The history of Hardin county, Ohio, Part 24

Author: Warner Beers & co., Chicago, pub
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago : Warner Beers & Co.
Number of Pages: 1076

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handle of a butcher knife. I could not detect any evidence of rust, how- ever. On the highest part of the mound, and about twelve or fifteen feet from the two deepest graves was evidence of fire. The loam had been burned till it had a brick color. I have seen it look very much so where a large log heap had been burned, and would have thought such was the cause had it not been that it was below the surface about three feet. The whole number of skeletons exhumed by me was three hundred and eight. I could not ascertain how many had been taken out by diggers of sand.

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" The citizens of the vicinity informed me that there was a very heavy forest on the mound at the time of clearing it. They also stated that the Indians who were here with the first settlers knew nothing of the race who interred their dead there. I have very little doubt they belonged to the age of stone. There was no evidence that they ever had any communication with the age of iron or bronze. They must have had some commercial ar- rangements for getting conch shells and copper. The copper has the appear- ance of the Lake Superior copper, and the conch shells must have come from the Atlantic, Pacific, or Gulf of Mexico. There was no evidence of pottery that I could discover. I have visited as many as twenty mounds in the Mississippi Valley, on nearly every one of which were broken pottery, liter- ally covering the mounds. About three-fourths of a mile from where I now reside, on a farm owned by a Mr. Stump, is a very beautiful little mound about thirty feet across and six feet high. Some years ago, Dr. Craig, of Ontario, Richland County, made an examination, in which he discovered charcoal, ashes, and a flint knife five inches long. It is my impression that no signs of human bones were discovered by him. There has been a large number of stone axes, or celts of all sizes, between two and seven inches in length, found on the surface, some of them finely made, mostly of granite. Various other implements have from time to time been picked up, and I have made a practice of preserving the flint implements on my farm and vicinity, until I have two hundred specimens of various shapes and sizes."

Speculating upon a people of a less remote age, we might exclaim with Halleck :

" What tales if there be tongues in trees, These giant oaks could tell Of beings born and buried here !"

But the hoary antiquity of the stateliest monarchs of the wood cannot carry us back to the time when the builders of the enduring earth monu- ments dwelt in our land. We can only know that a vast population filled our valleys, and passed away; that a nation existed and is gone, leav- ing no page of history to carry through the ages the story of its origin and destiny. All that the student desires to know, that for which he has anxiously but vainly sought, has been engulfed in the illimitable oblivion that holds so much more of the history of human life-how much we cannot tell. Vast as may be the ages that have elapsed since our land was the theater of this unknown race, it is but a brief period in the cycles of time that have swept by since the first dawn of the world; and ancient as we are accus- tomed to regard the Mound-Builders of America, they may have been only the last in a series of vanished races of men-the blood of the earth that has gone forth at every pulse-beat of creation, every throb of the Infinite.

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CHAPTER II.

THE NORTH AMERICAN INDIANS-THEIR LIFE, LANGUAGE, PLACES OF ABODE AND CHARACTER-THE MEDICINE MAN-THE INDIAN SQUAW-MARRIAGE AND SOCIAL RELATIONS-RELIGIOUS BELIEF-ORIGINAL OHIO TRIBES-MIAMI CONFEDERACY-SIX NATIONS-LOCATION OF TRIBES AND THEIR STRENGTH-INDIAN WARS AND EXPEDITIONS-SITES OF VILLAGES -VICTORIES AND DEFEATS-FINAL DEFEAT OF THE INDIANS -LEADING CHIEFS - SIMON GIRTY - PEACE OF 1795- TECUMSEH AND THE WAR OF 1812-SUBSEQUENT TREATIES-INDIAN RESERVATIONS-EXTINCTION OF INDIAN TITLE IN OHIO-RESUME FROM 1754 TO 1794-HARDIN COUNTY AS A HUNTING GROUND-INDIAN CAMPING PLACES- SHAWNEE TRACE-VILLAGES AND CHIEFS.

T THE history of the North American Indians has been gathered, princi- pally, from the traditions handed down by the leading men of that race, though much of it has been established as authentic and reliable. Their origin is involved in complete obscurity, but, that they are one of the oldest races of mankind, cannot be doubted. " They belong to the Ganowa- nian, or Bow-and-Arrow family of men. Some races cultivate the soil, others have herds and flocks, others build cities and ships." To the American Indian the chase was his sole delight ; to smite with his arrow the denizen of the forest and make war upon his enemies, his chief aim in life. He could live happily, only, among vast hunting-grounds of forest, hill and river, filled with the game which unaided nature supplied. To glide up and down the streams and mighty rivers in his frail canoe was a favorite past- time. Nature was his teacher and the forest his home. His religious be- lief centered upon the theory, that at death he would be transferred to just such a paradise of the chase as in life he considered necessary to true hap- piness. This heaven of his imagination he called "the happy hunting ground," and truly it was a beautiful and poetic theory of immortality, one well suited to the child of Nature.

The character of the Indians was largely the result of their lives. They judged and lived by what the senses dictated. They had names and words for what they could hear, see, feel, taste and smell, but had no conception of abstract ideas until they learned such from the whites ; hence their language was very symbolical. They could see the sun in his bright- ness, and feel his heat ; hence they compared the actions of a good man to the glory of the sun, and his fervent energy to the heat of that body. The moon in her brightness, the wind in its fury, the clouds in their majesty, or in their slow graceful motion through a lazy atmosphere ; the grace and flight of the deer ; the strength and fury of the bear ; the rush or ripple of water as it coursed along the bed of a river, all gave them words whose musi- cal expressiveness are a wonder and a marvel to this day. The Wyandots

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looked upon the beautiful river that borders the southern shores of this State and exclaimed " O-he-zuh !" great, grand and fair to look upon, while the Shawnees called it " Kis-ke-pi-la Sepe," Eagle River. They gazed upon the placid waters of the stream bordering the western line of Indiana and ejaculated, " Wa-ba," a summer cloud moving swiftly ; on a river flowing into Lake Erie and said, " Cuy-o-ga," crooked; and so on through their entire vocabulary, each name expressive of a meaning, full and admirably adapted to the object.

.The Indians did not occupy the ancient earthworks, nor did they con- struct such. They were found as they are now-a hunter race, wholly averse to labor. Their abodes were in rock shelters, in caves, or in tem- porary sheds of bark and boughs, or skins, easily moved from place to place, which they called their wigwams. Like most savage races, their habits are unchangeable, and although they partially adopted from the whites some customs in dress, and the erection of cabins, yet the efforts of the white race, during three centuries, have failed to make little, if any, impresssion upon them. In peace the Indian was unsocial, solitary and gloomy, yet at times gave way to pleasure and merriment ; in war, he was fierce, vindictive revengeful and unforgiving. He recognized no law save his own will, and to curb that will, or to thwart his passions or purposes by civil authority was intolerable. The most striking characteristic of the race was a certain sense of personal independence and freedom from restraint. On the war- path they followed a chieftain whom they chose to lead them, or else one who won his position and right to command by being the most cunning in savage strategy, foremost in danger and bravest in battle. The prophet and physician of the tribe was the Medicine Man, whose office was self-con- stituted. He claimed his authority from the Great Spirit, and as no man gave it none could take it away, his influence depending upon himself and the voluntary respect of the nation.

The Indian squaw was a degraded creature, a drudge, a beast of bur- den, who did all the hard, slavish labor, while her lord and master followed the chase, or made war upon his enemies. The social principle was, there- fore, correspondingly low, and marriage consisted simply of two persons agreeing to live together. Among some tribes this simple agreement was never broken, while among others the man could put away his wife at will and take another. The Wyandots, Shawnees and Delawares prided them- selves on their virtue and hospitality, and the marriage relations among them, as well as some other tribes, was seldom violated, any variation from it on the part of the female meriting certain death.

The Indians were all believers in one Great Spirit. They firmly be- lieved in his care of the world and of his children, though different theories prevailed among the tribes regarding their creation. This trust often led them into habits of prodigality. They seldom provided for the future, almost literally fulfilling the adage : " Let each day provide for its own wants." They hunted, fished and idled away their days. Possessed of a boundless inheritance, they allowed the white race to come in and possess their lands and eventually drive them entirely away.

When the white man first came to the territory now embraced within the State of Ohio, he found dwelling here a number of Indian nations, each composed of several tribes, and each was often at war with the others.

JOHN ESPY

JANE ESPY

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HISTORY OF HARDIN COUNTY.

Many theories have been advanced and much has been written as to what nation originally belonged the soil of Ohio, but the more recent writers lean toward the belief that to the Shawnees may be accorded that honor. It is claimed that the powerful and warlike people who once inhabited the southern shores of Lake Erie, and known in history as the Eries, are identical with the nation later known as the Shawnees.

This tribe is recognized in history as the Bedouins of the North Amer- ican Indians. As fomenters of discord and war between themselves and their neighbors, their genius was marked ; as wanderers, they were without rivals among their race. Capt. John Smith made mention of a tribe that lived on the southern shores of Lake Erie, whom he called "Massawom- ekes," while in the Jesuit Relations they are called " Eries, Cats, or Chats." Cadwallader Colden calls them "Satanas," and Nicholas Perot " Chaoua- nous." This diversity of names does not alter the fact that all of these authorities give the same location and date of occupancy of the tribe about which each wrote; also, that this tribe was conquered and dispersed by the Five Nations of New York, known by the French as Iroquois, and the English as Mingoes, about 1655, is generally admitted by all historians. Nicholas Perot lived among the Indians for more than thirty years subse- quent to 1665, and enjoyed their confidence to a marked degree. He says that the " Chaouanous " were driven from Lake Erie by the Five Nations, who chased them and their allies toward Carolina, where they have since remained, establishing themselves at different points. The survivors of this once powerful nation being driven from their homes and their property destroyed, deprived of the lake as a principal source of food supply, were forced to resort to the chase as a means of subsistence.

We find that as early as 1669, La Salle speaks of the " Shawnees " as being familiar with the country contiguous to the Ohio River. Father Mar- quette, in 1670, makes similar statements as to their location, and in 1672, upon reaching the mouth of the Ohio, on his voyage down the Mississippi, says : "This river comes from the country on the east inhabited by the people called Chaouanous, in such numbers that they reckon as many as twenty-three villages in one district, and fifteen in another, lying quite near each other ; they are by no means warlike, and are the people the Iroquois go far to seek in order to wage an unprovoked war upon them." This would seem to indicate that their warlike spirit had been somewhat crushed by their humiliating defeat some years prior to this time. In 1680, Father Membre, in his account of the adventures of La Salle, speaks of this tribe, and the same year, a chief of the "Chaouanous " who had 150 wrrriors, and lived on a large river emptying into the Ohio, sent to La Salle, to form an alliance with him.

On a map accompanying Marquette's journal, published in 1681, the "Chaouanous " are located on the Ohio, near the Mississippi, while on his original manuscript map they are placed a long distance east of that river, in the region of what is now the Ohio. In 1700, Father Gravier speaks of this tribe as living on a river which is evidently the Tennessee. On De l'Isle's map, published during the same year, they are located near the mouth of the Tennessee, and a tribe which he calls " Outonigauha " are placed on the head-waters of the great rivers of South Carolina. From a report of an investigating committee of the Pennsylvania Assembly, made

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in 1755, we find that at least a portion of this band living in South Caro- lina had come to Conestoga, Penn., by leave of the Susquehanna Indians, about 1698, and four years previously a portion of the same tribe had set- tled among the "Minsis," on the Delaware River.

From time to time other straggling parties continued to join their brethren in Pennsylvania, until they finally became very numerous and powerful. In 1700, William Penn visited their chiefs at Conestoga, and the same year the Council of Maryland resolved "that the friendship of the Susquehannock and Shawnee Indians be secured by making a treaty with them, they seeming to be of considerable moment and not to be slighted."

In 1710, John Senex published a map, which indicates villages of the " Chaouanous " on the head-waters of South Carolina, but places the main body along the upper waters of the Tennessee, which probably locates them too high up that river. About 1715, the Cherokees and Chickasaws ex- pelled them from their numerous villages on the Lower Cumberland, for we find on a map published by H. Moll, in 1720, that the lands formerly occu- pied by the " Chaouanous" was then in possession of the " Charakeys," in- dicating the abandonment several years before of the last Shawnee village in the Cumberland and Tennessee Valleys, and their gradual withdrawal to the north side of the Ohio River. According to Ramsey, a straggling band of this tribe moved from Green River, Kentucky, where they were tempo- rarily residing, to the Wabash country, as late as 1764. Some time prior to 1740, a portion of this tribe lived for a period a short distance from the fort at Mobile, Ala., as M. De Bienville, the commandant of the fort in that year, speaks of their abandonment of their village at that point. Another offshoot found a home in Alleghany County, Md., at a place now known as Oldtown, on the Potomac River, while still another lived in the neighborhood of Winchester, Va.

That a portion of this tribe also lived in Florida is evident, as the cele- brated chief of the Shawnees, Catahecassa, or Black Hoof, was born in that country, and often spoke of bathing and fishing in the salt water ere the migration of his band to the Ohio Valley. He was a man of sagacity and experience, of fierce and desperate bravery, and well informed in the tradi- tions of his people. He occupied the highest position in his nation, was present at the defeat of Braddock, in 1755, and was engaged in all of the Ohio wars from that time until the Greenville treaty in 1795. He stood about five feet eight inches in height, and lived to the great age of one hundred and ten years, dying at Wapakoneta, Auglaize Co., Ohio, in 1831.

After the expulsion of the Shawnees from the valleys of the Cumber- land and Tennessee Rivers, their appearance in history is rare until about the middle of the eighteenth century, as they were doubtless scattered through the interior of what is now Ohio and Indiana, living by right of suf- france in the territory which their forefathers owned ere their defeat and dis- persion by the Five Nations. On a map published in London, England, in 1752, by Emanuel Bowen, a " village d' Chaouanou " is located about mid- way between the mouths of the Kanawha and Scioto Rivers, on the north side of the Ohio. In the meantime the Shawnees of Pennsylvania had become the most numerous, and important portion of that nation, but owing to the agressiveness and encroachments of the whites, they were gradually crowded from their lands and homes. About 1750, they began to turn their faces

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toward the setting sun, and in a few years were re-united with their brethren in the valleys of the Muskingum and Scioto Rivers. This tribe from Penn- sylvania is known in history as the Delawares, which title they derived from the river and bay of that name, upon which they lived. In the war of 1755, these tribes became the warm allies of the French, were a terror to the border settlements of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and glutted their revenge at Braddock's defeat, almost annihilating the English in that fatal battle.

Within the period of the struggle for possession of Ohio, the following tribes were the recognized owners of the lands now contained within this State : Shawnees, Wyandots, Delawares, Mingos (of Ohio), Miamis, Sacs, Senecas (of Sandusky), and Munsees, who were an offshoot of the Delawares. The Ottawas, Pottawatomies and Piankeshaws, were around Detroit and along the Maumee River, while the Eel River Indians, Kickapoos and Weas, were in the Wabash country, and the Chippewas on the Upper Lakes. Two confederacies of Indians were opposed to each other in the war for suprem- acy of the Ohio country, viz., the Miami Confederacy, and the Iroquois, or Six Nations. The former were composed of the following tribes : Shawnees, Wyandots, Miamis, Ottawas, Sacs and Pottawatomies, who were also joined at times by the Delawares, Chippewas, Weas, Eel River Indians, Kicka- poos, Munsees, and other tribes of the Wabash. The Iroquois, who were known by the English as Mingoes, comprised the following tribes : Oneidas, Onondagas, Mohawks, Cayugas, Senecas and Tuscaroras, which confederacy was called the Six Nations. In the early history of these latter tribes they were but five in number, but subsequently being joined by the Tuscaroras, of Carolina, their appellation of the Five Nations was dropped, and ever afterward they were known in history as the Six Nations. This last con- federacy laid claim to Ohio along Lake Erie by right of conquest, while the claims of the Miami confederacy were based upon original ownership, which was always recognized by the Americans after they came into posses- sion of the country, the English, alone, recognizing the claims of the Six Nations, as opposed to the French and Americans. Previous to 1792, the Senecas, with some Indians from other tribes of the Six Nations, located on the Sandusky River. and they were recognized by the United States in the ·treaties made with the Ohio tribes subsequent to that date.

From 1755 to 1780, the following were the locations in a general way of the Ohio tribes. The Shawnees inhabited the country along the Scioto River and its tributaries, as far west as Greene and Clark Counties, running north to the Mackacheek towns of Logan County, and east, so as to include Raccoon Creek. This included a portion of the territory now comprised in Hardin County, as well as that of Logan, Champaign, Clark, Greene, and all south and east of these counties to the Ohio River.

The Delawares and Munsees occupied the valley of the Muskingum, and east of that river, and as they bore tribal relations to the Shawnees, these tribes lived in friendship and harmony side by side.

The Mingoes (of Ohio) were settled along the eastern and notheastern portions of the State, including the valleys of the Cuyahoga, the Tuscara- was and Wheeling Creek, but like the other tribes were gradually pushed west into the territory occupied by their sister nations.

The Wyandots lived along the valleys of the Sandusky River, and

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around Sandusky Bay, on the southern shores of Lake Erie ; also the val- leys of the other streams flowing into the lake west of the Cuyahoga, but no further up the Maumee than Henry County. They also inhabited, in com- mon with the Shawnees and Delawares, the country between the Scioto and Muskingum Rivers. They claimed to have come from the north bank of the St. Lawrence River to the Peninsula of Michigan, and thence to the southern shores of Lake Erie. They had many legends as to their origin and ancestry, and were one of the leading nations of the Northwest.

The Miamis occupied the level country drained by the streams that formed the head-waters of the Maumee, Wabash and Great Miami Rivers, from the Loramie portage across to Fort Wayne, and down the Maumee Val- ley. They were noted for their fierce opposition to the Americans, and as the devoted allies of the English throughout the Revolutionary period.

The Ottawas, Pottawatomies and Piankeshaws were along the Maumee and around Detroit, while the Weas, Kickapoos and Eel River Indians were living in the valley of the Wabash.

Attempts to determine the number of persons comprising the Indian tribes in Ohio, and their exact location, have resulted in nothing better than estimates. It is supposed that, at the commencement of the Revolution, there were about six thousand Indians in the present confines of the State, but many of their villages were little more than movable camps. It will not be out of place, perhaps, to give from one of these estimates, the number of warriors that each tribe could send to the front on short notice, during, and subsequent to, the Revolutionary war: Shawnees, 500; Wyan- dots, 300; Delawares and Munsees, 600; Miamis, 300; Ottawas, 600; Pottawattamies, 400; Mingoes (of Ohio), 600; Weas, Kickapoos and Piankeshaws, 800; total, 4,100.

The Six Nations of New York had an estimated war footing as follows : Mohawks, 100; Oneidas and Tuscaroras, 400; Cayugas, 220 ; Onondagas, 230; Senecas, 650; total, 1,600, while the Chippewas, of the Upper Lakes, were equal in strength to the Ohio tribes and Six Nations combined, making, a grand total of 11,400 warriors, ready for battle whenever the tocsin of war was sounded.

Throughout the period of white settlement in Kentucky, and subse- · quently along the north bank of the Ohio, the clash of the contending forces was almost continuous ; in fact, we might say with truth, that the hatchet was seldom buried. The Indians were fighting for their homes, made sacred as the resting-place of their forefathers ; the whites were determined to pos- sess these lands, peaceably if they could, forcibly if they must. Thus the issue stood between the two races, one of whom must go to the wall. There was an Indian village three miles above the mouth of the Kanawha River, and in 1756, Maj. Lewis led an expedition against it, which proved a failure. In 1764, Col. Boquet's expedition to the Muskingum Valley resulted in a tem- porary peace; and the Indian town on the Wakatomika, a few miles above Zanesville, was destroyed by Col. McDonald ten years later. In 1778, Gen. Hand marched from Fort Pitt to attack the Indian town of Cuyahoga, but it ended so ingloriously that it is known in history as the "Squaw Cam- paign."

Two years previous to this last expedition, an event occurred which changed the current of thought, influenced the history of the world, and

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made necessary a new map of the North American Continent. This was the Declaration of Independence, whose clarion notes, that all men were created free and equal, and that governments derived their just powers from the consent of the governed, rang throughout the nations of the earth, caus- ing the spark of freedom to burn with hope in the hearts of oppressed hu- manity. The conduct of England, during the subsequent struggle, was hypocritical and treacherous. Her influence among the Indians was used in a cruel and blood-thirsty manner, offering premiums for American scalps until she was known among the Indians as "the hair-buying nation." At that time there was not in the vast territory, bounded on the north by the Great Lakes, on the east and south by the Ohio, and on the west by the Mis- sissippi, a single American settlement. Beyond the Ohio, looking north and west, was everywhere an Indian country, and nearly all the tribes throughout the whole region were openly at war with the United States. So the settlements that had taken root west of the Alleghanies-reaching from Pittsburgh down the east side of the Ohio to some distance below Wheeling- and the few that were dotting the wilds of Kentucky, were all suffering the horrors of the Western border war of the Revolution-a war characterized by rapacity and bloodthirstiness.

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The history of Hardin county, Ohio, Part 24

Author: Warner Beers & co., Chicago, pub Publication date: 1883 Publisher: Chicago : Warner Beers & Co. Number of Pages: 1076

Author: Warner Beers & co., Chicago, pub
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago : Warner Beers & Co.
Number of Pages: 1076