USA > Ohio > Wyandot County > Past and present of Wyandot County, Ohio; a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievemen, Vol. I > Part 7
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36
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further of the Wyandot Mission, than to merely make men- tion of some of the most prominent events.
While the chiefs and head men known as Between-the-logs, Mononcue, John Hicks, Squire Grey Eyes, George Punch, Summundewat, Big-tree, Driver, Washington, Joseph Williams, Two Logs, Mathew Peacock, Harrihoot, Robert Armstrong, Scuteash, Rohnyenness, Little Chief, Big River, Squindatee and others (with a following of about one-half of those on the reservation), professed to have obtained religion and were enrolled as members of the Mission Methodist Epis- copal church, Deunquat, who became the head chief of the na- tion upon the death of Tarhe, together with the other half of the Indians under his control, remained true to the religion. if so it may be called, of their fathers.
After the departure of the Delawares for the West, the Wyandots were the only considerable body of Indians re- maining in the State of Ohio. In the meantime the white set- tlers had encircled their reservations at Upper Sandusky and the Big Spring with towns and cultivated lands, and were anxious that congress should purchase these reservations, and thus open the way for their occupancy by the whites. Acting upon these urgent petitions, agents of the General Government had endeavored to open negotiations with the Wyandots for the purpose of purchasing the lands they claimed as early as 1825. But they firmly resisted all argu- ments tending to that end for nearly twenty years thereafter. However it became evident, that such a state of affairs could not always exist, as they had sadly degenerated from the pros- perous state they were in a few years before. The Rev. Fin- ley, the missionary, had left in 1827, and the majority of the Indians had gone back to their old habits of intemperance and heathenism, they realized that they must yield to the advance of civilization, and they finally consented to give up the narrow possessions they claimed for a large sum of money and thousands of broad acres lying west of the Mississippi river. Col. John Johnston, of Piqua, conducted the nego- tiations on the part of the United States, and concluded the purchase at Upper Sandusky on the 17th day of March, 1842. In speaking of this transaction and the proceedings which led to it, Colonel Johnston said :
"About the year 1800, this tribe numbered about 2,200, and in March, 1842, when, as commissioner of the United
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States, I concluded with them a treaty of cession and emigra- tion, they had become reduced to less than 800 of all ages and both sexes. Before the Revolutionary war quite a num- ber of the Wyandots had embraced Christianity in the com- munion of the Roman Catholic church. In the early part of my agency, Presbyterians had a mission among the Indians at Lower Sandusky, under the care of the Rev. Joseph Badger. The war of 1812 broke up these missionary efforts. When peace was restored, the Methodists became the spiritual instructors of these Indians and continued in charge of them until their removal westward of Missouri. The mission had once been in a flourishing condition, but of late years had greatly declined, many of the Indians having gone back to habits of intemperance and heathenism, but a few continued steadfast to their Christian profession. Of this number was Grey Eyes, a regularly ordained minister, of pure Wyandot blood. This man was resolutely opposed to the emigration of his people, and was against me at every step of a long and pro- tracted negotiation of twelve months' continuance. I finally overcame all objections, and on the last vote more than two- thirds of the whole male population were found in favor of removal. Grey Eyes had long asserted that under no cir- . cumstances would he consent to a removal of his people. His
age was about forty-eight years; his character forbade any attempts to tamper with him, and I never addressed myself personally to him on the subject of the treaty. But as soon as the whole nation in open council had voted to leave the reservation and seek a new home in the West, I sent an in- vitation to him to come and dine with me and spend an even- ing in consultation. He accepted my invitation and came. As a result of this interview, it appears that Grey Eyes changed his views, for he removed West with his people.
"By the terms of this treaty, it was stipulated that the chiefs should remove their people without other expense to the United States than $10,000, one-half payable when the first detachment should start; the remainder, when the whole nation would arrive at its place of destination. Further, that the Wyandots should receive for the lands ceded, another track of land west of the Mississippi, containing 148,000 acres, a permanent cash annuity of $17,500, and a permanent fund of $500 per annum for educational purposes, and an appro- priation of $23,860 to pay the debts of the tribe. They were
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also to be paid the full value of their improvements in the country ceded, and to be provided in their new home with two blacksmiths and a blacksmith shop with necessary steel, iron and tools and with an agent and an interpreter. However, instead of the 148,000 acres promised, the Wyandots received by purchase from the Delaware Indians 24,960 acres, and by a subsequent treaty received in lieu of the balance of the 148,000 acres, $380,000 in three annual payments.
"In the spring and summer of 1843, in accordance with the stipulations of the treaty concluded the previous year, the Wyandots under the lead of Jacques, their head chief, com- pleted their arrangements for the removal to the new re- serve, in the then wild West. The parting scenes at Upper Sandusky were most affecting. Consultations were held in the council house, and religious worship in the church, for days before the final departure. Meanwhile the remains of the chief, Summundewat, who had been murdered in Wood county in 1841, and also those of the colored preacher, John Stewart, were brought hither and deposited in the burial ground attached to their church. The last resting places of their other dead were likewise cared for, and marked with stones or marble tablets. Just before their strange and mot- ley procession unwound its length on the highway leading southerly, Chief Grey Eyes bade an affectionate farewell to the large number of white people present. With plaintive voice he bade farewell to the graves of his ancestors, which they were about to leave forever.
"At last, all being in readiness, the train, consisting of horses and wagons, hired from the settlers living in the vicin- ity, Indian chiefs upon horseback, and many men and women on foot, began wending its slow way toward Cincinnati, where boats were waiting to take them to the mouth of the Kansas river. This movement began on the last days of July, and was participated in by nearly 700 of the Wyandot race. The remainder of the distance to their new reserva- tion was accomplished by way of the Mississippi and Mis- souri rivers. The Wyandots left Cincinnati on the eighth day after leaving Upper Sandusky. Among their leading men at that time were Jacques, Bearskin, Blue Jacket, Big Tree, Black Sheep, Big River, Bull Head, Big Town, Curly Head, Caryhoe, Chop-the-logs, Lump-on-the-head, Peacock, Porcupine, Providence, Split-the-log, Stand-in-the-water,
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White Wing, Mudeater, Warpole, Grey Eyes, William Walker, a quarter-blood, John Hicks and Washington."
From the report of the United States Commissioner of Indian affairs for the year 1843, we learn that the number of Wyandots who removed to their new reservation in July and August of that year, was 664, and that fifty still remained in Ohio who were expected to emigrate the next spring. In the following year, 1844, the sub-agent reported that only 585 Wyandots were on the new reserve. During the year 1855, another treaty was concluded with that nation, wherein it was stipulated that in lieu of the 148,000 acres (less the 24,960 acres purchased for the Wyandots from the Dela- wares in 1842), granted by the treaty of Upper Sandusky, the Wyandots were to receive $380,000, in three annual pay- ments. By this treaty, also, all provisions of former treaties guaranteeing permanent annuities, etc., were annulled.
"NELLIE TWO BEARS "
THE RELAPSE OF AN INDIAN PRINCESS INTO BARBARITY
She didn't want to return to the tribe, but she went- instead of weaning the Indians from savagery she became as they were. The following sketch shows the "true inward- ness" of the Indian nature. A man who has had wide ex- perience in trying to make the Indian civilized by education and who is not hostile entirely to the ideas inculcated at Car- lisle and Hampton said to a St. Paul correspondent of the New York Sun:
"One instance of a complete return to aboriginal manners, mode of thought and disgrace of living, which came within my knowledge may serve to point a moral. When seven years old, Nellie Mat-nopath (Two Bears), daughter of the principal and hereditary chief of the great Sioux tribes known as the Lower Yankonais, was sent, her father concurring, to a Catholic school in St. Joseph, Missouri. She was a bright girl, with other claims than birth to the title of princess, and rapidly acquired a good knowledge not only of English, but of French, while in needlework and housewifely gifts she displayed an aptitude that cheered the hearts of the gentle sisters, her teachers, and led them to hope that, arrived at
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woman's estate, Nellie would well repay their care and toil by the influence she would exert among her people.
"When she reached the age of eighteen, and after more than eleven years in the convent, and among the whites (for she was not allowed, for reasons that seemed good, to visit her people during her education) Nellie was told that the time had come for her to repay the sisters and priests she had loved for all they had done for her behalf, and that hereafter she must live with her own kindred and seek by example and precept to wean them from their savagery to proper modes of living. The young woman wept bitterly, pleaded hard to be allowed to stay in the convent as a teacher, pointed out how distasteful the coarse life of the tepee would be to one who knew so well the amenities of life, and urged, further, that from what she knew of her tribe she would not be welcome should she try to induce them to adopt the customs of the whites. But her teachers were firm, and properly so, since it had been a condition precedent with her father-an enlightened chief, so far as his environment would permit-when he permitted her to go to St. Joseph, that when she had completed her course of instruction she should return to him and to his life.
"So with many tears she left her school and after a long boat journey up the Missouri, during which she was made much of by several wives of officers who were on their way to Fort Yates, she arrived at the agency, within three miles of which her father and her family were encamped. She went at once to the house of Mrs. Galpin, an Indian woman of much influence among the Sioux and with several half breed daugh- ters. The day after her arrival she wrote the Indian agent a dainty note in admirable French asking permission to remain at Mrs. Galpin's. The request was referred to Bishop Marty, who would not acquiesce, but said Nellie must go to her father with all speed, as the old man was sick and needed her attendance.
"The homecoming was a terrible trial to the girl, and all the whites about the agency and the fort who knew of the case pitied her deeply. When she entered her father's tepee, she found the old chief very ill. Around him were medicine men, one of whom was stuffing into the dying man's mouth a nause- ous compound of herbs, which the sufferer had previously chewed into a ball. The girl was coldly welcomed and almost
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insulted, when she insisted that the medicine men should leave and the agency doctor be summoned. She carried her point after an appeal to the agent, and tenderly nursed her father through his few remaining hours of life.
"For a fortnight Nellie came to the agency daily, riding on an Indian pony in civilized feminine fashion. Then her visits became fewer, and then some insisted-but were not believed -that she had doffed some of her civilized attire and rode astride. Then we missed her altogether, and visitors to her tepee were met with the Indian equivalent of 'Not at home.'
"Six weeks after Nellie's arrival at Standing Rock there' was one of the fortnightly beef killings in the big corral across the river. These killings in those days were scenes of bru- tality and blood such as no white man would witness unless duty called him thither. Extended description would serve no good end. The imagination can picture what a corral would be wherein six score or more big beasts had been shot to death and were being dismembered by red men and women roused to a high pitch of excitement.
"Those of us who were in charge of the killing were amazed to see Nellie Two Bears in the very wildest center of screaming, blood bespattered squaws. She was dressed in what the Indians doubtless regarded as the height of fashion- broad, nail bestudded belt, red leggings, porcupine quilled moccasins, short calico skirt, blue tissue cloth blouse.
"Her face and part of her hair were painted, and she swung a butcher knife in one hand, while in the other was a piece of raw liver, of a recently killed steer, from which dainty morsel she now and then took a very liberal bite, as a school girl would from a red streaked pippin.
"We could scarcely believe our eyes and called her by name. She paid no attention but on our evidencing an in- tention to come nearer to her she showed the savage grace of shame, covered her head in the blanket which hung at her hips and ran out of the corral to her horse, which she bestrode quickly and rode to the ferry.
"In a few weeks we learned that the educated princess, the girl who from the age of seven, to that of eighteen lived amidst the most refined influences, the woman who wept when she had to return to tepee life, was about to be married to a half breed named Bad Hip, a man with an unsavory reputation but noted as a hunter and with a certain wild grace of his own and having a good deal of influence among the Indians."
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JOHNNY APPLESEED
Johnny Appleseed, who made frequent trips through Wyandot county disposing of his nursery stock to the pio- neer settlers, is thus sketched by the late Rosella Rice, a writer of considerable note:
John Chapman was born in the year 1775, at or near Springfield, Massachusetts. In the latter years of the last century or beginning of the present, he, with his half-brother, Nathaniel Chapman, came to Ohio, and stayed a year or two, and then returned to Springfield, and moved their father's family to Marietta, Ohio. Soon after that Johnny located in Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, and began the nursery busi- ness, and continued it on westward. His father, Nathaniel Chapman, was twice married. The children of the first wife were John, Lucy and Patty. The children of the second mar- riage were Nathaniel, Perley, Persia, Abner (a mute), Mary, Jonathan (likewise a mute), Davis and Sally. Johnny's father, Nathaniel, Sr., moved from Marietta to Duck Creek, where he lived until his death, and was buried there. Johnny often visited them and gathered seeds there. The Chap- man family and relatives are scattered through Ohio and In- diana. Four of Johnny's half-sisters were living when the monument was erected to his memory, or his name engraved on the Copus monument in 1882. We have good authority for saying that he was born in the year 1775, and his name was John Chapman not Jonathan, as it is generally called. He was an earnest disciple of the faith taught by Emanuel Swedenborg, and claimed that he had conversation with spirits and angels. In the bosom of his shirt he always car- ried a Testament and one or two old volumes of Sweden- borg's works. These he read daily. He was a man rather above middle stature, wore his hair and beard long and dressed oddly. He generally wore old clothes that he had taken in exchange for the one commodity in which he dealt -apple trees. He was known in Ohio as early as 1811. Dr. Hill says in 1801, an uncle of ours, a pioneer in Jefferson county, Ohio, said the first time he ever saw him (Johnny) he was going down the river in 1806 with two canoes lashed 1 together and well laden with appleseeds which he had ob- tained at the cider presses of western Pennsylvania. Some- times he carried a bag or two of seeds on an old horse, but
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more frequently he bore them on his back going from place to place on the wild frontier clearing a little patch, surround- ing it with a rude enclosure and planting seeds therein. He had little nurseries all through Ohio, Pennsylvania and In- diana. If a man wanted trees and was not able to pay for them, Johnny took his note, and if the man ever got able and was willing to pay the debt, he took the money thankfully; but if not, it was well. Sometimes he took a coat, one of which we remember of having seen. It was sky-blue, light, very fine, and made in the prevailing Quaker style, and bright silver-looking buttons on it, two rows as large at least as silver dollars. Some way the button holes were out of sight hidden by a fold perhaps. The coat was a choice wedding garment of a wealthy young Quaker, and in time, prosperity and its attendant blessings made the young man grow rotund in stature and the coat did not fit. Then he had loops put on it and finally he traded it to Johnny for trees; and Johnny's home was at my grandfather's and by that means the coat came into our family and hung by the year, on a peg up stairs. I can remember how Johnny looked in his queer clothing, combination suits, as the girls of nowadays would call it. He was such a good, kind, generous man, that he thought it was wrong to expend money on clothes to be worn just for their fine appearance. He thought if he was com- fortably clad, and in attire that suited the weather, it was sufficient. His head covering was often a paste-board hat of his own making, with one broad side to it, that he wore next the sunshine to protect his face. It was a very unsightly object to be sure, and yet never one of us children ventured to laugh. We held Johnny in tender regard. His pantaloons were old and scant and short, with some sort of a substitute for "gallows" or suspenders. He never wore a coat unless it was in the winter time, and his feet were knobby and horny and frequently bare. Sometimes he wore sandals in- stead-rude soles with thong fastenings. The bosom of his shirt was always pulled out loosely so as to make a kind of pocket or pouch in which he carried his books. We have seen Johnny frequently wearing an old coffee sack for a coat, with holes cut in it for arms.
All the orchards in the white settlements came from the nurseries of Johnny's planting. Even now all these years, and though this region is densely populated, I can count from
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my window, no less than five orchards or remains of orchards that were once trees taken from his nurseries. Long ago if he was going a great distance and carrying a sack of seeds on his back he had to provide himself with a leather sack, for the dense underbrush, brambles and the thorny thickets would have made it unsafe for a coffee sack. I remember distinctly of falling over one of Johnny's well filled sacks early one morning immediately after rising. It was not light in the room, at the head of the stairs and it was not there when I went to bed. He preferred to lie on the floor with his poor old horny feet to the fire. I have often wondered how he carried that sack of seeds. I should think there was at least a bushel and a half in it and was so full that instead of being tied and leaving something for a hand hold, it was sowed up snugly and one end was as smooth and tight as the other. It must have been as hard to carry as a box of the same size. I have heard my father say, however, that Johnny always carried a forestick or any big stick for the fire place on his hip, so it may be the way that he carried that ungainly burden.
In 1806 he planted sixteen bushels of seeds on an old farm on the Walhonding river, and he planted in Licking county, Ohio, and Richland county, and had other nurseries further west. One of his nurseries was near us, and I often go to the secluded spot on the quiet banks of the river shut in by the trees, with the sod never broken since the poor old man did it. And when I look up and see the wide out-stretched branches over the place like out-spread arms in loving bene- diction, I say in a reverent whisper "Oh, the angels did com- mune with the loving old man whose loving heart prompted him to go about doing good."
Though my mother was very kind, she liked fun-liked to tease big over-grown boys, and make them say funny things, and writhe and twist rather than confess or make a fair answer. I often recall one time that she so far trans- gressed as to tease Johnny. He was holding the baby on his lap, chirruping to the little fellow, when my mother asked him if he would not be a happier man if he were settled in a home of his own and had a family to love him? He opened his eyes very wide (they were remarkable, keen, penetrating gray eyes, almost black) and replied in a manner the words of which I cannot repeat, but the meaning was that all women
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are not what they profess to be, that some of them were deceivers and a man might not marry the amiable woman that he thought he was getting after all.
Now we had always heard that Johnny had loved once upon a time, and that his lady love had proven false to him. Then he said one time he saw a poor, friendless little girl who had no one to care for her, and he found her home for her, and sent her to school, and meant to bring her up to suit himself and when she was old enough he intended to marry her. He clothed her and watched over her; but when she was fifteen years old, he called to see her once unexpect- edly and found her sitting beside a young man with her hand in his, listening to his silly twaddle.
I peeped over at Johnny while he was telling this story, and young as I was I saw his eyes grow dark as violets and the pupils enlarge, and his voice rise up in denunciation, while his nostrils dilated and his thin lips worked with emotion. How angry he grew. He thought the girl was basely ungrate- ful. After that time she was no protege of his.
On the subject of apples he was very charmingly enthu- siastic. One would be astonished at his beautiful description of excellent fruit. I saw him once at the table when I was very small, telling about some apples that were new to us. His description was poetical, the language remarkably well chosen. It would have been no finer had the whole of Web- ster's unabridged with all its royal vocabulary been fresh upon his tongue. I stood back of mother's chair amazed, de- lighted, bewildered and vaguely realizing the wonderful pow- ers of true oratory. I felt more than I understood.
He was scrupulously honest. I recall the last time we ever saw his sister, a very ordinary woman, the wife of an easy old gentleman, and the mother of a family of handsome girls. They had started to move west in the winter season, but could move no farther after they reached our house. To help them along and to get rid of them, my father made a queer, little one-horse vehicle on runners, hitched their poor caricature of a beast to it, helped them pack and stow their bedding and a few movables, gave them a stock of provisions and five dol- lars, and sent the whole kit on their way rejoicing. And that was the last we ever saw of our poor neighbor.
The next time Johnny came to our house he very promptly laid a five dollar bill on my father's knee and very decidedly
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shook his head when it was handed back. Neither could he be prevailed upon to take it back again.
He was never known to hurt any animal or to give any living thing pain; not even a snake. One time when over- taken by night while traveling he crawled into a hollow log and slept till morning. In the other end of the log were a bear and her cubs. Johnny said he knew that the bear would not hurt him and that there was room enough for all.
The Indians all liked him and treated him very kindly. They regarded him from his habits as a man above his fel- lows. He could endure pain like an Indian warrior; could thrust pins into his flesh without a tremor. Indeed so insensi- ble was he to acute pain that treatment of a wound or sore, was to sear it with a hot iron and then treat it as a burn. He ascribed great medical virtues to the fennel, which he found probably in Pennsylvania. The overwhelming desire to do good and benefit and bless others, induced him to gather a quantity of the seed which he carried in his pockets, and occasionally scattered along his path in his journeys, espe- cially at the waysides, near dwellings. Poor old man! He inflicted on the farming population a positive evil, when he sought to do good, for the rank fennel, with its pretty but pungent blossoms, lines our roadsides and borders our lanes, and steals into our door yard, and is a pest second to the daisy.
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