USA > Ohio > Hamilton County > Cincinnati > The Cincinnati miscellany, or, Antiquities of the West, and pioneer history and general and local statistics. Volume II > Part 55
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CINCINNATI, July 8, 1846.
Having been accustomed to very courteous re- lations with the gentlemen of the press, I regret to observe in your paper of yesterday a para- graph equally uncourteous and unjust, in which my name is associated with others in a sneering allusion.
Whatever you can justly say of myself, you are welcome to say; but as men are judged by their associates, I beg that my name shall not on any occasion be connected with those of men with whom I have as little sympathy, affinity,
I was surprised to find so little disparity in the two products, under the circumstances of the case. I do not know the amount of flour actually manufactured in St. Louis. This is both there Mr. C. CIST,-Sir : and here, far short of the actual capacity of the mills. We make in Cincinnati more than one hundred and twenty thousand barrels annually, all beyond our home consumption, until this year, for shipment to New Orleans and the Atlantic Cities. Owing to the late flour operations, we have sent this year largely to the Lake Erie ports. At Union mills, St. Louis, on two rnn of stones -five feet-they make one hundred barrels flour per day. At Bradbury's, here, on four run four and a half feet, one hundred and thirty to one hundred and fifty barrels daily. This is or connection as yourself and Dr. Wilson.
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Whether my investigations of the brain receive | would save the coroner the trouble of calling a jury to sit upon our remains."
public honour or censure, troubles me very little; but I am not willing that my friends should be annoyed and my position mystified with the pub- lic, by using my name in the company in which you have placed it.
Although editors are not bound to be omnis- cient, they are at least bound to be just in what they do say; and as your columns have a tone of independence and conscientionsness, I would re- quest you to rectify this matter by a short extract which I herewith send you, which will serve in some degree to define my position for your readers.
Legitimate, and even insolent and unfair op- position I expect as a matter of course, but I am not prepared to submit to any personal degrada- tion as a proper reward for investigations which some of the best minds of our country already re- gard as the commencement of a new era in the science of mind.
Very respectfully yours,
JOS. R. BUCHANAN.
The Way Americans go Down Hill.
But who has not been both wcaried and amu- sed with the slow caution of the German drivers? At every little descent on the road that it would almost require a spirit level to discern that it was a descent, he dismounts and puts on his drag. On a road of the gentlest undulations, where a heavy English coach would go at the rate of ten English miles an hour, without drag or pause, up and down, he is continually alighting and put- ting on one or both drags, alighting and ascend- ing with a patience that amazes you. Nay, in many states, this caution is evinced also by the government, and is enforced by a post on the side, standing on the top of every slope on the road, having painted on a board a black and con- spicuous drag, and announcing a fine, of com- monly six florins (ten shillings) on any loaded carriage which shall descend without the drag on. In everything they are continually guarded against those accidents which result from hurry, or slightness of construction .- Howitt's Moral und Domestic Life in Germany.
The stage in which we traveled across " tht | Alleghenies," was one of the then called " Transi Line." It was, as the driver termed it, a " rush- ing affair," and managed by a refined cruelty to the dumb beasts, to keep a little ahead of the " Opposition," that seemed to come clattering in our rear like some ill-timed spirit, never destined exactly to reach us. The drivers of our different " changes" all seemed to be made upon the go- ahead principle, looking upon nothing as really disgraceful but being behind the stage that so perseveringly pursued us. Unfortunately, too, for our safety, we went in an " extra," and man- aged, by a freak of fortune, to arrive at the differ- ent stations, when drivers and horses were changed, just as the former had got comfortably to bed, and it was not the least interesting por- tion of my thoughts, that every one of those Je- hus made the most solemn protestations that they would " upset us over some precipice, not less than three hundred and sixty-five feet high, and knock us into such a perfect nonentity, that it
It is nine years since, and if the winter of that year is not " remarkably cold" in the almanacs, it shows a want of care in those useful annuals. We say it was nine years since we crossed the Alleghenies. At the particular time we allude to, the " oldest inhabitant" of the country, and we met him on the road side, informed us that he had no recollection of such a severe season. How we lived through it has puzzled us quite as much as it did Capt. Ross, after he returned to England, from his trip to the north pole. The fire in every house we passed smoked like a Pitts- burgh furnace, and around its genial warmth were crowded groups of men, women and chil- dren, that looked as if they had been born in the workshop of Vulcan. The road over which we traveled was McAdamized, and then frozen; it was as hard as nature will permit and the tramp- ling of the horses' fcet upon it sounded in the frosty air as if they were rushing across a contin- uous bridge.
The inside of the stage coach is a wonder; it is a perfect denial of Newton's theory, that two things or twenty cannot occupy the same place at the same time. The one we traveled in was perfectly full of seats, and their backs straw, buf- falo robes, hat-boxes, rifles, flute cases, small par- cels, and yet nine men, the very nine muses at times, (all the cider along the road was frozen and we drank the heart of it,) stowed themselves away within its bowels, but how, we leave to the invention of exhausted air-pumps and hydraulic presses. We all of course froze more or less, but it was in streaks; the curtains of the stage were fastened down and made tight, and then like pigs we quarreled ourselves into the snuggest possible position and place, it being considered fortunate to be most in the middle, as we then parted with the least heat, to satisfy the craving appetite of Jack Frost, who penetrated every little hole and nook, and delighted himself in painting fantastic figures upon the different objects exposed to his influence, out of our misery and death.
By one of these extraordinary phenomena, ex- hibited in the light of our favoured country, we unexpectedly found ourselves traveling over a road that was covered with frozen sleet; cold as was the season, there was no snow, the horses' shoes had no corks on them worth noticing, and the iron bound wheels ou this change in the sur- face of the earth, seemed to have so little hold upon the road, that we almost expected they would make an effort to leave it, and break our necks as a reward for their aspirations. On we went, however, and as night came on, the dark- ness enveloped us in a kind of cloud, the ice-gla- zed surface of the ground reflecting a dull mys- terious light upwards. Our whereabout never troubled us, all places between the one we were anxious to reach and where we were, made no impression upon ns, and perhaps we would never have known a single particular place but for the incident we are about to detail.
I think that all my companions as well as my- sclf were asleep, when I was awakened by that peculiar sawing motion a stage-body makes upon its springs when suddenly stopped. " What's the matter now?" was the general exclamation of the "insides" to the driver, who was discovered through the glass windows on the ground, beat- ing his arms around his body with a vehemence that almost raised him into the air.
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" Matter!" he exelaimed, sticking his nose above a woolen blanket that was tied around his face, which from the eold and his breath, wss frosted like a wedding cake, " Matter, matter enough-here we are on the top of ' Ball Moun- tain.' the drag chain broken, and I am so infar- nal cold, I couldn't tie a knot in a rope if I had eighteen thousand hands!"
It was a rueful situation, truly. I jumped out of the stage, and contemplated the prospect near and at a distance with mixed feelings. So ab- sorbed did I soon become, that I lost sight of the unpleasant situation in which we were placed, and regarded only the appearance of things about me disconnected with my personal happiness. 'T'here stood the stage upon the very apex of the mountain, the hot steaming breath of my half sinothered fellow travelers pouring out of its open door in puffs, like the respiration of a mam- moth. The driver, poor fellow, was limping - about, more than half frozen, growling, swear- ing and threatening. The poor horses looked ; about twenty years older than when they started, their heads being whitened with the frost. They ! stamped with impatience on the ' hard ribbed ice;" the polished iron of their shoes looked as if :
But such a landscape of beauty, all shrouded in death, we never saw or conceived, and one like it is seldom presented to the eye. Down the mountains conld be traced the broad road in ser- 1 pentine windings, lessening in the distance until it appeared no wider than a foot-path, obseured by the ravines and forest trees through which it
at the bottom of which the hardy pines sprung upward a hundred and fifty feet, and yet they looked from where I stood like creeping plants. The very mountain tops spread out before me like pyramids. The moon shone upon this vast prospeet, coming up from behind the distant hori- zon, bathing one eleventh in light, and another in darkness, or refleeting her silvery rays across the frozen ground in sparkling gems, as if some eastern prince seattered diamonds upon a marble floor, then starting in bold relief the shaggy roek- born hemlock and poison laurel, penetrating the deep solitudes, and making " darkness visible" where all before had been deep obseurity. There, too, might be seen the heat driven from the earth in light fogs by the intense cold, floating up- wards in fantastie forms, and spreading in thin ether as they sought more elevated regions. As far in the distance, in every direction, as the eye could reach, were the valleys of Penn, all silent in the embrace of winter and night, calling up most vividly the emotions of the beautiful and sublime.
" How are we to go down this outrageous hill, driver?" bawled out a speculator in western lands, who had amused us through the day past with niee ealeulations of how much he could have saved the government and himself, had he had the contraet of making the "National road" over which we were traveling. The reply of the dri- ver was exeeedingly apt and characteristie.
" There is no difficulty in getting down the hill, but you well know there are a variety of waysin doing the same thing; the drag-ehain would be of little use, as the wheel tire would make a runner of it. I think you had all better take your pla- ces inside, say your prayers, and let me put off, and if yonder grinning moon has a wish to see a race between a stage-coach and four horses down
' Ball mountain,' she'll be gratificd, and see sights that would make a locomotive blush."
The prospect was rather a doleful one; we had about ninety chanees in a hundred that we would make a "smash of it," and we had the same number of chances of being frozen to death if we did not take the risk of being smashed, for the first tavern we could get to was at the foot of the mountain. The driver was a smart fellow, and had some hostage in the world worth living for, because he was but three days married-had he been six months we would not have trusted him. The vote was taken, and it was decided to " go ahead."
If I were to describe an unpleasant situation, I should say that it was to be in a stage, the door closed upon you, with the probabilities that it will be opened by your head thrusting itself through its oak pannels, with the axle of the wheel at the same time falling across your breast. It seemed to me that it would be, with my com- panions, if I entered that stage, to be buried alive; se I mounted the driver's seat with a de- gree of resolution that would have enabled me to walk nnder a falling house without winking.
At the crack of the whip, the horses, impa- it would penetrate their flesh with blighting cold. ! tient at delay, started with a bound, and ran a
ran. On either side were deep yawning ehasms. a hammock; then we would travel a hundred
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short distance, the boot of the stage pointing to the earth: a sudden reverse of this position, and an inelination of our bodies forward, told too plainly that we were on the descent. Now eom- menced a race between the gravitation and horse- flesh, and odds would have been safely bet on the former. One time we swayed to and fro as if in yards side ways, the wheels on the ice sparkling with fire and electricity, and making a grating sonnd, as terrible to my nerves as the extraeting of a tooth. The horses frightened at the terrible state of things in the rear, and the lashing of the whip, would pull us around for a moment, and away we would go again, sideways, bouneing; crashing about like mad. A quarter way down the mountain, and still perfectly sound: but by this time the momentum of our deseending body was terrible, and the horses, with reeking hot sides and distended nostrils, lay themselves down to their work, while the lashing whip craeked and goaded in their rear to hasten their speed. The driver, with a coolness that never forsook him, guided his vehicle, as much as possible, in zig zag lines across the road. Obstaeles no larger than pebbles would projeet us into the air as if we had been an India rubber ball, and onee, as we fell into a rut, we escaped upsetting by a gentle tap from the stomp of a cedar tree, upon the hub of the wheel, that righted us with the swiftness of lightning. On we went, the blood starting in my chilled frame, diffusing over me a glowing heat, until I wiped huge drops of perspiration from my brow, and breathed in the eold air as if I were smothering. The dull, stunning sound that now marked our progress was seareely re- lieved by the elattering hoofs of the horses, and the motio . beeame perfectly steady, except when a piece of iee would explode from under the wheel, as if burst with powder. Almost with the speed of thought we rushed on, and the critical moment of our safety came. The slightest obstaele, the stumbling of a horse, the breaking of a strap, a too strongly drawn breath alnost. would have, with the speed we were making, projected us over the mountain side. as if shot from a cannon, and buried ns beneath the frozen ground and hard
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rock below. The driver, with distended eyes, [ 14th, which was the day before the packet sailed. and an expression of intellectual excitement, played his part well, and fortune favoured us. As we made the last turn in the road, the stage for a moment vibrated between safety and des- truction-running for several yards upon one side, it exposed two wheels in the air, whirling with a swiftness that rendered them almost in- visible. With a severe contusion it righted, the driver shouted, and we were rashing up an as- cent. For a moment the stage and horses went on, and it was but for a moment; for the heavy body, lately so full of life, settled buck upon the traces a dead weight, dragging the poor animals in one confused heap downwards, and shaking violently upon its springs, it stood still.
" A pretty severe tug," said one of the insides, to the driver, as lie stretched himself with a yawn. " Well, I rather think it was," said Jehu, with a smile of disdain.
" I've driv on this road fifteen years, but I never was so near-as to-night. If I was on t'other side of ' Ball mountain,' and my wife on this (only three days married, recollect, ) I would not drive that stage down ' Ball mountain' as I have to-night to keep her from running away with another."
" Why, you don't think there was any great danger, do you?" inquired another "inside," thrusting his head into the cold air.
" I calculate I do; if that off leader, when I reached the ' devil's rnt,' had fallen, as he inten- ded, your body would now be as flat as either of the back seat cushions in that stage."
" Lord bless us, is it possible," sighed another " inside;" but it is all very well, we have esca- ped, and one must run a little risk, rather than to be delayed in a journey.
Appreciating the terrible ordeal through which I had passed better than my fellow-travellers, I have often in my dreams, fancied myself on a stage coach, just tumbling down the ravines that yawn on the sides of " Ball mountain;" and when I have started into wakefulness, I have specula- ted on that principle of the American character, that is ever impelling it forward; but it never so forcibly struck me as a national peculiarity, until I read Howitt's journey down hill, among the sturdy Germans of the Old World.
The latest from Ireland. NEWTON LIMAVADY, Dec. 15, 1845.
Dear James :-
I received your dutiful letter from Cincinnati a week or so since, and sends my best love and my blessing in return to ye. By what you say of America it must be a wonderful country. I don't wonder that the Yankees are so yellow complected as you say they are, seeing they haven't the potatoe to live on. I suppose if an Irishman was born in America it would be all the same.
But there's one thing weighs heavy on my mind. I am afraid that the people iu America streetch the blanket, as we say here, and that my own James is learning to do the likes. Mr. Mul- hollan was reading to me in an " Old Country- man," which was sent over to him, that " Money in New York was plenty in the streets," on the
I am doubting that same story; for why would not the poor people pick it up if it lay in the streets? But what is this to what you tell me about the hogs near Cincinnati-that you give them corn in the ear to save trouble. Oh James! James! would you make your old mother believe that the pigs there swallow through the ear any more than in Ireland. Don't deceive your own mother so.
My blessing on ye! all the boys and one of the girls sends love to ye.
Secollections of the Last Sixty Years .-- No. 5. BY J. JOHNSTON, EsQ., of Piqua.
After a year's delay the prisoners were tried, convicted andI ordered for execution. His Hon- our Judge Wick, presided. My chief counsel was the late General James Noble, one of the Senators in Congress from Indiana, assisted by three others. Bridge, Sawyer and Hudson suf- fered; young Bridge, being a minor, was pardon- ed at the place of execution by the consent of the Indians. Three of them witnessed the awful scene, the Governor attending a mile off to act as circumstances miglit require. This affair cost the United States from first to last, seven thon- sand dollars. The justice of the country was vindicated in the eyes of the Indians, and they were satisfied. Thanks be to the distinguished man then at the head of the war department, who disdaining the popularity of the mob, chose to obey the dictates of duty and honour.
The other case happened with the Wyandotts of Sandusky, about seven years ago, in Hancock county, Ohio. One of their beloved chiefs and counsellors of the Christian party, took a hunt- ing excursion with his family: his camp was vis- ited in the evening by three white men with axes, who proposed to the Indian to lodge all night at his camp. This being readily agreed to, the women gave them their suppers, after which the Indian, agreeable to his uniform custoin, kneeled down and prayed in his own language, and then lay down with his wife to sleep, little suspect- ing that these fiends in human shape, who had been so hospitably and kindly entertained by himself and his wife, were at that moment plot- ting their destruction. As soon as the man and his wife were sound asleep, the white men rose on them with the axes they brought aud killed them in the most brutal manner, and then rob- bed the camp, taking off the horses. The mur- derers living not many miles off, were soon dis- covered and apprehended, committed to prison, and afterwards permitted to break jail and es- cape. I was not in the service at the time of this murder, or a very different fate would have awaited these villains. In 1841 and 2, when as
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United States Commissioner I was treating with the Wyandotts, one of these murderers was re- ported to me as being in the jail of Wood county, Ohio, under a charge of passing counterfeit money, and of course within our reach. I im- mediately reported the fact to the Commissioner for Indian affairs at Washington, asking for au- thority and funds to procced against the offender. No money would be furnished to sustain a prose- cution against the offender, although there was no lack of proof, and the murderer escaped. This time I had not John C. Calhoun to sustain me and see justice done to the Indians .*
Cases innumerable, and nearly as bad as the foregoing, have occurred during my long ac- quaintance with the Indians. In a period of fifty three years since I first came to the west, an instance of white men being tried, convicted, and executed under our laws for the murder of Indians has not come to my knowledge, other than the one given in this narrative. I had very great difficulty in persuading the Indians to wit- ness the execution in Indiana. They said they would take my word that the murderers had been hung. I told them no-they must witness the fact with their eyes, being well aware that bad white men would tell them we had deceived them, and permitted the murderers to escape. When the culprits were cast off and the death struggle ensued, the Indians could not restrain their tears. They had witnessed death in every shape, but never before by hanging.
During my negotiations with the Wyandotts, in 1841 and 42, I ascertained a fact which had previously escapcd my notice-that they had no horses previous to 1755. The year of Braddock's defeat, the first owned by the Wyandotts were captured in that disastrous campaign.
My agency embraced all the Indians in Ohio, as well as the Delawares of Indiana, who would not consent to be separated from me. In addi- tion to these enumerated, were the remains of the Munseys, Mohegans, Nanticokes, a part of the Mohawks, Senecas, and Ottawas. The two last
had rights in the soil of Ohio, which they ceded to the United States by joint treaty with the Shawanese and Wyandotts. There is not now an acre of land owned or occupied by an Indian in Ohio. Fifty-one years ago they owned the whole territory. Does not the voice of humanity cry aloud to the Congress of the United States to give them a country and a home in perpetuity, and a government adapted to their condition? Will impartial history excuse this people and their government if they permit the destruction of the primitive race to happen without one ade- quate effort being put forth to save then? I shall, during the long nights of the winter, prepare you some further notice of the natives and the first settlement of Ohio by the whites.
Your friend and obd. servt,
JOHN JOHNSTON ..
CHARLES CIST, Esq., Cincinnati ..
Pioneer Adventure.
I have taken down the following from the lips- of an old citizen here, as a specimen of the every day dangers which the early pioneers encountered in the settlement of the west. There is a great deal of the fire of the flint in these old fellows yet. At the last Presidential election, being on board a steamboat, an upstart, dandy lawyer, with whom he differed in politics, forgot himself so far as to call our veteran an old tory. The words were hardly out of the young fellow's mouth when he found himself in tight grips car- ried to the edge of the boat, and would have been dropped overboard like any other puppy, but for the intercession of some of the passengers. But to the story.
" In 1795, soon after the defeat of the Indians by Gen. Wayne, I started for Detroit, where my brother William had been working for some time. My main business was to sell a stud horse there. I succeeded in obtaining five hundred dollars in cash and trade for the beast. A part of the trade was a first rate gelding, the finest brute I ever owned, and for which I got at Dayton afterwards, one hundred and twenty-five dollars, although half the money would buy a pretty good horse in those days. My brother accompanied me on my way home to Cincinnati. At Fort Defiance we fell in with an old man, a cripple, who also kept company with ns. When we got within ten or twelve miles of Dayton, which had been just laid ont and a few houses built there, we encamped, turned our horses loose to graze, and prepared to cook a meal's victuals and rest ourselves. While I was kindling a fire for this purpose, I heard the old man, who had occasion to turn aside into the brush, call out that the Indians were catching our horse. The horses were in the high weeds and brush; the weeds being as high as themselves we
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