USA > Ohio > The Old Northwest : a chronicle of the Ohio Valley and beyond > Part 7
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THE OLD NORTHWEST
throughout a settlement or county. Foremost among such occasions were the log-rollings.
After a settler had felled the thick-growing trees on a plot which he desired to prepare for cultivation, he cut them, either by sawing or by burning, into logs twelve or fifteen feet in length. Frequently these were three, four, or even five feet in diameter, so that they could not be moved by one man, even with a team of horses. In such a situation, the settler would send word to his neighbors for miles around that on a given day there would be a log-rolling at his place; and when the day arrived six, or a dozen, or perhaps a score, of sturdy men, with teams of horses and yokes of oxen, and very likely accompanied by members of their families, would arrive on the scene with merry shouts of anticipation. By means of hand- spikes and chains drawn by horses or oxen, the great timbers were pushed, rolled, and dragged into heaps, and by nightfall the field lay open and ready for the plough - requiring, at the most, only the burning of the huge piles that had been gathered.
Without loss of time the fires were started; and as darkness came on, the countryside glowed as with the light of a hundred huge torches. The
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skies were reddened, and as a mighty oak or poplar log toppled and fell to the ground, showers of sparks lent the scene volcanic splendor. Bats and owls and other dim-eyed creatures of the night flew about in bewilderment, sometimes bumping hard against fences or other objects, sometimes plunging madly into the flames and contributing to the general holocaust. For days the great fires were kept going, until the last remnants of this section of the once imposing forest were con- sumed; while smoke hung far out over the coun- try, producing an atmospheric effect like that of Indian summer.
Heavy exertion called for generous refreshment, and on these occasions the host could be depended on to provide an abundance of food and drink. The little cabin could hardly be made to accommo- date so many guests, even in relays. Accordingly, a long table was constructed with planks and tres- tles in a shady spot, and at noon - and perhaps again in the evening - the women folk served a meal which at least made up in "staying quali- ties" what it lacked in variety or delicacy. The principal dish was almost certain to be "pot-pie," consisting of boiled turkeys, geese, chickens, grouse, veal, or venison, with an abundance of
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dumplings. This, with cornbread and milk, met the demands of the occasion; but if the host was able to furnish a cask of rum, his generosity was thoroughly appreciated.
In the autumn, corn-huskings were a favorite form of diversion, especially for the young people; and in the early spring neighbors sometimes came together to make maple sugar. A wedding was an important event and furnished diversion of a different kind. From distances of twenty and thirty miles people came to attend the ceremony, and often the festivities extended over two or three days. Even now there was work to be done; for as a rule the neighbors organized a house- building "bee," and before separating for their homes they constructed a cabin for the newly wedded pair, or at all events brought it sufficiently near completion to be finished by the young hus- band himself.
Even after a day of heavy toil at log-rolling, the young men and boys bantered one another into foot races, wrestling matches, shooting contests, and other feats of strength or skill. And if a fiddler could be found, the day was sure to end with a "hoe-down" - a dance that "made even the log-walled house tremble." No corn-husking
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or wedding was complete without dancing, al- though members of certain of the more strait- laced religious sects already frowned upon the diversion.
Rough conditions of living made rough men, and we need not be surprised by the testimony of Eng- lish and American travelers, that the frontier had more than its share of boisterous fun, rowdyism, lawlessness, and crime. The taste for whiskey was universal, and large quantities were manu- factured in rude stills, not only for shipment down the Mississippi, but for local consumption. Fre- quenters of the river-town taverns called for their favorite brands - "Race Horse," "Moral Sua- sion," "Vox Populi," "Pig and Whistle," or "Split Ticket," as the case might be. But the average frontiersman cared little for the niceties of color or flavor so long as his liquor was cheap and produced the desired effect. Hard work and a monotonous diet made him continually thirsty; and while ordinarily he drank only water and milk at home, at the taverns and at social gather- ings he often succumbed to potations which left him in happy drunken forgetfulness of daily hardships. House-raisings and weddings often became orgies marked by quarreling and fighting
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and terminating in brutal and bloody brawls. Foreign visitors to the back country were led to comment frequently on the number of men who had lost an eye or an ear, or had been otherwise maimed in these rough-and-tumble contests.
The great majority of the frontiersmen, how- ever, were sober, industrious, and law-abiding folk; and they were by no means beyond the pale of religion. On account of the numbers of Scotch- Irish, Presbyterianism was in earlier days the principal creed, although there were many Catho- lics and adherents of the Reformed Dutch and German churches, and even a few Episcopalians. About the beginning of the nineteenth century sectarian ascendancy passed to the Methodists and Baptists, whose ranks were rapidly recruited by means of one of the most curious and char- acteristic of backwoods institutions, the camp- meeting "revival." The years 1799 and 1800 brought the first of the several great waves of religious excitement by which the West - espe- cially Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee - was periodically swept until within the memory of men still living.
Camp-meetings were usually planned and man- aged by Methodist circuit-riders or Baptist itiner-
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ant preachers, who hesitated not to carry their work into the remotest and most dangerous parts of the back country. When the news went abroad that such a meeting was to take place, people flocked to the scene from far and near, in wagons, on horseback, and on foot. Pious men and women came for the sake of religious fellowship and in- spiration; others not so pious came from motives of curiosity, or even to share in the rough sport for which the scoffers always found opportunity. The meeting lasted days, and even weeks; and preaching, praying, singing, "testifying," and "exhorting" went on almost without intermission. "The preachers became frantic in their exhorta- tions; men, women, and children, falling as if in catalepsy, were laid out in rows. Shouts, in- coherent singing, sometimes barking as of an un- reasoning beast, rent the air. Convulsive leaps and dancing were common; so, too, 'jerking,' stakes being driven into the ground to jerk by, the subjects of the fit grasping them as they writhed and grimaced in their contortions. The world, indeed, seemed demented."I Whole com- munities sometimes professed conversion; and it was considered a particularly good day's work " Hosmer, Short History of the Mississippi Valley, p. 116.
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when notorious disbelievers or wrong-doers - "hard bats," in the phraseology of the frontier - or gangs of young rowdies whose only object in coming was to commit acts of deviltry, succumbed to the peculiarly compelling influences of the oc- casion.
In this sort of religion there was, of course, much wild emotionalism and sheer hysteria; and there were always people to whom it was repellent. Backsliders were numerous, and the person who "fell from grace" was more than likely to revert to his earlier wickedness in its grossest forms. None the less, in a rough, unlearned, and material- istic society such spiritual shakings-up were bound to yield much permanent good. Most western people, at one time or another, came under the influence of the Methodist and Baptist revivals; and from the men and women who were drawn by them to a new and larger view of life were re- cruited the hundreds of little congregations whose meeting-houses in the course of time dotted the hilis and plains from the Alleghanies to the Missis- sippi. As for the hard-working, honest-minded frontier preachers who braved every sort of danger in the performance of their great task, the West owes them an eternal debt of gratitude. In the
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words of Roosevelt, "their prejudices and narrow dislikes, their raw vanity and sullen distrust of all who were better schooled than they, count for little when weighed against their intense ear- nestness and heroic self-sacrifice."
Nor was education neglected. Many of the set- tlers, especially those who came from the South, were illiterate. But all who made any pretense of respectability were desirous of giving their children an opportunity to learn to read and write. Accord- ingly, wherever half a dozen families lived reason- ably close together, a log schoolhouse was sure to be found. In the days before public funds existed for the support of education the teachers were paid directly, and usually in produce, by the patrons. Sometimes a wandering pedagogue would find his way into a community and, being engaged to give instruction for two or three months during the winter, would "board around" among the residents and take such additional pay as he could get. More often, some one of the settlers who was fortunate enough to possess the rudiments of an education undertook the rôle of schoolmaster in the interval between the autumn corn-gathering and the spring ploughing and planting.
Instruction rarely extended beyond the three R's;
9
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but occasionally a newcomer who had somewhere picked up a smattering of algebra, Latin, or as- tronomy stirred the wonder, if not also the sus- picion, of the neighborhood. Schoolbooks were few and costly; crude slates were made from pieces of shale; pencils were fashioned from varicolored soapstone found in the beds of small streams. No frontier picture is more familiar or more pleasing than that of the farmer's boy sitting or lying on the floor during the long winter evening industriously tracing by firelight or by candlelight the proverb or quotation assigned him as an exercise in pen- manship, or wrestling with the intricacies of least common denominators and highest common divi- sors. It is in such a setting that we get our first glimpse of the greatest of western Americans, Abraham Lincoln.
CHAPTER VIII
TECUMSEH
WAYNE'S victory in 1795, followed by the Treaty of Fort Greenville, gave the Northwest welcome relief from Indian warfare, and within four years the Territory was ready to be advanced to the second of the three grades of government provided for it in the Ordinance of 1787. A Legislature was set up at Cincinnati, and in due time it proceeded to the election of a delegate to Congress. Choice fell on a young man whose name was destined to a permanent place in the country's history. William Henry Harrison was the son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, the scion of one of Virginia's most honored families. Entering the army in 1791, he had served as an aide-de-camp to Wayne in the campaign which ended at Fallen Timbers, and at the time of his election was act- ing as Secretary of the Territory and ex-officio Lieutenant-Governor.
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Although but twenty-six years of age, and with- out a vote in the House of Representatives, Harri- son succeeded in procuring from Congress in 1800 an act dividing the Territory into two distinct "governments," separated by the old Greenville treaty line as far as Fort Recovery and then by a line running due north to the Canadian boundary. The division to the east was named Ohio, that to the west Indiana; and Harrison was made Governor of the latter, with his residence at Vincennes. In 1802 the development of the back country was freshly emphasized by the admission of Ohio as a State.
Meanwhile the equilibrium between the white man and the red again became unstable. In the Treaty of 1795 the natives had ceded only southern Ohio, southeastern Indiana, and a few other small and scattered areas. Northward and westward, their country stretched to the Lakes and the Mis- sissippi, unbroken except by military posts and widely scattered settlements; and title to all of this territory had been solemnly guaranteed. As late as 1800 the white population of what is now In- diana was practically confined to Clark's Grant, near the falls of the Ohio, and a small region around Vincennes. It numbered not more than twenty-
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five hundred persons. But thereafter immigration from the seaboard States, and from the nearer lands of Kentucky and Tennessee, set in on a new scale. By 1810 Indiana had a white population of twenty- five thousand, and the cabins of the energetic settlers dotted river valleys and hillsides never before trodden by white man.
In this new rush of pioneers the rights of the Indians received scant consideration. Hardy and well-armed Virginians and Kentuckians broke across treaty boundaries and possessed themselves of fertile lands to which they had no valid claim. White hunters trespassed far and wide on Indian territory, until by 1810 great regions, which a quar- ter of a century earlier abounded in deer, bear, and buffalo, were made as useless for Indian pur- poses as barren wastes. Although entitled to the protection of law in his person and property, the native was cheated and overawed at every turn; he might even be murdered with impunity. Abra- ham Lincoln's uncle thought it a virtuous act to shoot an Indian on sight, and the majority of pioneers agreed with him.
"I can tell at once," wrote Harrison in 1801. "upon looking at an Indian whom I may chance to meet whether he belongs to a neighboring or a more
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distant tribe. The latter is generally well-clothed, healthy, and vigorous; the former half-naked, filthy, and enfeebled by intoxication, and many of them without arms excepting a knife, which they carry for the most villainous purposes." The stronger tribes perceived quite as clearly as did the Governor the ruinous effects of contact between the two peoples, and the steady destruction of the border warriors became a leading cause of discon- tent. Congress had passed laws intended to pre- vent the sale of spiritucus liquors to the natives, but the courts had construed these measures to be operative only outside the bounds of States and organized Territories, and in the great unorganized Northwest the laws were not heeded, and the ruin- ous traffic went on uninterrupted. Harrison re- ported that when there were only six hundred war- riors on the Wabash the annual consumption of whiskey there was six thousand gallons, and that killing each other in drunken brawls had “become so customary that it was no longer thought criminal."
Most exasperating, however, from the red man's point of view was the insatiable demand of the newcomers for land. In the years 1803, 1804, and 1805 Harrison made treaties with the remnants of the Miami, Eel River, Piankeshaw, and Delaware
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tribes - characterized by him as "a body of the most depraved wretches on earth" - which gained for the settlers a strip of territory fifty miles wide south of White River; and in 1809 he similarly ac- quired, by the Treaty of Fort Wayne, three million acres, in tracts which cut into the heart of the In- dian country for almost a hundred miles up both banks of the Wabash. The Wabash valley was richer in game than any other region south of Lake Michigan, and its loss was keenly felt by the In- dians. Indeed, it was mainly the cession of 1809 that brought once more to a crisis the long-brewing difficulties with the Indians.
About the year 1768 the Creek squaw of a Shawnee warrior gave birth at one time to three boys, in the vicinity of the present city of Spring- field, Ohio." One of the three barely left his name in aboriginal annals. A second, known as Laule- wasikaw, "the man with the loud voice," poses in the pages of history as "the prophet." The third brother was Tecumseh, "the wild-cat that leaps upon its prey," or "the shooting star," as the
I Authorities differ as to the facts of Tecumseh's birth. His earliest biographer, Benjamin Drake, holds that he was "wholly a Shawanoe" and that he was a fourth child, the Prophet and another son being twins. William Henry Harrison spoke of Tecumseh's mother as a Creek.
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name has been translated. He is described as a tall, handsome warrior -daring and energetic, of fluent and persuasive speech, given to deep reflec- tion, an implacable hater of the white man. Other qualities he possessed which were not so common among his people. He had perfect self-command, a keen insight into human motives and purposes, and an exceptional capacity to frame plans and organize men to carry them out. His crowning scheme for bringing together the tribes of the Mid- dle West into a grand democratic confederacy to regulate land cessions and other dealings with the whites stamps him as perhaps the most states- manlike member of his race.
While yet hardly more than a boy, Tecumseh seems to have been stirred to deep indignation by the persistent encroachment of the whites upon the hunting-grounds of his fathers. The cessions of 1804 and 1805 he specially resented, and it is not unlikely that they clinched the decision of the young warrior to take up the task which Pontiac had left unfinished. At all events, the plan was soon well in hand. A less far-seeing leader would have been content to call the scattered tribes to a momentary alliance with a view to a general up- rising against the invaders. But Tecumseh's pur-
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poses ran far deeper. All of the Indian peoples, of whatever name or relationships, from the Lakes to the Gulf and from the Alleghanies to the Rockies, were to be organized in a single, permanent con- federacy. This union, furthermore, was to con- sist, not of chieftains, but of the warriors; and its governing body was to be a warriors' congress, an organ of genuine popular rule. Joint ownership of all Indian lands was to be assumed by the con- federacy, and the piecemeal cession of territory by petty tribal chiefs, under pressure of government agents, was to be made impossible. Only thus, Tecumseh argued, could the red man hope to hold his own in the uneven contest that was going on.
The plan was brilliant, even though impractic- able. Naturally, it did not appeal instantly to the chieftains, for it took away tribal independence and undermined the chieftain's authority. Be- sides, its author was not a chief, and had no sanc- tion of birth or office. Its success was dependent on the building of an intertribal association such as Indian history had never known. And while there was nothing in it which contravened the professed policy of the United States, it ran counter to the irrepressible tendency of the advancing white
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population to spread at will over the great western domain.
By these obstacles Tecumseh was not deterred. With indefatigable zeal he traveled from one end of the country to the other, arguing with chiefs, making fervid speeches to assembled warriors, and in every possible manner impressing his people with his great idea. The Prophet went with him; and when the orator's logic failed to carry conviction, the medicine-man's imprecations were relied upon to save the day. Events, too, played into their hands. The Leopard-Chesapeake affair,' in 1807, roused strong feeling in the West and prompted the Governor-General of Canada to begin intrigues looking to an alliance with the redskins in the event of war. And when, late in the same year, Gover- nor Hull of Michigan Territory indiscreetly ne- gotiated a new land cession at Detroit, the northern tribes at once joined Tecumseh's league, mutter- ing threats to slay the chiefs by whom the cession had been sanctioned.
In the spring of 1808 Tecumseh and his brother carried their plans forward another step by tak- ing up their residence at a point in central Indiana
I See Jefferson and his Colleagues, by Allen Johnson (in The Chron- icles of America).
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where Tippecanoe Creek flows into the Wabash River. The place - which soon got the name of the Prophet's Town - was almost equidistant from Vincennes, Fort Wayne, and Fort Dearborn; from it the warriors could paddle their canoes to any part of the Ohio or the Mississippi, and with only a short portage, to the waters of the Maumee and the Great Lakes. The situation was, therefore, strategic. A village was laid out, and the popu- lation was soon numbered by the hundred. Live stock was acquired, agriculture was begun, the use of whiskey was prohibited, and every indication was afforded of peaceful intent.
Seasoned frontiersmen, however, were suspicious. Reports came in that the Tippecanoe villagers en- gaged daily in warlike exercises; rumor had it that emissaries of the Prophet were busily stirring the tribes, far and near, to rebellion. Governor Harri- son was not a man to be easily frightened, but he became apprehensive, and proposed to satisfy him- self by calling Tecumseh into conference.
The interview took place at Vincennes, and was extended over a period of two weeks. There was a show of firmness, yet of good will, on both sides. The Governor counseled peace, orderliness, and industry; the warrior guest professed a desire to
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be a friend to the United States, but said frankly that if the country continued to deal with the tribes singly in the purchase of land he would be obliged to ally himself with Great Britain. To Harrison's admonition that the redskins should leave off drinking whiskey - "that it was not made for them, but for the white people, who alone knew how to use it" - the visitor replied pointedly by asking that the sale of liquor be stopped.
Notwithstanding the tenseness of the situation, Harrison negotiated the land cessions of 1809, which cost the Indians their last valuable hunting- grounds in Indiana. The powerful Wyandots promptly joined Tecumseh's league, and war was made inevitable. Delay followed only because the Government at Washington postponed the military occupation of the new purchase, and because the British authorities in Canada, desiring Tecumseh's confederacy to attain its maximum strength before the test came, urged the redskins to wait.
For two more years - while Great Britain and the United States hovered on the brink of war - preparations continued. Tribe after tribe in Indiana and Illinois elected Tecumseh as their chief, alliances reached to regions as remote as Florida. In 1810 another conference took place at
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Vincennes; and this time, notwithstanding Har- rison's request that not more than thirty redskins should attend, four hundred came in Tecumseh's train, fully armed.
A large portico in front of the Governor's house [says a contemporary account] had been prepared for the purpose with seats, as well for the Indians as for the citizens who were expected to attend. When Te- cumseh came from his camp, with about forty of his warriors, he stood off, and on being invited by the Governor, through an interpreter, to take his seat, re- fused, observing that he wished the council to be held under the shade of some trees in front of the house. When it was objected that it would be troublesome to remove the seats, he replied that "it would only be necessary to remove those intended for the whites - that the red men were accustomed to sit upon the earth, which was their mother, and that they were always happy to recline upon her bosom."I
The chieftain's equivocal conduct aroused fresh suspicion, but he was allowed to proceed with the oration which he had come to deliver. Freely rendered, the speech ran, in part, as follows:
I have made myself what I am; and I would that I could make the red people as great as the conceptions of my mind, when I think of the Great Spirit that rules over all. I would not then come to Governor Harrison to ask him to tear the treaty [of 1809]; but I would say to him,
I James Hall, Memoir of William Henry Harrison, pp. 113-114.
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Brother, you have liberty to return to your own country. Once there was no white man in all this country: then it belonged to red men, children of the same parents, placed on it by the Great Spirit to keep it, to travel over it, to eat its fruits, and fill it with the same race - once a happy race, but now made miserable by the white people, who are never contented, but always encroach- ing. They have driven us from the great salt water, forced us over the mountains, and would shortly push us into the lakes - but we are determined to go no further. The only way to stop this evil is for all red men to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was at first, and should be now - for it never was divided, but belongs to all. Any sale not made by all is not good.
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