USA > Ohio > The Western Reserve and early Ohio > Part 10
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Yesterday their village might have existed on the Cuyahoga, today on the Tuscarawas, tomorrow on the Muskingum. The conflicting reports as to the resi- dence of a chief who possessed so many homes and vil- lages, both past and present, has always been an ex- asperation to the antiquarian historian, and the subject of much argument among writers and a puzzle to their readers.
Wam-te-kek, Beaver Hat, Seneca, and Pontiac fell by the hands of the white. Logan was murdered by tribesmen, but Capt. Pipe, the ferocious and inveterate enemy to the whites, died a natural death, a centen- arian and the victim of remorse.
Historians have said, and every succeeding writer has reiterated the error, that, of the Delaware chiefs, White Eyes Netawatwees, Big Cat, Capt. John, Kill- buck and others, failed to take up arms for the British during the War of 1812, but that the Chiefs of the Wolfclan, Armstrong, Newalike and Capt. Pipe with- drew towards Lake Erie, and joined the British forces.
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INDIANS
Chief Newalike may have done this, but Armstrong did not, until after his village upon the clear fork of the Mohican had been burned by the militia. It is certain that Capt. Pipe did not as will be seen afterwards.
Capt. Pipe's voice during the war was first, last and always for peace. His village was at that time in Ashland County, and many Ashland county citizens have testified to that fact. But more than this Capt. Pipe was too old during the war to have dug up the hatchet. He was born while the eighteenth century was still young. Over fifty years before this, while Capt. Pipe was then a middle aged man, he had been a prisoner at Fort Pitt. In 1814, Capt. Pipe must have been a centenarian, too old, surely, to take up arms against the race he had always fought. At the begin- ning of the war we have the testimony of unimpeach- able witnesses to prove that his form was then bent with age, his head silvered with his lonely sorrow, and his face furrowed with the lines of remorse. Elsewhere in this volume will appear Capt. Pipe's reasons in his own language.
The Ottawas, Senecas, Mingoes and a few restless, renegade Delawares of the Western Reserve, were active in the war in the cause of the British. Among these were many from Portage-Summit territory.
The Summit County History says : "The Dela- ware's Villages in Summit County about the time of Lord Dunmore's War, were well populated." It also says that Simon Girty, who was a Delaware, and his brother George, who was a Seneca by adoption, were often at these Indian Villages in the Cuyahoga Valley.
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INDIANS
From 1760 to 1794, the warriors of the Indian Vil- lages on the Reserve were actively engaged in desult- ory warfare with the encroaching settlements east and south of the Ohio River. Numerous small parties pass- ed along the great trial and ravaged the border settlements of Pennsylvania. Some of these parties, especially those of Capt. Pipe's Village, after commit- ting their depredations, returned by the great southern trail which, tho longer by thirty miles, could be made by water, effectually throwing their pursuers, if any, off the trail and diverting suspicions from their villages.
The Indian hunters of the border were puzzled to account for the rapidity in which blows were struck and in the shortness of time in which their savage ag- gressors disappeared. Suspicions began to be harbored against the Christian Moravian Indians on the Tuscar- awas, or to the tribes on the upper Muskingum. With an obtuseness hard to understand in this day, they looked in every direction except the one from which the blows had fallen. The Indian villages began to be depopulated in the beginning of Tecumseh's conspiracy ; many were abandoned after the battle of Fallen Tim- bers. For some unaccountable reasons the Indians all left the Cuyahoga Valley before the close of the War of 1812. Some no doubt left for fear of the whites, some to join the British, some to become the hangers- on of camps. But few ever returned after the war and those few did not stay.
It is undoubtedly a fact, proven by the careful ob- servation of years, from a mass of testimony slight in its individuality but taken as a whole, conclusive in the extreme, that a conspiracy existed among the tribes of
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INDIANS
Northern Ohio, that in case the British won a victory on Lake Erie, the Indian tribes were to rise and assist- ed by Proctor and his Indian allies, were to sweep the entire Northern Ohio from Sandusky to the Pennsyl- vania line with fire and sword. The able-bodied men of the Western Reserve were in the ranks, defending a harrassed border, the women and children, the aged and crippled were at home. Resistance would have been useless. Smoking ruins and mutilated corpses would have marked the course of 3000 devils let loose upon a defenseless people. The whole world would have shud- dered and history would have been turned back another century.
It is well for the Reserve, well for our country, well for humanity, that this heart-rending page of a bloody history was averted.
Out of the death comes life, and from out the rent and torn and sinking Lawrence came the seeds of life and hope and victory.
The British Lion cowered before the American Eagle, and joy and peace and thankfulness settled over the brooding, trembling, troubled border land of the Western Reserve.
INDIAN TRAILS
The Great Indian Trail from Fort McIntosh went to Sandusky and Detroit, commenced at Beaver, Penn- sylvania and ran up the east bank of the Beaver river to just above its junction with the Mahoning. The trail then followed the north bank of the Mahoning until about three miles above the present site of Youngstown, when it crossed the river, thence, passing through the salt springs of the Mahoning, and on through Milton in Mahoning County, through the north- ern part of Palmyra; thence through Edinburg; after crossing Silver Creek, one and one half miles north of the center road; thence through Ravenna, on down the Break Neck Creek Valley, across the stream the Stand- ing Stone ; crossing the Cuyahoga here it ran westward- ly along the north side of the river until it entered Stow township. Here the trail divided ; one branch led north- westerly through Stow, Northampton and Boston, where it crossed the Cuyahoga and continued down the west bank of the Cuyahoga to its mouth.
At Fish Creek, in Stow township, where the trail divided, the southern branch ran south westwardly to Cuyahoga Falls, the falls of Hoppocon, and on down to Old Portage, where it connected with navigation for the Lake, and with Portage Path for the Tuscarawas and the Muskingum, and with the Scioto Trail for the Scioto River, and central parts of the state. After crossing the Cuyahoga at Old Portage the great trail kept on westward, nearly on the same line as the Smith
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BEGINNING OF PORTAGE PATH
INDIAN TRAILS
Road, until it reached the Huron River, where it inter- sected with Indian trails from the Muskingum and Wal- honding Rivers, also with trails from the Mohican River, passing through Ashland and Richland Counties. From Huron River the combined trails followed the east bank of that river to Lake Erie; thence along the Lake shore to Sandusky and Detroit. From the north- ern branch of the great trail, side trails branched off to Indian villages in Northampton, Bath, and Richfield. Another trail extended along the south side of the Cuyahoga, extending from Old Portage, via the falls of Hoppocon, (Big Falls) to Standing Stone (Kent), pass- ing through the northern part of Tallmadge. Another trail led southeast from the falls of Hoppocon, passing through Tallmadge, near Middlebury, to Springfield Lake.
Dr. William Smith, writing of this great trail, says : "In this day's march, Oct. 9, 1764, the path divided into two branches, that to the southwest leading to the low- er towns on the Muskingum. In the forks of the path stand several trees painted by the Indians in hierog- lyphic manner denoting the number of wars in which they have engaged and the particulars of their success in prisoners and scalps."
In 1785, General Harmar drove all the setlers who had located west of the Pennsylvania line, off the trail and east of the Beaver.
In 1786, Colonel Hillman, of Pittsburg, afterwards a settler in Youngstown, began to take great pack trains over this trail loaded with flour consigned to the mouth of the Cuyahoga. From here it was shipped to Detroit by the "Mackinaw". Col. Hillman's pack train
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usually numbered ninety horses and nine men. Break- neck Creek was named by him from the fact that one of his men had his neck broken when crossing the stream by reason of his horse stumbling because of a root that had fastened around its hoof under the water.
In 1872 it was along this trail that the Poe broth- ers followed the Indian marauders, and which ended in the noted fight so often quoted.
It was on this trail that Brady pursued the Indians and had his party ambushed, defeated and compelled to flee for their lives. It was on this trail that he made his masterly race for life, his famous leap, his success- ful escape, giving his name to Brady's Lake since 1780.
It was on this trail that Benjamin Tappan and Benjamin Bigsby found their way to Ravenna in 1799.
It was on this trail that from 1759 to 1764, Mrs. Stewart and Mary Campbell were held prisoners at Cuyahoga Falls.
Under date of July 20, 1796, Milton Holley, one of the Connecticut Land Company's surveyors said: "On the sixty-fifth mile, for seventy chains, land gently de- scends to the south, thinly timbered with white and black oak, at seventy-two chains to an Indian path east and west."
It was on this trail that Seth Pease and his sur- veyors traveled to and from their work.
Moses Warren's field book, July 18, 1796, says: "River fog prevented observation of the polar star, struck the right bank of Cuyahoga River, thirteen chains, ninety-eight links from the "Portage tree", which I traversed in three courses, the last crossing the river. I then traversed the path to No. 3 and en- camped on a run on No. 7."
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4代
PATH CROSSING OLD CLEARING
INDIAN TRAILS
It was on this trail that Nicksaw was cruelly mur- dered, his squaw and pappoose left to freeze, while three Indians taken as prisoners by Major Rogers were so frozen as to be forever incapacitated from making a living.
It was on this trail that Capt. Mills and his band of Indian hunters killed four out of five of the last Indians ever in the county.
It was by this trail that war parties so swiftly and murderously fell on the border settlements of Penn- sylvania and escaped to their forest fastness.
The poor Moravians and the Sandusky Indians were blamed for the acts of their northern neighbors. There is no doubt in the mind of the writer but what the Moravians suffered martyrdom for the acts of these villagers, tributary to the Fort McIntosh and Sandusky trails.
At the point where this trail crosses Silver Creek, in Portage County, Frederick Daniels and others in 1814, discovered, painted on several trees, various de- vices, evidently the work of the Indians. The bark was carefully shaved off two thirds of the way around, and figures cut upon the wood. One of these delineated seven Indians equipped in particular manner, and one of whom was without a head. This was supposed to have been made by a party on their return westward, to give intelligence to their friends behind, of the loss of one of their party at that place, and on making search a human skeleton was discovered near by.
The trail followed the highest ground along the watershed, and parties of Indians were continually pass- ing, probably for centuries. Long after the whites
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INDIAN TRAILS
came, this Indian migration went steadily on over the great aboriginal thoroughfare from Sandusky to the Ohio River. There were several large piles of stones on this trail under which human remains have been found. These are supposed to be savages slain in war, or murdered by their enemies, as tradition has it that it was formerly an Indian custom for each Indian pass- ing the grave of an enemy to throw a stone upon it.
"Standing Stone" on this trail, was a huge natural pillar of sandstone standing in the middle of the Cuya- hoga, at what was known as Franklin Mills, now Kent. It is said to have been an imposing sight, standing in the midst of the rushing stream, with a lone pine tree crowning its summit. It was near here that the In- dians had their fording place.
The best known and seemingly the most important Indian land mark was the "Portage Path". The old- est European maps as well as the earlier American ones gave it, even before the Ohio river was little more than a myth to the average European scholar. In these old maps the Cuyahoga was given as rising in Summit Lake, and "the Portage" only a mile in length. Wash- ington and Jefferson were favorably impressed with the point as being possibly of great strategic and com- mercial value. The early statesmen discussed the pos- sibility of building a canal to connect the Cuyahoga with the Tuscarawas, this making a continuous line for boats from the Great Lakes to the Gulf. These rivers at that time carried four times the volume of water that they do at the present time. A student of the old maps of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies cannot but be impressed with the distinction this
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INDIAN TRAILS
at one time held. In four different treaties with the Indian tribes it was made the western boundary of the United States. The savages had made it a highway for centuries and were loath to give it up.
Congress of the United States in 1787, secured to the citizens of the new Republic, the right of highway on it forever. The State of Ohio upon her admission to the union, was received into the union of States upon this express condition among many others. Long afterward, after Ohio had succeeded to her statehood, lines of boats ascended to "Old Portage", and it was no common sight to see more than one hundred teams unloading at this terminus of the "Portage Path," while at the other terminus, "New Portage", lines of boats ran directly to the gulf without breaking bulk. As late as the War of 1812, this point was so import- ant that an army of occupation under Major General Wadsworth lay at "Old Portage", shipping troops and supplies from Cleveland to this point, and from here shipping troops and munitions of war to the advanced posts on the Huron River and Sandusky. Troops were also hastened from this point for the relief of Fort Meigs and Detroit.
The "Portage Path" was by legislative enactment made the boundary line of Washington, of Jefferson and of Trumbull Counties. The Portage gave its name to one of the townships through which it runs, and also gave its name to the third county to be organized in the Western Reserve. The county in which it lies took the name of Summit, as Portage was already pre-empt- ed by the county from which it sprung. Summit was the apex of Portage, and Akron, its metropolis, became
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INDIAN TRAILS
the "Tip-Top-City", because it was on the top of Sum- mit, the highest land in the State, sending its waters both ways, into the Great Lakes of the north and the Gulf of Mexico on the south. Springfield Lake, one of
CENTER OF INDIAN COMMUNICATION
the sources of the Cuyahoga, lies in Summit County, and is nearly seven hundred feet higher than Lake Erie and one hundred and seventy-two feet higher than the
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INDIAN TRAILS
mill race in front of the Empre House, now Portage Hotel in Akron.
Portage Summit was a well known name in early canal days, it is up to the citizens of the city to see that it does not grow cold.
The "Portage Path" started at the portage of the Cuyahoga, at "Old Portage", and run nearly west, un- til the top of the highland was reached, when it turned almost directly south, passing along the eastern bound- aries of lot 2 in Portage township, where it left the Cuyahoga, about a quarter of a mile south of the North township line of Portage; thence along the west bound- aries of lots numbered 2, 3, 6, 7, and near the middle of 10, where it bore a few rods to the west, continuing this way across lots 10 and 11, when it bore to the eastward, a few rods east of the northeast corner of lot 14, then crossed West Exchange Street extension, following the road now running west of the residences of Goodrich, Works and Marvin, and on past the old Perkins resi- dence, all on lot 14, thence nearly south across the new Perkins Park, until it struck a tract line running due west from Buchtel College, when it made a turn and bore south-westernly across A. G. Mallison's part of lot 18, crossing Wooster avenue on the line between lot 18 and 19, a short distance east of the four corners at Sherbondy, thence on south-easternly, crossing Thorn- ton street, a few rods east of where that street makes a junction with the Manchester Road; then it struck nearly south, across lot 19, west of Manning's Pond along the Manchester Road until it struck South street, when it again bore west of the road, crossing it again nearly opposite the center of Summit Lake; thence
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INDIAN TRAILS
nearly following the course of the road until Coventry center is reached, when it passes through March's prop- erty and the eastern end of Nesmith Lake, passes Louie Young's and strikes the Tuscarawas south of the canal opposite to Young's Road House.
Moses Warren's field book, July 19 and 20, 1796, says: "Continued the traverse to Tuskawawa landing at course 74. At No. 72 is a large white oak, marked with many hieroglyphics. In the vicinity are many In- dian camps. The traverse from the second parallel by the path is 658.63; length of portage 644.55 chains."
"July 21, 1796-Continued a traverse down the river from which I was allured by Mr. Pease's pack- horse man, who sounded the Indian whoop, and being answered refused to reply as we heard him. Mr. Pease connected his traverse with mine at No. 96, about forty chains southwest of the landing. Except the Cuya- hoga Hill, the Portage will admit an excellent road, and that is not so formidable as the one at Queenstown, Upper Canada."
Every stream of considerable size had its Indian Trail leading along one or other of its banks.
Long before the white man ever saw Northern Ohio, the Indian tribes of the "Ohio Country" had used "Portage Path" in their travels from the Ohio river and intermediate points, to the Great Lakes of the North. The canoe was their most valued possession, and their chosen way of travel. Ascending the Cuya- hoga which in that day was a great river running bank full, to the Portage, they carried their light birch bark canoes along "Portage Path" until they reached the head waters of the Tuscarawas, at the other end
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PICTURED TREE ON PATH
K.
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INDIAN TRAILS
of the path. This was the shortest and best portage between waters leading into the great river and the great lake. At Zoar they reached Conotten Creek, which connected with Cross Creek, entering the Ohio below Steubenville. At Navarre, a creek reached near- ly across Stark County. At Bolivar the Big Sandy be- came a confluent, from which Carroll, Stark and Colum- biana Counties were reached. In 1764, according to Dr. Wm. Smith, the river here was two hundred and ten feet wide, a beautiful, strong and clear stream. At Coshocton, the Walhonding united; then jointly forming the Big Muskingum. The waters of the Wal- honding furnished them a highway to Coshocton, Knox, Holmes, Ashland and Richland Counties, and via Ver- non River, into Morrow County. At Adams Mills, Wills Creek made a route into Guernsey County, while the Michalach, coming from Licking County, joined the river at Zanesville. At Putnam, the Moxahala Creek, opened a way into Perry County. Thus these aboriginal travelers were able to reach almost every part of eastern and central Ohio from the Tuscarawas, Muskingum, White Woman's Rivers, and their con- fluent branches. Truly a great highway in the days of canoe voyaging.
The Great Scioto War Trail left the "Portage Path" near the foot of Sherbondy Hill, south-east corner of lot 18, where it crosses Wooster avenue, thence down Wooster avenue, crossing the southeastern corner of lot 20, in Portage township, and diagonally across lot 1, in Coventry township, entering Norton township on the northeast corner of lot 20, and crossed the Wolf Creek near where Van Hyning's bridge now is, passed
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INDIAN TRAILS
down the west side of Wolf Creek Bottoms nearly on the same course of the present road. It crossed the south-east corner of lot 38, and diagonally across lot 48, into lot 67, and from there took a direct course for Johnson's Corners. From Johnson's Corners it follow- ed a south-west course, nearly identical with the Woos- ter Road, passing around the hill at Doylestown, to the west, it followed the road to Wooster, from thence down the Killbuck and Walhonding Valleys to the Scioto. This trail was followed by early settlers in Norton and Wadsworth, Doylestown, etc. It was mark- ed by a well beaten path, a hard and compact roadway for pedestrians or horses. In many places this path was a foot below the surrounding surface, worn down by countless feet following its course for many decades. It proved of but little avail as a highway for teams, until trees were cut and underbrush cleared away. The road was not cut as far as Johnson's Corners, un- til in 1816, when it soon reached as far as Wooster.
This trail connected at Portage Path with the trail to the Great Lakes on the north and the Tuscarawas and Muskingum on the south. At Old Portage it con- nected with the great trail running from Fort McIntosh on the east, and Sandusky and Detroit on the west.
This great War Trail allowed the northern tribes which were very numerous at one time, along the Cuya- hoga, Tuscarawas, Portage Path and the many inland lakes, to throw their war parties quickly and surely far down the Ohio, to meet the encroachment of the whites upon Indian territory in Virginia and Kentucky. Along this trail were numerous Indian villages, especially in the neighborhood of Wooster, and the wild, forest
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INDIAN STATUE ON PORTAGE PATH
INDIAN TRAILS
passed. After the building of Fort Harmar at the mouth of the Muskingum, many war parties that for- merly passed down that river to its junction with the Ohio, followed the great Scioto War Trail, which cross- ed the Walhonding.
Along the shores of Lake Erie ran the Lake Indian Trail, rarely used as a war trail, but mostly used by hunting and fishing parties. This extended from San- dusky, (from where the war trail ran westwardly to the Miami of the lakes, and thence on to Detroit) to Buffalo Creek.
There were too many streams to cross on this trail to ever make it popular with the red men. The Indians maintained a ferry at the mouth of the Cuyahoga, yet, east or west, there were too many large streams enter- ing Lake Erie, that were difficult to cross, to even make it a chosen route. On the west of the Cuyahoga were the Huron, Vermillion, Black and Rocky Rivers, be- sides many other streams. On the east, from the Cuya- hoga to Presque Isle, there were ten streams to cross. In quiet weather when the lake was not boisterous, the streams could be safely passed as a sandbar always formed just outside the mouth of the streams; nature thus built a subterranean bridge for those who were willing to wade. The trouble existed in finding the lake quiet enough for this purpose. However, a well defined trail ran along the lake shore during the years intervening between 760 and 1796.
After the unfortunate Bradstreet Expedition of 1764, for many years, the neighborhood of the mouth of the Rocky River was a famous resort for the Indians
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INDIAN TRAILS
of Northern Ohio. It is to be presumed that the waves washed up much plunder, sad remembrances of that fatal shipwreck.
There were many other trails on the Reserve, but none of which were very prominent, and it required much study and great labor to rehabilitate them. A century and a quarter of silence has served to bury them beyond the memory of men.
NOTED INDIAN CHIEFS ON THE RESERVE
"I am; how little more I know! Whence came I? Whither do I go? A centered self, which feels and is; A cry between the silences; A shadow-birth of clouds at strife With sunshine on the hills of life;
A shaft from Nature's quiver cast Into the future from the past; Between the cradle and the shroud, A meteor's flight from cloud to cloud."
-Whittier.
It was in a mad whirl of that celebrated Indian campaign known as "Mad Anthony's War," that Capt. Pipe, Jr., son of Hopocan, old Capt. Pipe, won his spurs. Wayne broke the spirits of the Indians of the North- west.
His village lay at the southern end of the portage path in Coventry, numbering at one time over five hun- dred warriors. He was by far the shrewdest, best known, most vindictive and the most powerful Dela- ware chieftain in Ohio. It was he who burnt Col. Craw- ford at the stake and who at various treaties always signed his name as "Capt. Pipe, King of New Portage." New Portage. at this time was at "the Feeder," near the present Young's Hotel. He, at the treaty of Greenville, in 1795, ceded his territory to the United States, hav- ing previous to this built a new village at Greentown, in Ashland County, where he remained until he dis- appeared, about the time of the beginning of the war of 1812. He was not only a man of power, but he was "a man of mystery." Except the fact that he was
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