USA > Ohio > Ross County > Chillicothe > Ohio centennial anniversary celebration at Chillicothe, May 20-21, 1903 : under the auspices of the Ohio State Archaelogical and Historical Society : complete proceedings > Part 8
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He soon suspected and then discovered the purposes and pro- ceedings of the French minister and set about thwarting them.
We never know how often nor how much our wits are sharpened and our wills stiffened by inherited antipathies, because they generally act unconsciously. Jay certainly desired the result he sought as a benefit to America and not as an injury to France, but he was an Huguenot matched against a Bourbon.
Franklin lent an unwilling ear to Jay's suspicions and proofs, so Jay sent an agent of his own to England to watch and cir- cumvent the French emissary who had gone there. Franklin reminded him of their instructions, which required all negotia- tions to be conducted in connection with the French, but Jay thought an unforeseen emergency had arisen which warranted disregarding them. By the terms of our treaty with France both nations had to concur in terms of peace with Great Britain, but Jay thought the situation required separate negotiation in advance and that the course of the French justified it.
Franklin still hesitated. He was not fully convinced of the duplicity of the French, and could not lightly disregard the obligations of courtesy and gratitude and those of obedience besides.
Then John Adams came over from Holland. He heard both and sided with Jay. The separate negotiation went on. The boundaries, the Tory claims and the fisheries were the chief sub- jects of dispute. The boundaries were Jay's chief concern. He had said in Congress five years before :
Extensive wildernesses, now scarcely known or explored, remain yet to be cultivated; and vast lakes and rivers, whose waters have for ages rolled in silence to the ocean, are yet to hear the din of industry, be- come subservient to commerce and boast delightful villas, gilded spires and spacious cities rising on their banks.
He insisted on the line of the Mississippi and the lakes and, with Adams, declared he would never sign a peace which fixed any other.
When the terms of the treaty as to America were finally settled the draft was submitted to Vergennes, who wrote the French ambassador at Philadelphia :
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The boundaries must have caused astonishment in America. No ·one can have flattered himself that the English ministers would go beyond the head-waters of the rivers falling into the ocean. .
Franklin's suavity succeeded in pacifying the French and after some efforts to change its terms the treaty was signed which made possible our celebration here to-day.
While Clark's conquest did not reach the northern part of the territory, it supplied the strongest support for the Ameri- can claim. The territory could not well be divided according to actual occupation because there was no natural boundary be- tween the Ohio and the lakes. The British yielded with great reluctance and only in consideration of concessions to them on other points. They retained possession of Detroit and other places along the lakes on the pretext, which was not wholly with- out color, that we had not fully performed our obligations. No doubt they repented of the bargain and hoped to be able to escape the loss of the territory by keeping a hold on it until the dissensions they confidently expected should break out among the states. They did not give up possession until 1795 and in the meantime strengthened their hold by building new forts, one of which was on the Maumee within the present state of Ohio.
Ever since the Confederation had been formed there had been contentions among the states over the claims of some of them to this western country. Those which had none insisted that those which had should surrender them for the common benefit, and some refused to sign the articles unless this were done. Maryland held out until the war was nearly over.
New York, which asserted title through the Iroquois, had set the example of relinquishment before the treaty, which fur- nished a new subject of dispute, viz .: whether it made the ter- ritory common property or confirmed the colonial claims to which the several states had succeeded. The states were tenacious, but finally Virginia yielded, her deed of cession being signed and delivered by Jefferson in 1784, and Massachusetts and Con- necticut followed. Sovereignty was entirely surrendered but ownership of certain lands reserved. Congress thus acquired complete dominion over the country, which then became known
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as the Northwest Territory to distinguish it from the unsettled regions south of the Ohio.
Congress had two objects for wishing to obtain control of the western country. Washington in his farewell address had said:
The most extensive and fertile regions of the West will yield a most happy competence to those who, fond of domestic enjoyment, are seeking for personal independence.
Accordingly from the close of the war the soldiers of the Revolution began to petition Congress for grants of western lands.
Congress also looked to sales of these lands for relief of the bankrupt treasury. Without waiting for cessions from the remaining states, which had then become only a question of terms, it accordingly, May, 1785, ordered a survey and June, 1785, caused a proclamation to be issued stating that disorderly persons had settled on unoccupied lands beyond the Ohio, thus interfering with the survey and sale, and ordering them to depart at once.
Various plans were also presented for dividing the territory with a view to ultimate admission as states, which was one of the conditions of the cession. The outcome was the famous Ordinance of 1787, the forerunner of our American constitutions. It established a single territory for which it provided general principles and the machinery of government. The officers were to be appointed by Congress but a legislative body was to be chosen by the people, and also a representative in Congress, when the free male inhabitants of full age should reach five thousand. Not less than three nor more than five states were to be formed on their total population reaching sixty thousand each.
But the features of this act which make its passage an epoch in our history are found in the articles which were made a compact, unalterable except by common consent, between the original states and the people and states in that territory. These articles embody all the fundamental rights with which every American is familiar - religious and political liberty, trial by jury, exemption from cruel and unusual punishments, due pro- cess of law, sanctity of property and contracts, encouragement
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of education, morality and religion, freedom of navigation, and the immediate and absolute prohibition of slavery.
This last was an abolition as well as a prohibition because slavery, both African and Indian, had been introduced by the French and still existed. So that when sixteen years later, the territory of Louisiana, the northern part of the purchase, was made subject to this ordinance, the French settlers com- plained because their slave rights were thus taken away, while those in the southern part, the territory of Orleans, were not. The territory of Missouri was accordingly established by an ordinance which omitted this prohibition. Attempts were also made to repeal this clause of the Ordinance of 1787, but they failed. The result on the history of the two regions is well known.
One of the articles imposed the condition of "the utmost good faith" toward the Indians, secured them against disturbance in their property, rights or liberty and required the making of "laws founded in justice and humanity" "for preventing wrongs being done to them and for preserving peace and friendship with them."
This was a grateful recognition of our obligations to the tribes of that region, most of which, under the influence of the friendly Delawares who had recently settled along the Mus- kingum, had rejected all inducements to attack us in the rear during the Revolution. The Delawares were in fact our allies under a formal treaty made at Fort Pitt in 1778.
The Indian title cut no figure in the conflicts among Euro- pean nations. Though always acknowledged by them, it was treated as an incumbrance rather than a title because of its usually vague character and because of the assumed ownership of civilized races from discovery. They admitted that the tribes had rights in the lands they roamed over or occupied, but agreed on the rule that the tribes could dispose of the lands only to or by consent of the government which had extended its authority over them. So grants from the Indians were still re- quired to perfect the title to the Northwest Territory.
Accordingly by treaties with the tribes which occupied the eastern and southeastern parts of it they were induced to move
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northward and westward. Among them were the Shawanees in whose former country we are now assembled. The most des- perate Indian warfare in our history was still to come with the confederated tribes which made their last stand contending for the Ohio as the Indian boundary; but it came after the found- ing of Marietta.
The French settlements had naturally commenced in the north and extended west and southwest. A new and greater tide, which was not to ebb, was now ready to flow along and across the Ohio and thence over the entire region. And, after centuries of conflict for its possession, the rich and beautiful country between the Ohio, the lakes and the Mississippi was. ready to begin its emergence from solitude to busy life, and from oppression and bloodshed to the realization of what mankind has. hoped and struggled for since government began upon the earth.
MT. LOGAN, CHILLICOTHE OHIO. MOUNTAIN REPRESENTED IN THE OHIO SEAL.
THE HISTORY
OF THE
NORTHWEST TERRITORY FROM THE MARIETTA SETTLEMENT TO THE ORGANIZATION OF THE STATE.
MARTIN R. ANDREWS.
Where a nation has for many centuries occupied the same territory, the human plant slowly yields to the influence of its own carth, air and sky, and the result is a new variety with its own characteristics. Our history is too brief for such development. Our life is made up of many stream- lets, each of which had flowed in its own narrow valley for a long time ere it joined any other. Sometimes the streams flowed side by side, yet unmingled and distinct. Sometimes there was the rush and roar of con- tending forces, but gradually the streamlets lost their identity, all merged in a mighty stream resistless in its power. So thoroughly have the varied elements of our origins blended in the great commonwealth of Ohio that we can now recall the early differences and contests with- MARTIN R. ANDREWS. out fear of arousing bitterness. In the period which we are to consider, the blending has scarcely begun; hence our history must be made up of mere glimpses from each of many widely sundered colonies.
First among these colonies were the settlements of the In- dians, for many of the tribes in what is now Ohio had entered that region within the eighteenth century. In the fertile valleys
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they had built their wigwams, and they claimed as their own all the land from Lake Erie to the Ohio River. Within the area lived, perhaps, fifteen hundred warriors. Had the land been equally divided among them, each would have possessed an es- tate of seventeen thousand acres. Since only the squaws had reached the agricultural stage, a very small part of this vast domain was cleared and cultivated. It is not strange, then, that the Indians were ready to sell their lands whenever guns, fire- water and blankets were offered in exchange. The greatest trou- ble to the purchaser was the uncertainty of the title. It was hard to secure a transfer that would not be contested by some other red claimant. For example, when Wayne made his famous treaty in 1795, he paid a goodly sum for land which had already been purchased at Fort Stanwix in 1784, at Fort McIntosh in 1785 and at Fort Harmar in 1789.
First to compete with the Indians in the wilderness came the ubiquitous squatter. In this class were to be found hunters, traders, farmers and escaped criminals. Of their number we have no statistics, for the census enumerator had never reached them, but one official of a frontier garrison on the Ohio estimated that fifteen hundred of these adventurous intruders had moved into unoccupied territory within his sphere of observation. Many of them were driven away by the soldiers and their cabins burned, but it seems probable that they soon returned. Among these adventurers there may have been some worthy pioneers, but the squatters, as a class, did not have a good reputation among the officers who had been sent to the frontiers. John Matthews, a nephew of General Rufus Putnam, saw many of them in 1787, and in a private letter written at that time, he said of them and of the Indians : "They are both savages." General Harmar said of Captain Pipe, a Delaware chief: "He is a manly old fellow, and much more of a gentleman than the generality of these frontier people." Even if the British officers and traders had not been constantly inciting the Indians to hostile acts, the outrages committed by these lawless whites furnished the red man with abundant excuses for going upon the warpath. The better class of squatter at last found home and occupation among the legiti- mate settlers; others continued their vagrant habits, and kept
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moving forward out of the reach of law and civilization. Many a pioneer found the land he had purchased from the government already occupied by an intruder, who was unwilling to make room for the legitimate owner.
There are traditions of rude contests in those early days, contests in which the lawful purchaser, finding his cabin burned by a stealthy foe, and fearing for the life of wife and children, abandoned his home and sought a new one in the wilderness. Sometimes the escaped criminals would not stop on the frontier, but would go to the Indians, and lead them back to rob or murder the settlers. A few of the same kind seem to have been in the frontier army, for General Wilkinson thought it necessary, in 1792, to issue orders that, if any soldier deserted in the direction of the enemy, scouts were to pursue him and bring back his head ; that for such service the scouts were to receive forty dollars. He added this grim comment to his order: "One head lopped off in this way and set upon a pole on the parade might do last- ing good in the way of deterring others." All honor is due to the body of pioneers who, under such adverse conditions, held fast to the religion and morality of their fathers, and thus laid the foundations of stable and orderly government.
These pioneers, these legitimate settlers, followed closely upon the trail of the squatter. Armed with rifle, ax and hoe, these farmer soldiers were ready to face a savage foe or to trans- form the wilderness.
The first party, led by General Rufus Putnam, landed at the mouth of the Muskingum on the seventh of April, 1788, and soon made settlements northward as far as Waterford, and southward to Belpre. The following winter parties under the general direc- tion of John Cleves Symmes, formed settlements at Columbia, Losantiville and North Bend. The settlement on the Muskingum was named Marietta, in honor of Queen Marie Antoinette, whose soldiers had assisted us in the war for independence. Judge Symmes reported that he had named the settlement in his pur- chase Cincinnati in honor of the "knights," as he called them, who lived there, meaning the order of farmer soldiers who bore that name. In many respects, the conditions of the Marietta and Cin- cinnati settlements were similar. Since the first settlements
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could only be made under military protection, each of these sites had been selected because the United States troops had erected a fort in that vicinity. In each place there were among the set- tlers many veterans of the Revolution, who came to the wilder- ness in the hope of repairing the losses they had incurred in the war for independence. In each case, the movement to the Ohio. was preceded by a contract with Congress for a large undivided tract of land, of one and a half million acres about the Muskin- gum, and a million between the Great and Little Miami. The land was engaged at the rate of two-thirds of a dollar an acre, and payment could be made in the final certificates that had been issued to the discharged officers and soldiers.
Each company failed to complete the purchase of all the land for which they had made contract, other land having soon been placed on the market at more favorable rates. The system of purchasing land in large blocks was soon modified, but not until it had driven many prospective settlers to Kentucky, where a more liberal system prevailed. As a land speculation, the Mus- kingum and Miami ventures were both failures.
Since it was impossible to bring a large supply of provisions with the pioneers, the first work of the spring was to clear some land and plant a field of corn. At Marietta, a hundred acres were cleared and cultivated the first summer, and in the first year of the settlement at Manchester the lower of the Three Islands was transformed into a cornfield. Corn, pumpkins and beans, with game from the forest and fish from the streams, fur- nished subsistence for the hardy pioneers, yet so great were the. demands upon the time and strength in building and fortifying, in planting and cultivating, that all sources of supply were in- sufficient, and, at times, there was almost a famine in some of the colonies. If we compute distances by the time or the expense of transportation, Sitka is, to-day, as near Philadelphia as Cincin- nati was in 1790. At that time General Harmar, finding it diffi- cult and expensive to send a boat once a month five hundred miles. up the Ohio to Pittsburg to a post-office, found it cheaper to send letters by private messenger to Danville, Kentucky, and thence over the mountains to be mailed at Richmond. Even as late as I792, the transportation of a message from Wayne, who was near
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Pittsburg, to Wilkinson, near Cincinnati, is said to have cost a hundred dollars. In the latter part of the next year, two packet boats, well armed and sheathed, were "poled" up the river, each making the round trip to Pittsburg in a month, and conveying letters and passengers with safety and dispatch.
In the summer of 1794 three small boats were constructed. to convey the mails between Wheeling and Limestone. Secre- tary Pickering sent to General Putnam the necessary papers for establishing a post-office at Marietta and also at Gallipolis. He also directed him to secure a postmaster for each office. For the. position at Marietta General Putnam recommended a young at- torney, Return Jonathan Meigs, Jr., who was afterwards post- master-general. The methods of conveying the mail by boats proved so unsatisfactory that it was announced in 1796 that the next year the route would be overland by Zane's Road through. Zanesville, Lancaster and Chillicothe. When that route was adopted mail was carried once a week on horseback from Zanes- ville to Marietta. The kind of roads to be found in the earlier days may be imagined from the instructions given by Albert Gallatin to General Putnam fifteen years after the first settle- ment had been made, and when people were beginning to expect improved conditions. A road was to be opened from Marietta to St. Clairsville, through a rough and thickly-wooded country, provided the entire cost of construction did not exceed five dollars a mile. Evidently, making the road "passable for wagons" meant. little more than cutting down trees and leaving no very high stumps in the way. In 1795, Griffin Green of Marietta paid at. the rate of $7.75 for each hundred weight (112 lbs.) conveyed by wagon from Philadelphia to Pittsburg. Other bills for haul- ing in those times show that this was not much above the average price. The expense of transporting goods down the river and back into the remote settlements would be almost as much more.
Under such conditions the price of imported goods when measured in farm products was almost prohibitive. For example, the farmer who wished a pound of tea or a dozen iron spoons must pay in exchange a hundred pounds of pork or flour. From necessity the pioneers learned to limit their wants to the product of their own industry. When a calico gown would cost enough
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meat to last a family for a whole winter, our grandmothers wore with dignity and grace the linen or the linsey which their own hands had woven and fashioned.
With a mountain barrier between them and the Atlantic, the people on both sides of the Ohio demanded a free passage to the Gulf of Mexico. Very early the surplus products of the farm were transported down the Ohio and Mississippi, in flatboats to New Orleans or in ships to the West Indies. The ships were built on our borders, and the first leader to engage in this foreign trade was Commodore Abraham Whipple, who sailed from Mari- etta to the West Indies in the brig St. Clair. The Spanish coins, the quarter, the "levy" and the "fip," brought into this country as the result of this foreign trade, continued in circulation in Ohio until the beginning of the Civil War.
In connection with the act authorizing the sale of land to the Ohio Company of Associates, there was an arrangement to sell a much larger tract to what was known as the Scioto Com- pany. Disaster befell this venture, whose only permanent ad- dition to the state was the settlement at Gallipolis. Through the influence of Barlow, an agent of the Scioto Company, six hun- dred French emigrants were induced to embark at Havre in Feb- ruary, 1790. Many became discouraged at Alexandria, Va., but about four hundred came overland to Gallipolis - the name se- lected in France for the new settlement they were about to make - and occupied the cabins prepared for them 'by Major Burn- ham. Among these were workmen whose skill seemed marvel- ous to the frontiersman. There were goldsmiths and watch- makers, sculptors and glassblowers. Their ignorance of wood- craft provoked the merriment of the American pioneers, but their beautiful gardens were the admiration of General Putnam and John Heckewelder, who visited them in 1792. Skilled workmen were scarce on the frontier, and many wandered from Gallipolis to other settlements where their descendants may be found among the best families. So many had gone from Gallipolis within the first five years of its existence that when General Putnam came to Gallipolis to distribute among the settlers the land in the French grant, only ninety-three persons over eighteen years of age were present to draw a share.
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A little later the long deserted Moravian settlement was re- occupied by the heroic missionaries Zeisberger and Heckewelder, and, in compliance with an act of Congress, General Putnam sur- veyed 12,000 acres on the Tuscarawas and assigned the tract for the use of the Christian Indians. Politically, this colony, as well as the one at, Gallipolis, was in Washington County, and we must neglect the details of local history, although each of these settle- ments could furnish material for many volumes of poetry and prose. The tract of land withheld from the general government by the state of Connecticut, and therefore called the Western Reserve, or New Connecticut, was not occupied by surveyor or settler before 1796, and its growth was comparatively slow for many years. Trumbull County, which at first included all the Reserve, sent one representative to the second Territorial Legis- lature and two to the constitutional convention. Its history had barely begun at the close of the territorial period. If we would clearly understand the conditions in the Ohio settlements we must bear in mind that from the very first there was a state of war. There was a brief truce along the Muskingum, but on the Ohio within sixty miles above and below the mouth of the Scioto, more than a hundred emigrants, according to General Putnam's. estimate, were killed by the Indians within five years after the first settlement had been made. Along the front of the Miami colonies, murders and thefts were frequent until the advance of our army and a liberal premium on Indian scalps had driven the Indians far towards the north. The frequent attacks upon the- emigrants near the mouth of the Scioto induced General Harmar, in the spring of 1790, to march in that direction with about three hundred soldiers, but the wary foe heard of his advance and kept out of his way. In September of that year he moved north- ward from Cincinnati with 1,400 soldiers, a few of them regulars, but the greater part militia from Kentucky and Pennsylvania. On the Miami of the Lakes he destroyed the cornfields; but two of his detachments having been routed with a total loss of three hundred men, he was forced to retreat without waiting to bury his dead. His campaign had exasperated the enemy, but not over- awed them. Governor St. Clair then undertook a campaign in person, advancing to the hostile country with a force of 2,300,
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