USA > Ohio > Wyandot County > The History of Wyandot County, Ohio, containing a history of the county, its townships, towns general and local statistics, military record, portraits of early settlers and prominent men etc > Part 24
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southern border of Lake Erie, extending from the Niagara River on the east to the Miami River on the west; that they possessed fortified towns, and could muster four thousand warriors or fighting men, famed for their ex- ploits in archery. Finally, however, they became involved in a war with the Iroquois or Five Nations, which continued until the entire tribe of Eries was either killed, adopted into the powerful confederacy of the Five Nations, or driven to other regions far to the westward. This misfortune, we are told, befell the Eries about the year 1656, and it is supposed that from the date last mentioned until the coming of the Wyandots or Huron-Iroquois, the territory lying immediately to the southward of Lake Erie remained as abandoned or neutral ground.
THE HURONS OR WYANDOTS.
The first European to make mention of the tribe of Indians, since known to history as the Wyandots, was the celebrated French navigator and explorer Jacques Cartier, who in the summer of 1535, sailed up the St. Lawrence River to a place called by him Mont Royal (afterward changed by the English to Montreal), and formally took possession of all the country round about (in the name of King Francis the First), under the title of New France. Soon after, Cartier and his men extended their explorations along the Huron Lake, where, on its southern shores, they suddenly dis- covered themselves to be intruders upon the territory of a powerful tribe of savages, who called themselves, as did the New York Iroquois, Ontwaonwes, meaning "real men," but known in French and English history as the Huron-Iroquois, or more commonly the Hurons from their proximity to the lake of that name. The immediate territory occupied by them (lying about 100 miles south of the mouth of the Ottawa or French River), was only about sixty miles in extent, yet, according to French writers, they then had twenty-five towns, and were about 30,000 in number.
The Hurons, like all untutored aboriginal tribes, were chiefly employed in pursuits of the chase and warring with their no less savage neighbors. Yet it cannot be said of them, as of the Five Nations, that they were par- ticularly a warlike and vindictive people. However, they could not for a moment tolerate a tribal insult. Though they were, without a doubt, Men- gwes or Iroquois Indians, possessing many characteristics in common with their New York brethren, yet they were sworn enemies, and their tribal and personal vindictiveness was proverbial among all Indians. As the New York Iroquois was a confederation of the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayu- gas and Senecas, so the Huron-Iroquois was a league of the Hurons proper, and various tribes of the Algonquin race, and long before Cartier navigated the waters of the St. Lawrence these leagues and confederations of red men had waged wars of extermination against each other. Cartier made some attempts at colonization along the St. Lawrence, but in 1543 the few French settlements had all been abandoned and for more than half a century there- after, the disturbed condition of France entirely prevented its people from utilizing his discoveries.
In 1603, however, Samuel de Champlain, another distinguished French mariner and explorer, led an expedition to Quebec, made a permanent set- tlement there, and, in fact, founded the colony of Canada. From Quebec and from Mont Royal, which was soon after established, the adventurous French explorers, fur traders, voyageurs and missionaries, pushed rapidly into the Western wilderness, and as early as 1615, Champlain himself visited the Hurons on the shores of Lake Manitouline. Quite as early, too,
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priests of the Récollet or Franciscan order, established missions in the same locality.
As before indicated, the Hurons had been reared to hate the very name of the Iroquois-their Southern brethren-and from the remotest period of their tribal existence, the defiant warwhoop, sounded by either of the bel- ligerents, was sufficient for the commencement of another bloody chapter in the unwritten history of their career. The Hurons, therefore, hailed the arrival of Champlain with delight. They considered the brave bearing, and improved weapons of the French soldiery (added to their numerical strength, and their perfect acquaintance with the nature of the territory of their mortal encmies), would be a force sufficiently effective for the annihil- ation of the vindictive Iroquois. Terms of alliance with the French were soon proposed by the Hurons to Champlain, who. not willing that his power should be unknown and unfelt in the Western wilds, and particularly that his dusky neighbors should be acquainted with the fact that opposition to his policy meant that they had in their own midst an enemy of terrific ven- geance, whom it was always better to placate than offend, terms of alliance were at once consummated, by which, either in times of war or peace, the Hurons and French were to act as one people.
Very naturally the Southern Iroquois, or Five Nations, looked upon the French settlements on their Northern border with deep aversion. Already the Dutch had established themselves at New Amsterdam (New York) and along the Hudson River, the Swedes were occupying the Lower Delaware Valley, the English were making settlements at Plymouth Rock, and Salem, and Dorchester in New England, also in Virginia, and now the French encroachments upon the north aroused all their slumbering suspicions as to the final result, if foreign peoples were permitted to invade their territory, curtail their hunting grounds, and thus trifle with their hitherto unlimited authority. Therefore, the ever alert and fiery Monawks soon found an occasion for taking up the tomahawk against the French and the Hurons. Their example became infectious, and soon the whole confederation-the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas-took the war path against their enemies in the North. Advised of the approach of the Iro. quois, Champlain made choice of his battle-field on the lake, which still bears his name, and with his own ships, surrounded by a fleet of bark canoes bearing his Huron allies, he met the enemy in mid-lake. Of course the advantages were all with the French, for water is never the selected battle-field of the Indian and bows and arrows were no match for musketry, and after a short, though stubbornly contested fight, the Iroquois gave way, and rowed their light, birch-bark canoes almost with the bounding of the deer to the shore from which they had embarked, hotly pursued by the equally light canoes of the Hurons. By the time they had reached the shore, the panic was complete. The forest offered them no encouragement to make a stand, so on they went, followed by the musketry of the French and the victorious whoop of the Hurons, till further pursuit was useless, and the chase was abandoned.
The defeat sustained by the Five Nations on Lake Champlain, at the hands of the French and Hurons, as well as the constantly spreading out of white settlements in New England and New York, caused the terrible Iroquois confederates first mentioned to confine their attention to matters nearer home, and to remain comparatively (though not wholly) peaceable for many years. Meanwhile, or about 1625, there had arrived on the shores of the St. Lawrence a few Jesuits, the vanguard of a host of those fiery
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champions of the cross who were destined, it appears, to crowd aside the more peaceful or more inert Franciscans throughout the whole river and lake region in the North, and substantially to appropriate that missionary ground to themselves. Their course was generally across Canada by land to Lake Manitouline, and thence in canoes through Lakes Huron, Michigan and Superior; for the more convenient route by way of the Niagara River and Lake Erie was guarded by the ferocious Iroquois, whom Champlain, by his ill-advised attack, had made the implacable enemy of the French. Dur- ing the period referred to, the Jesuit fathers were assiduous in their atten- tion to the Hurons; many of the latter were willingly made converts of the Catholic faith, and also showed a rapid advancement in the ways of civiliza- tion, particularly in the cultivation of the soil, and the production of corn, beans, pumpkins, squashes, etc. A number of schools and churches were likewise established at St. Louis, St. Ignatius, and other of their chief towns, and stockades erected to protect them from surprise by the dreaded Iroquois.
The Iroquois, however, were only biding their time. For about two score years had they smarted under the stigma of the defeat received at the hands of Champlain. Another generation of warriors had grown up among them, and the sons were eager seekers of an opportunity by which the shame of the past might be obliterated in the glory of the future. This oppor- tunity was afforded them as early as 1648, when, by a treaty with the Dutch, they became well supplied with firearms, which previous to that time had been denied them by the Dutch authorities. The tireless. irreconcilable, unforgetting and unforgiving Iroquois were now ready for the war-path. The terms of the treaty above mentioned prevented the possibility of a conflict with the Dutch along the Hudson River, and as a similar peaceful state of affairs prevailed between them and the New England colonists, the young and restless warriors of the confederation turned to more remote fields in search of an enemy upon whom to test the virtues of their newly acquired implements of war.
Such an enemy was soon found (if any credence be given to traditional narration) in the persons of the Eries, who then inhabited the country lying to the southward of Lake Erie, and as a result, the latter were vanquished and destroyed. Our " Romans of America," the confederated Iroquois, then turned upon their ancient enemy, the Hurons. This war be- tween the Hurons and Iroquois raged for several years, or until about 1659, when the latter invaded the country of the former in great forces, de- feated them at every point, massacred large numbers, including several French priests, destroyed their crops and towns, and pursued the panic- stricken fugitives to remote quarters. Some of the Hurons sought protection under the walls of Quebec; others made their way to the frozen borders of Hudson's Bay; others again reached in safety the upper part of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan; but the greater portion fled to the Ojibway, or as now termed, Chippewa hunting-grounds, on the southern shore of Lake Su- perior. The implacable Iroquois even followed the fugitives westward to their new haunts, but the latter, by the help of the Chippewas, were enabled to repulse their arrogant enemies, who thenceforth seldom sought a war- path which led so far to the Northwest.
For a number of years the Hurons, the Ottawawas, or Ottawas, and the Dinondadies -tribes which had been driven from Canada by the fierce Iro- quois-led a restless, nomadic life in the Lake Superior region. At length they were visited by Fathers Jacques Marquette and Claude Dablon, who
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began to organize the Hurons, under their various chiefs, as a permanently established, self-reliant people, and had succeeded in a measure, when a war with the Sioux compelled their removal to Michillimacinac, now known as Mackinaw. The assembling at Mackinaw of the Hurons and other tribes friendly to the French, took place about the year 1671, and there they re- mained until 1701; when La Motte Cadillac, who had been for several years the commandant at Mackinaw, established a permanent post on the " detroit," or strait, between Lakes Erie and St. Clair, which was at first known as Fort Ponchartrain, but soon after received the appellation of Detroit, which, as post, village and city it has retained to this day. Cadillac immediately made strenuous efforts to induce all the various tribes of the Northwest who were friends of the French to locate around and near Fort Ponchartrain, evidently desirous to have them well in hand, so that the French command- ers could more easily lead them on warlike expeditions against the English and Iroquois. The Hurons at Mackinaw (as well as various other tribes) promptly accepted his invitation. At Detroit, they were joined by quite large bands of Hurons and Dinondadies from Charity and Great Manitouline Islands. Subsequently new tribal compacts were perfected, and the re- united and combined tribes of Hurons and Dinondadies then became known as the Wyandots, meaning " Traders of the West."
The warriors of the various tribes assembled at Fort Ponchartrain usually acted together in their numerous warlike expeditions. Of the con- flicts which they waged with other savages, however, there is seldom any record unless they fought in connection with the French. Even in that case the accounts are few and meager. It appears that the Indians in Mich- igan under French control were almost continually at war with the Iroquois, and, notwithstanding the acknowledged valor and sagacity of the Six Na- tions, the former (having the support and sometimes the active assistance of the French) were able after 1707 to hold their ground, and to remain in possession of that peninsular throughout the century.
Early in May, 1712, when the warriors at Cadillac's settlement at the " detroit " were nearly all absent, hunting, a large body of Outagamie (Fox) and Mascoutin Indians, supposed to be in league with the Iroquois, suddenly appeared before Fort Ponchartrain, erected a breastwork, and made other preparations for an assault. Du Buisson, the commandant, who had only about twenty men with him, sent runners to call in the hunt- ing-parties, and then awaited the assault of his foes. It was made on the 13th of May, and, though temporarily repulsed, there was every prospect that it would be successful on account of the comparatively large numbers of the assailants.
While the fight was going on, however, the Wyandots, Ottawa, and Pot- tawatomie warriors returned, and immediately attacked Du Buisson's assailants. The latter were driven into their own defenses; those defenses were assaulted by the French and their allies, and these in turn were re- pulsed by the Foxes and Mascoutins. Thus the conflict continued with varying fortunes for no less than nineteen days, when the invaders fled. Several miles north of Detroit they halted, and built a rude fortification, but the French and their allies attacked them with two small pieces of artil- lery, and routed them after three days more of fighting, when the Wvan- dots, Pottawatomies and Ottawas massacred eight hundred men, women and children.
In fact, the Fox nation was reported completely destroyed, but this was not the case. Some of its warriors joined the Iroquois, while the main body
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fled to the west side of Lake Michigan, where they were long distinguished for their especial hatred of the French. On the other hand, the friendship then cemented between the French and the Wyandots, Pottawatomies and Ottawas, endured through more than half a century of varied fortunes, and was scarcely severed when, throughout Canada and the West, the Gallic flag went down in hopeless defeat before the conquering Britons.
From Detroit the Wyandots gradually extended their hunting-grounds to the southward (the strength of the Iroquois, after a thirty years' war with the French, having been much reduced, and their hostile incursions into the Lake Erie region successfully repelled), and as early as 1725 were in quiet possession of the country about Sandusky Bay, and also claimed ownership to all the lands lying between Lake Erie and the Ohio River. In 1740, they consented to the proposition that a considerable body of Dela- wares, who had been driven out of Pennsylvania by the Iroquois, should oc- cupy the Muskingum country. Finally, the entire Delaware nation, as well as the major portion of the Shawanese, became established in the present State of Ohio, and in conjunction with the Wyandots (all allies of the French), desolated and laid waste the border settlements of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia for many years.
Our researches have not led us to believe that the Wyandots were any worse or any better than the average North American savage. They had the usual characteristics of the Indians, both of the Algonquin and Iroquois races, of which races, indeed, during the later years, they were a mixture. Less terrible in battle, less sagacious in council, than the men of the Six Nations, they were, nevertheless, like the rest of their red brethren, brave, hardy and skillful warriors, astute managers so far as their knowledge ex- tended, generally faithful friends, and invariably most implacable enemies. Their own time they devoted to war, the chase or idleness, abandoning to the women all the labors which could be imposed upon their weary shoulders.
They lived in the utmost freedom which it is possible to imagine, con- sistent with any civil or military organization whatever. Their sachems exercised little authority, save to declare war or make peace, to determine on the migrations of the tribes, and to give wise counsels allaying any ill feelings which might exist among the people. There was no positive law compelling obedience.
Even in war there was no way by which the braves could be forced to take the war-path. Any chieftain could drive a stake into the ground, dance the war dance around it, strike the tomahawk into it with a yell of de- fiance, and call for warriors to go forth against the foe. If his courage or capacity was doubted, he obtained but few followers. If he was of approved valor and skill, a larger number would grasp their weapons in response to his appeal; while if he was a chieftain distinguished far and wide for deeds of blood and craft, the whole nation would spring to arms, and all its vil- lages would resound with the terrific notes of the war song, chanted by hundreds of frenzied braves. Even after they had taken the field (or more properly speaking, the woods) against their enemies, they could not be com- pelled to fight, except by the fear of being called a " squaw," which, however, to the Indian mind was a very terrible punishment.
With the Indian method of warfare, the American mind is pretty well acquainted, so that we need not give a detailed description of it here. Few have not read how the warriors went forth against their foes, clad chiefly in hideous paint, but armed with tomahawk and scalping-knives, and those
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who have been sufficiently successful in fur-catching, carrying also the cov- eted muskets of the white man; how they made their way with the utmost secrecy through the forest until they reached the vicinity of their enemies, whether red or white; how, when their unsuspecting victims were wrapped in slumber, the whole crowd of painted demons would burst in among them, using musket, knife and tomahawk with the most furious zeal; and how, when the torch had been applied, men, women and children were stricken down in indiscriminate slaughter by the luried light of their blazing homes.
It is well known, too, that those who escaped immediate death were often reserved for a still more horrible doom; that the fearful sport of running the gauntlet when a hundred weapons were flung by malignant foes at the naked fugitive, was but the preliminary amusement before the awful burn- ing at the stake, accompanied by all the refinements of torment which a baleful ingenuity could invent, yet supported with unsurpassable fortitude by the victim, who often shrieked his defiant death song amid the last con- vulsions of his tortured frame. Their religion was what might have been expected from their practices-a mass of senseless and brutal superstition -and Pere Marquette, the most zealous of missionaries, after several years of labor among the Northwestern Indians, could only say that the Hurons " retained a little Christianity."
It would be foreign to the design of this work to attempt to give an extended account of all the wars, mnovements, etc., of the Wyandot In- dians. subsequent to their occupation of the Sandusky River country, even if such were possible. They were simply in common with all other tribes in the neighborhood of the great lakes, the friends and allies of the French, the foes of the English and Iroquois. and until the termination of the French power in America. had assisted the troops of that nation to fight many battles. Thus in 1744, when war broke out between France and England, numerous bands of savages from all the Northwestern tribes sought the service of the French. Some of them assailed the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia, while others made their way to Montreal, where they were furnished with arms and ammunition, and were sent forth against the settlers of New York and New England. In 1745, one of the numer- ous records made by the Canadian officials states that fifty "Poutewatamies," fifteen "Puans" and ten "Illinois" came to go to war. Another mentions the arrival of thirty-eight "Outawois," seventeen "Sauternes." twenty-four Hurons, and fourteen " Poutewatamies." Similar official memoranda show the sending out of not less than twenty marauding expeditions against the English colonists in one year, frequent mention being made of the part taken by the Hurons or Wyandots in these bloody raids.
After the close of that war by the treaty of Aix-la Chapelle in 1748, there was comparative quiet among the red men of the Northwest until the opening of the great conflict known in Europe as the seven-years' war, but in America called the "Old French and Indian War." This contest was commenced in the spring of 1754, by a fight between a body of Virginia rangers, under Lieut, Col. George Washington, and a company of French sent out from Fort DuQuesne, and continued until toward the close of 1762, when, by a treaty of peace between France and England, the former power gave up all claims to the Northwest Territory, and from that date their authority here ceased forevermore.
Meanwhile, true to their promises and their friendships, the Hurons or Wyandots had participated side by side with the French in numerous con- flicts. They assisted to defeat Braddock in front of Fort Du Quesne. Sub-
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sequently, nearly every Wyandot who could lift a tomahawk, went forth upon the war path against the hapless inhabitants of the Pennsylvania and Virginia frontiers. They served under Montcalm in Canada. Again were they summoned to the defense of Fort Du Quesne when it was threatened by Gen. Forbes' army, and the following year, under D'Aubry, they pro- ceeded to the relief of Fort Niagara. That fortress soon surrendered to the English, however, and a little later the fall of Quebec (at which a large body of the Northwestern Indians was present) virtually decided the fate of Canada and the Northwest. The Indians then began to lose faith in the omnipotence of their French friends, ard our Wyandots, together with other tribes, returned to their homes on the shores of the Great Lakes and rivers of the West, and gloomily awaited the results referred to at the close of the preceding paragraph.
When, in 1763, Pontiac, the renowned Ottawa chieftain, marshaled un- der his leadership the Northwestern tribes for the purpose of overthrowing British supremacy in that region, the Wyandots joined him. After the siege of Detroit had continued for several weeks, the Wyandots and Potta- watomies made a treaty of peace with Maj. Gladwyn, the besieged English commander, but when Maj. Rogers and Capt. Dalzell led a party from the fort to attack Pontiac in his camp, the treacherous Wyandots and Pottawat- omies fiercely assaulted the flank of the British column. Dalzell was killed, and it was only by the most desperate exertions that his successor, Capt. Grant, with the aid of Maj. Rogers and his American rangers, was able to make good his retreat to the fort, after a fourth of his men were killed or wounded.
The next summer, 1864, Gen. Bradstreet* occupied Detroit with a con- siderable force of English, Americans and Iroquois, the appearance of whom. together with Gen. Boquet's successful campaign into the Muskin- gum Country, doubtless tended to strongly impress the power of England on the hitherto hostile tribes. In 1765, George Croghan, Deputy Superintend- ent of Indian Affairs, under the celebrated Sir William Johnson, baronet, his Majesty's sole agent and Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the North- ern Department of North America, etc., etc., etc., held a grand council meet- ing at Fort Pitt, and also at Detroit, with the North western tribes. They had by that time become thoroughly humbled, and were sincerely desirous of peace and the re-opening of the fur trade. After the treaties then made, all these tribes remained steady friends of the British, so long as that na- tion had any need of their services.
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