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 25

Author:
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Chicago, Leggett, Conaway
Number of Pages: 1072

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 25

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Pontiac himself gave in his submission at another council held in Au- gust of the same year. This celebrated chieftain was murdered by an Illi- nois Indian near St. Louis, in 1769. The Wyandotts, the Ottawas, and other tribes which had followed his lead, sprang to arms to avenge the mur- der, and almost exterminated the Illinois. Except this and similar conflicts with neighboring savages, also a slight participation in Dunmore's war, the Wyandotts remained at peace until the out-break of the Revolutionary war.

The British then made strong and, as we shall see, successful efforts to obtain their assistance, and in the summer of 1777, several hundred Wyan- dots, Ottawas, Pottawatomies, Chippewas, Winnebagoes and others from the region of the Great Lakes, all under Charles de Langdale, a French and

* During the same season, Gen. Bradstreet, with his forces, ascended the Sandusky River as far as it was navigable for boats, where a treaty of peace was signed by the chiefs and head men of the Wyandot na- tion. It is probable that he penetrated as far inland as the old Indian town of Upper Sandusky, which stood on the right bank of the river, about three miles above the present town of Upper Sandusky. Gen. Israel Putnam. then a Major in command of a battalion of American provincials, was with Bradstreet.

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HISTORY OF WYANDOT COUNTY.

Indian half-breed, and another French officer, joined the English Army of Gen. Burgoyne. They accompanied him in his invasion of New York, but ac. complished little, except to burn some houses and slaughter a few families. Burgoyne made some efforts to restrain their ferocity, which so disgusted them that they nearly or quite all returned home before his surrender to Gen. Gates. They also complained that Burgoyne did not take good care of them, and that over a hundred of their number were needlessly sacrificed at Bennington, Vt.

Although the Wyandots and their neighbors-the Ottawas, Chippewas, and Pottawattomies on the north, and the Delawares and Shawanese on the south-were opposed to taking any further part in the war under the direct command of British officers, and as part of a British Army, yet as it appears, they were not at all averse to making war upon the Americans in their own way, and under the lead of their own chiefs. Hence, late in the fall of 1777, the Wyandot, Delaware and Shawanese warriors appeared in West- moreland County, Penn., where (many of the arms-bearing population being absent as members of Washington's army) they gathered many scalps. Elated with their success. they crossed the Alleghanies and slaughtered many of the inhabitants of the region now embraced by the counties of Bedford, Blair, Huntingdon and Somerset. Neither age, sex nor condition were spared by the savages. Immediately after the French Government had relinquished control of Canada and the Northwest Territory, the Jesuit mis- sionaries retired to the Canadian side of the Great Lakes and the river St. Lawrence, hence the Wyandots, thus left without the Christianizing influ- ences of their former teachers, soon relapsed to a degree of barbarity and ferociousness which placed them upon an even footing with their no less savage allies, the Delawares, Shawanese, Mingoes and Miamis. The Six Nations also took the war-path in the interests of the British, and under the lead of the villains Brant, Butler and various tories, committed many mur- ders in the frontier settlements of New York and Pennsylvania, the mas- sacre of the Wyoming settlers and the destruction of Hannastown being among their chief exploits.

These forays and murdering expeditions on the part of the savages un- der British pay continued until the close of the struggle for American in- dependence. Meanwhile, the Americans were using all the means at hand in the endeavor to defend their border settlements in the interior, while at the same time engaged in fighting the British armies, then desolating their seaport towns. To this end, in 1778, Gen. Lachlin McIntosh, commander of the Western Military Department, with headquarters at Fort Pitt (Pitts- burgh), marched forth with about 1,000 men. He was vested with dis- cretionary powers, but it was purposed that he should march his army to Detroit, or at least as far as the Indian towns on the Sandusky River, which seemed to be the general places of rendezvous for the hostile tribes of the Northwest. Gen. McIntosh, however, lacked the qualifications necessary to conduct an Indian warfare successfully, and only proceeded as far as the immediate vicinity of the present town of Bolivar, in Tuscarawas County, Ohio. He there halted, erected Fort Laurens, garrisoned it with 150 men, under the command of Col. John Gibson, returned to Fort Pitt, and soon after resigned his command of the department.

Fort Laurens-named in honor of the then President of the Continental Congress, Henry Laurens-was the first substantially built work erected within the present limits of Ohio. Yet disasters attended it from the be- ginning. The Indians stole the horses, and drew the garrison into several

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ambuscades, killing fourteen men at one time and eleven at another, besides capturing a number of others. Eight hundred warriors, among them many Wyandots, invested it and kept up the siege for six weeks! The provisions grew short, and when supplies from Fort Pitt had arrived within a hundred yards of the fort, the garrison, in their joyousness, fired a general salute with musketry, which so frightened the loaded packhorses as to produce a general stampede through the woods, scattering the provisions in every di- rection, so that most of the much-needed supplies were lost. Although it was regarded very desirable, for various military reasons, to have a gar- risoned fort and depot of supplies at a point about equidistant from the forts on the Ohio River and the hostile Indians on the Sandusky Plains, yet so disastrous had been the experiences at Fort Laurens that it was abandoned in August, 1779.

During subsequent years, other expeditions were organized in Pennsyl- vania and Kentucky for the purpose of chastizing with powder and ball the hostile Indians of Ohio. Thus Col. John Bowman took the field with 160 Kentuckians in July, 1779; Col. George Rogers Clark, with about 1,000 Kentuckians, in July, 1780; Gen. Daniel Brodhead, with 300 men from Fort Pitt, in April, 1781; and Col. Archibald Lochry, with about 100 men from Westmoreland County, Penn., in July, 1781. These expeditions were attended with varying success, but as they had in view the punishment of the savages occupying the southern half of the present State, no special significance, as regards the history of Wyandot County, can be attached to their movements.

However, notwithstanding the efforts put forth by the Americans, the savages remained masters of the field in Ohio, the neighborhood of the Great Lakes, and along the River St. Lawrence. The Wyandots of the Sandusky Plains (together with large numbers of the Delawares and Shawanese, who, driven from haunts farther South by the expeditions already mentioned, had established themselves near the Wyandots), fully supplied with war material from the British post at Detroit, still continued their massacres of the inhabitants of the frontier settlements of Pennsyl- vania. The fiendishness displayed by these savages in their attacks upon isolated white settlements was unbounded, and frequently every member of a family was found slain, scalped, their bodies otherwise horribly mutilated, and their dwelling burned to ashes. The prattling babe, as well as the tottering decrepit grandparents, all, all fell victims to a ferocity of dispo- sition and studied cruelty of purpose that is harrowing to contemplate, even after the lapse of more than one hundred years. At last, stung to desperation by the loss of parents, brothers, sisters, wives and children, at the hands of the savages, the sturdy Scotch-Irish residents of Westmore- land and Washington Counties, Penn., determined upon the organi- zation of a force, under the authority of the military commander of that department, which should proceed to the Sandusky Plains (the rendezvous of all the hostile savages of the Northwest), and give battle to the Indians upon their own ground. This determination resulted in the formation and sending forward of a body of men under Col. William Crawford, whose movements, battles, etc., will be noted in the succeeding chapter.

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HISTORY OF WYANDOT COUNTY.

CHAPTER III.

INDIAN OCCUPANCY .- CONTINUED. (EVENTS FROM 1782 TO 1818.)

THIE INCEPTION OF CRAWFORD'S SANDUSKY EXPEDITION-THIE MARCH-BAT- TLE-RESULTS-DR. KNIGHT'S NARRATION - BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF COL. CRAWFORD-THE TREATY OF FORT MCINTOSH-TREATY OF FORT HARMAR-SAD RESULTS ATTENDING THE EXPEDITIONS UNDER GENS. HARMAR AND ST. CLAIR-" MAD ANTHONY" IN THE FIELD- HE DEFEATS THE COMBINED SAVAGE TRIBES AT THE " FALLEN TIMBERS"-INDIAN AC- COUNTS OF THE FIGHT-TREATY OF GREENVILLE-OF FORT INDUSTRY- OF BROWNSTOWN - THE WYANDOTS THE FRIENDS OF THE AMERICANS - WAR OF 1812-15-TREATY OF THE FOOT OF THE RAPIDS OF THE MIAMI OF THE LAKE-TERMS-SUPPLEMENTARY TREATY HELD AT ST. MARY'S- THIE WYANDOTS FINALLY ESTABLISHED ON RESERVATIONS, I. E., LANDS NOW EMBRACED BY WYANDOT COUNTY-DEATH OF THEIR GREAT CHIEF TARHE-ATTENDANT FUNERAL CEREMONIES-TRIBAL NAMES OF THE WY- ANDOTS-SKETCH OF CHIEF TARHE, AS PREPARED BY WILLIAM WALKER, A QUADROON OF THE WYANDOT NATION.

A S already indicated, the year 1782, especially along the American border settlements, was one of war, bloodshed and carnage. Urged on by the British officers at Detroit, the Indians sought every opportunity of wreaking their vengeance upon the unprotected settlers. The woods of Western Pennsylvania and Virginia teemed with savages the most vindic- tive, and no one was safe from attack unless protected by the walls of a fortified station. On the 28th of March, Gen. William Irvine, com- mander of the Western Military Department, with headquarters at Fort Pitt, issued a call to the officers of the militia of the counties of West- moreland and Washington (which counties then comprised all that part of Southwestern Pennsylvania lying west of Laurel Hill, Washington County, having been erected from Westmoreland in 1781) to meet in coun- cil at Pittsburgh on April 5, to take into consideration the adoption of some systematic defense of the exposed settlements. The council was large- ly attended, and the plan then agreed upon was to divide the regular troops equally between Forts Pitt and McIntosh, and to keep flying bodies of volunteers marching from place to place along the line of the frontier.

The county of Westmoreland agreed to furnish sixty-five men to range along the border from the Allegheny River to Laurel Hill, while Wash- ington County stipulated to keep in the field one hundred and sixty men to patrol the Ohio River from Montour's Bottom to Wheeling. It was soon ap- parent, however, that this experiment or system of defense was inadequate, for in spite of every precaution, and in defiance of every expedient to thwart them, the wily savages would frequently cross to the left banks of the Ohio and Allegheny rivers, fall suddenly upon some unsuspecting and helpless settlements, and after completing their work of murder and pillage, would hurriedly recross the rivers, and be far away in the western wilds be- fore the patroling volunteers were aware of their presence. Therefore it was soon demonstrated to the entire satisfaction of the majority of the en- dangered inhabitants that the only security for the frontier lay in carrying

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the war into the Indian country, and in accordance with this feeling Col. Marshall, the commandant at Fort McIntosh, wrote to Gen. Irvine, on the 2d of April, as follows : "This is most certain, that unless an expedition be carried against some of the principal Indian towns early this summer, this country must unavoidably suffer." Again, on the 4th of the same month, he wrote: "The people in general on the frontiers are waiting with anxious expectation, to know whether an expedition can be carried against Upper Sandusky * early this spring or not."

It is claimed that Gen. Irvine was not in favor of carrying the war into the Sandusky country, but be that as it may, he soon after called a council of the officers of his department to meet at his headquarters, at Fort Pitt, on the 7th of May, to take the matter under advisement. A large number of officers were present, and many others who could not come were repre- sented in writing. There was a wonderful unanimity of opinion, at this meeting, as to the necessity of sending an expedition into the Indian country. It was known that most of the scalping parties prowling about the borders came from Upper Sandusky, not, however, that all the savages invading the settlements were Wyandots, but that their town was the grand rallying point for all the Northwest tribes before starting for the frontiers. Of the men called together at Gen. Irvine's headquarters, none failed to ap- preciate the pressing necessity for the destruction of the Sandusky rendez- vous. An expedition was determined upon, and Upper Sandusky, the fa- vorite point of assembling for the hostile Wyandots, Delawares, Shawanese and Mingoes, was named as the point of attack.

Mingo Bottom, a point on the right bank of the Ohio River, about two and one-half miles below the present town of Steubenville, was designated as the place of rendezvous, and Monday, May 20, as the time for the assem- blage of those who were to take part in the movement. However, the vol- unteers did not all report until Friday morning, May 24, when the last one crossed to the west side of the river. The remainder of that day was occupied in the election of regimental and company officers, and in making prepara tions for the march to begin the following morning. Of the troops assem- bled, Washington County, Penn., had furnished three hundred and twenty; Westmoreland County, Penn., one hundred and thirty; Ohio County, Va., twenty; and other localities not known, ten; making a total of four hundred and eighty officers and men. In the election which took place for chief commander of the expedition, Col. William Crawford, of Westmoreland County, and Col. David Williamson, of Washington County-he who had commanded the expedition to the Tuscarawas countryt two months before- were the candidates. The vote stood two hundred and thirty-five for Col. Crawford and two hundred and thirty for Col. Williamson. Col. Crawford having been, by a small majority, placed at the head of the expedition, his competitor, Col. Williamson, was immediately chosen, by a unanimous vote,

* Upper Sandusky was then the place where the British paid their Western Indian allies their annuities.

+We are well aware of the fact that numbers of those who have heretofore written concerning Crawford's Sandusky expedition have managed to interweave in their narrations something about the wretched Moravian affair. The Delawares under the partial control of the easy-going Moravian missionaries may or may not have been guilty of offenses against the whi.es east of the Ohio River. It has been claimed that Delaware Indiaus who spoke the German language, and who claimed to belong to one of the Moravian villages. committed murders in a. white settlement on the Pennsylvania border, also, that Williamson's men found children's clothing in one of the Moravian towns, which was identified as having been worn by little white children when killed or carried off by Indians. Be this as it mav, we consider an account of the Moravian affair as not pertinent to the history of the Wyandot Indians, or of Wyandot County, and, therefore, forbear making further mention of it. If, however, it be asserted that by reason of the killing of the Delaware Indians, at the Moravian towns, the Delaware tribes were made more bloodthirsty. and burned Col. Crawford by way of retaliation, we answer, that the Delawares were always bloodthirsty, vindictive, treacherous, cowardly, and that they burned many white prisoners at the stake, both before and after the death of Crawford.

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the Senior Major, or second officer in rank. The other Majors were Thomas Gaddis, John McClelland and Maj. Brinton. Daniel Leet was elected Brigade-major; Dr. John Knight was appointed Surgeon; and John Slover and Jonathan Zane accompanied the expedition as guides. The force was divided into eighteen companies, some of which were commanded by the following named captains: McGeehan, Hoagland, Beeson, Munn, Ross, Ogle, John Biggs, Craig, Ritchie, John Miller, Joseph Bean and Andrew Hood.

Gen. Irvine issued sealed orders directed to the "Commander-in- Chief of the expedition against the Indian town at or near Sandusky," in which he specifically set forth the object of his command to be "to destroy with fire and sword (if practicable) the Indian town and settlement at San- dusky, by which it was hoped to give ease and safety to the inhabitants of this country; but if that should be found impracticable, to perform such other services in his power as would, in their consequences, have a tendency to answer that great end." It was also directed to "settle all questions of rank before leaving their rendezvous; and to regulate their last day's march so as to reach said town about dawn or a little before, in order to effect a surprise." Gen. Irvine spoke of the expedition as being composed of "dis- interested and virtuous men, who had the protection of this country in view, and upon whom he enjoined it specially to act in such a manner as to re- flect honor on and add reputation to the American arms.' The orders con- cluded " with the sincere wishes of the department commander for their suc- cess."

It will thus be seen that the Crawford expedition was not, as many have thought and asserted, an unauthorized, illegal, ill-considered or murderous raid -- " a sudden and wild maraud " of "untamed borderers" -an organization put on foot by lawless men, for the destruction of the remnant of the Moravian Indians that had been, during the previous year, forcibly removed from their villages on the Tuscarawas, by the British and Delaware hostiles to the Sandusky Plains. The massacre of innocent, inoffensive Indians was not the purpose of the expedition, commanded by Col. Crawford, to the Sandusky country, in 1782. It was to chastise hostile Indian tribes who had been and still were the deadly enemies of the settlers on the Western borders-enemies of our civilization -enemies of our common country-enemies of the white race. And all those writers who have maintained that Col. Crawford's command was com- posed of "bandits and murderers," and that their purpose was "to destroy the remainder of the Moravian Indians," were undoubtedly mistaken. Butter- field, in his admirable history of "Crawford's Sandusky Campaign," says, that " in all examinations of the correspondence of those projecting the expedition against Sandusky, and of those who took part in it, as well as of papers and documents of that period relating thereto, and of conteru pora- neous publications, he had not met with a single statement or word calcu- lated to awaken a suspicion, even of intended harm, to the Christian Indians upon the Sandusky. Whenever the objective point of the expedition is mentioned, it is invariably given as Sandusky, or the Wyandot town or towns."

Early on the morning of Saturday, May 25, Crawford's command began its march on horseback for the Sandusky Plains, distant about 150 miles. They purposed making a rapid march, avoiding, as far as practicable, the Indian trails, so as to reach the Sandusky region without the knowledge of the Indians, and thus take them by surprise. The wily nature of the sav-

WYANDOT MISSION CHURCH. COMPLETED IN 1825.

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HISTORY OF WYANDOT COUNTY.

ages, says Butterfield, was too well known to give assurance of security because no enemy was visible; hence Col. Crawford " took every precaution to guard against ambuscades and surprises." "Unceasing vigilance was the watchword." However, nothing worthy of note transpired until Mon- day night, the 27th, while at the third encampment. Here a number of the men lost their horses, which were hunted for the next morning without suc- cess. It was then decided by Col. Crawford that these dismounted men should return home, as their crippled condition would contribute more to the burden and inconvenience of the movement than would their services toward securing its successful issue. On Tuesday, the 28th, the fourth day of the march, the command reached the Tuscarawas River, at a point about one mile below the present town of New Philadelphia, the county seat of Tus- carawas County. During the same evening, Maj. Brinton and Capt. Bean, while a short distance from the camp, discovered two Indians lurking near by, upon whom they immediately fired, but without effect. These escaping Indians, says Dr. Knight, gave notice to the hostiles on the Sandusky of the movements of the Americans. The fact of the discovery while yet so remote from the objective point rendered the necessity greater for a rapid march. Therefore, on Wednesday morning, the 29th, the march was re- sumed with a rapidity not before attempted. The guides, Slover and Zane, in the advance, led off in a northwest course across the Killbuck, above the present town of Millersburg, county seat of Holmes County, leaving Woos- ter, the present county seat of Wayne County, about ten miles to the north, and Mansfield, now the county seat of Richland County, a few miles south, and on the evening of Saturday, June 1, the entire command encamped at a point now known as Spring Mills, about eight miles east of the present town of Crestline, in Crawford County. On the following day, Sunday, June 2, the expedition arrived at the Sandusky River near the present vil- lage of Leesville, having marched about eighty-five miles during the last five days. The Sandusky Plains were reached on Monday, the 3d day of June, and the mouth of the Little Sandusky on Tuesday, the 4th. Later on the same day, the troops reached the Wyandot town, then known as Up- per Sandusky, which was situated about three miles southeast of the present town of that name, but to the utter astonishment of Crawford and his men, not an Indian was to be seen, and the village appeared as if it had been deserted for some time. It was now afternoon. The men and officers dismounted, and while the horses leisurely grazed upon the luxuriant and abundant pasturage, and the men drank from a neighboring spring, Col. Crawford and his officers consulted as to what was best to be done.

One of the guides of the expedition, Slover, had been a prisoner among the Indians, and was familiar with the localities in the Sandusky region. He communicated his opinion to Col. Crawford, that the Indians of the deserted Wyandot village, on hearing of his approach, had probably gone to one of their towns, situated about eight miles down the river. It was thereupon determined to move forward at once in search of them. A march of three miles brought them to the site of the present town of Upper Sandusky. After a further advance movement of about a mile, some of the men stated that they were short of supplies, and expressed a desire to return instead of proceeding onward. A council of war was then held, to consider the ques- tion of the probability of the concentration of the hostile Indians in their front. Crawford and the guide, Zane, were of the opinion that there were indications that the Indians were bent on a determined resistance, and were then, probably, collecting their warriors. Zane advised an immediate re-

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turn home. The council, however, decided to continue the march during the remainder of that afternoon, but no longer.

Col. Crawford had previously sent forward a small body of men for the purpose of reconnoitering. This party had gone but about two miles when they discovered the enemy in full force rapidly moving toward them. Im- mediately one of the scouts was sent back to Col. Crawford to inform him of the presence of the enemy. The council had just adjourned, and the troops were at once formed for action. After advancing about a mile, the enemy were found moving toward a grove, evidently meaning battle. Col. Craw- ford ordered his men to dismount and advance upon the Indians. They did so, and ere the expiration of many minutes the savages were dislodged, and the Americans in possession of the grove. Soon, the Delawares, with whom the battle was opened, were reinforced by the Wyandots, all being under the command of Capt. Mathew Elliott, an Irishman in the service of the British Government. Very soon, the action, which commenced about 4 o'clock P. M., became general. The infamous renegade, Simon Girty, was with the savages and acted a conspicuous part. The Indians were protected, in a measure, by the tall prairie grass, and the Pennsylvanians were also afforded some protection, too, by the grove, of which they had, by gallant fighting, obtained possession. (The fight at " Battle Island," in what is now termed Crane Township, Wyandot County, continued with varying success until dark, when the Indians retired farther out into the prairie, and ceased firing. The loss sustained by the Americans was four killed and nineteen wounded. Doubtless the Indians lost a greater number, but of course it was never known.

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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 25

Author: Publication date: 1884 Publisher: Chicago, Leggett, Conaway Number of Pages: 1072

Author:
Publication date: 1884
Publisher: Chicago, Leggett, Conaway
Number of Pages: 1072