USA > Pennsylvania > Erie County > A twentieth century history of Erie County, Pennsylvania : a narrative account of its historic progress, its people, and its principal interests, Volume I > Part 2
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HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY
toward the west. The approach to the lake by the streams from the interior is marked generally by sharp steep ravines or by narrow tortuous valleys or glens many of them wooded and charming in high degree. In places, especially where the streams have pierced the high ridges, the can- yons or breakers that have been formed are grand and impressive. The can- yon of Wintergreen gulf, is perhaps the most notable of these, while the high bluff known as the Devil's Backbone, with its almost perpen- dicular sides brought together at the top to a narrow trail or footpath, thrust into the ox-bow bend of Elk creek, in Girard township, reaches the degree of sublimity. The brow of the bluffs of many of the streams is not infrequently rendered impressively picturesque by more or less extensive groves of hemlock spruce, overlooked by some happy chance when the lumberer was abroad with his all-devouring saw, and it is par- donable to breathe a wish that these relics of the great forest that once was, may long remain.
The county's streams are trivial as a rule, particularly so at the present time. During the summer season it frequently happens that once important and constant streams are as dry and dusty as the country roads, being sometimes for weeks without even scattered pools of water to be found in their beds. Those that empty into the lake, during their best estate, which is now more than three-quarters of a century ago, were wild and turbulent ; then invaluable as a means of furnishing power for the industries of the time. The principal streams that empty into the lake are Crooked creek, Elk creek, Trout run, Walnut creek and Mill creek, and, eastward, Four-mile, Six-mile, Twelve-mile, and Sixteen-mile creeks. Conneaut creek passes through a corner of Erie county only. The streams of the Alleghany water-shed are different, swift-flowing to be sure, near their source, but, nearing the county's southern line, tamed into a condition that rendered them serviceable for the commerce of the early time and important factors in aiding the development of the county in its youth. The streams of the southern watershed are of but three systems. The main, being French creek with its numerous tribu- taries, and the others Conneauttee creek and its tributary, Little Con- neauttee, which rise in Mckean and Franklin townships and drain Wash- ington township; and Hare creek and its tributaries which have their source in the east half of Wayne and after a course of a few miles flow into the Brokenstraw in Warren county. The townships drained by French creek and its tributaries are, Greenfield, Amity, Concord, part of Wayne, Union, Le Bœuf, Waterford, Venango, and the southern halves of Summit and Greene.
The lakes of the county are three in number and all are small-mere ponds. The most important is Lake Le Bœuf in Waterford township, known to the white man from the beginning of the French occupancy, as the route from the fort down French creek, led through this lake at the very start, for at only a few rods distance down from the fort the lake
HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY
receives Le Bœuf creek, which leaves it again but a short distance to the south. This lake is about two-thirds of a mile long by a half mile in width and contains a small island in the center, sometimes inundated during a high stage of water. Conneauttee Lake in Washington town- ship is about a mile long and half a mile wide, but this is its measurement since reinforced by means of a dam in the outlet built to obtain power for a flour mill. Naturally it was probably three quarters of a mile in length. Lake Pleasant, the smallest of the three is about a half-mile long by one-third wide. All three of the Erie county lakes are the product of glacial action, the result of the scooping-out process by the movement of the ice, which formed bowl-shaped excavations where the water collects as it is drained from the surrounding hills. Doubtless Lake Le Bœuf was at one time much larger in area; before the upper part had become filled with the peaty soil formed by the decaying vegetation reinforced by the alluvion carried by every spring freshet and deposited a little at a time upon the edge but constantly encroaching. The lakes are most beautifully situated, with surrounding hills of green in summer time, but unfortunately in two instances less attractive now than before the surrounding woods were removed.
The most beautiful waterfall of the county is in the vicinity of Howard's Stone Quarry in the northern part of Franklin township. The water is from Falls creek (the nanie derived from the cascade) and Falls creek is a tributary of Elk creek. This miniature Niagara is of a height of about fifty feet, but of no great width. The stream, which above the fall traverses a rather level tract, flows in a comparatively shallow bed which is superposed upon a rather thick stratum of the fine hard sandstone that was the product of that quarry during its business activity, and it is over the edge of a break in this stratum that the water is carried into a deep and narrow gorge with steep sides, the left covered with a growth of trees, the right almost perpendicular. Numerous cascades are found along the shore where the streams empty into the lake. The larger streams long ago wore away their rocky bottoms so that for many years a considerable length of slack water distinguished their estuaries. This condition is especially marked at the mouth of Elk creek. The slackwater at the mouth of Walnut creek is short, backed by a series of steep rapids that flow over the bottom of shale, composed of alternate hard and soft laminæ. Until within recent years-a score or so,-the fall at the mouth of Cascade creek was one of the most charming in nature, though small, and near the mouth of Six-mile creek there is still to be seen a little cascade which pours into a beautiful pool below, a delightful bit of natural scenery.
The soil of Erie county is varied. Bordering upon the lake, at its edge lying from fifty to sixty feet above the level of the water, there is a fertile plain, comparatively flat, varying from two to three miles in width, the soil of which is generally a sandy loam, largely alluvial in its
HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY
character, though midway there extended from near Moorheadville to the Ohio line a strip of land in places a half-mile wide of a swampy character. The soil in this was of no great thickness, being underlaid, at the depth of a foot or two in some instances, by a stratum of hard rocky shale or sometimes "hard-pan" clay. When cleared the soil of this swamp, became peat, in dry seasons took fire in places and, smouldering sometimes for weeks, burned out the supports of the trees in the woods upon which it encroached, with the result that the trees fell, a complicated mass of wreckage. Much of this swampy land in time became valuable to the cultivator. Back upon the hills the soil is generally clayey, stiff and hard to work, and at one time the land was regarded as of no particular value to the farmer, and fit only for grazing. "The Beechwoods" section was esteemed a poor part to have one's lot cast in. But the progress made in agriculture changed old-time notions, and now there is no part of the hill country that is not regarded as valuable. The wider valleys of the southern part, especially the valley of French creek has an alluvial soil of great depth and fertility. The most noteworthy swamp of the county is the "Tamarack Swamp." named from the larch which there has its habitat. It extends from near Water- ford, west into Mckean township, and is the source of tributaries of both Elk and Le Bœuf creeks.
Geologically Erie county is poor indeed. There is no coal, no iron, no oil, no metal of any kind, no limestone and no building stone worth working. Its foundation is what is known as the Portage sandstone and shale in irregularly alternate strata. But little of value has been obtained from the rocks of Erie county. At Le Bœuf, where the sandstone is rather coarser in texture, some building stone has been taken out, and at one time considerable was done at the Howard quarry in the north- ern part of Franklin township. Neither of these locations now yields any product to be depended upon. The Erie rocks are distant from the coal measures, as from the petroleum region, and though in the past drilling yielded small quantities of oil, and even to this day gas can be obtained by boring, neither is constant nor long in term of production and there- fore. not being dependable, there has not developed here a local oil or gas business. Scientifically there is a measure of interest in the rocks hereabout because of the occurrence of a formation called cone-in-cone, useful only to the geological collector for his cabinet. There are also a few fossils, chiefly of the lowest orders of plants, found in the slaty shales or the heavier strata of blue sandstone. At one time bog iron in some quantity was quarried from the swamp of the Lake Shore plain, but it soon became exhausted. Coming within the considerations of geological science there must not be overlooked the numerous erratic bowlders to be found everywhere over the county, sometimes lying upon the surface or embedded in the soil, and often plentiful in the streams, where the action of the water has laid them bare, evidence that this
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HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY
section was included in the region affected by the influence of the glacial epoch (the ice age), and numerous pebbles or small bowlders have been found in this vicinity that bore scratches, the effect of the grinding process as they were carried over harder substances under the weight of the massive glaciers during their steady but deliberate progress. In- deed the bed of Lake Erie itself, the shallowest of all the Great Lakes, is by geologists pronounced the result of glacial action that scooped out the immense basin.
Now this story, brought up to date, is the story of the Erie county part of that great American forest. It is difficult for us today to con- ceive what that forest primeval was-perhaps even to fully understand that it was ; that where the city stands was once an echoing woods from which, upon its floor, the sky could scarce be seen; that it was a tract of land cut by ravines well nigh impassable, with woods, woods every- where ; that then there was no view of green hills to the south, and smiling fields of grain billowing in the breeze; no stretches of growing corn like an army of plumed warriors ; no long avenues bordered with vines upon which the purple clusters are ripening in the autumn sun; no gables looking out from the sheltering orchards that surround ; no red school-house upon the hill-only the narrowly circumscribed view within the aisles of the forest. No sounds of industry ; no rumble of wheels ; no clang of church-going bell; no cheerful call of friendly greeting- only the sough of the wind among the hemlock boughs, or the rustle of the leaves ; the plash of the waves upon the beach; the song of the wood- thrush or the warbler or the vireo among the branches; the shrill cry of the flicker, or the echo of the woodpecker's rat-tat upon the hollow trunk. This was what prevailed when the white man was yet to come. We know what Erie and Erie county now is-but it is profitable also to consider what it was from which that we now have is come.
CHAPTER II .- THE EARLIEST INHABITANTS.
THE MOUND BUILDERS AND WHAT THEY LEFT AS RECORDS .- THE ERIE TRIBE AND THEIR EXTINCTION BY THE INDIANS OF THE SIX NATIONS.
Who were the original inhabitants of Erie county, and what manner of men were they who first called this part of North America their home? The answer is found in the remains they have left behind, relics of the works they constructed, that after an existence of several centuries are still to be seen and traced in outline. They were not the work of any tribe or nation of Indians with which the European became acquainted. Modern ethnologists pronounce them to have been the same, to all intents and purposes, as the Indians of the seventeenth cen- tury with which the white man became acquainted only that they were the ancestors of the later race. But there have been others who regarded them as entirely different, bestowing upon them the title of the Mound Builders. The most recent investigators are of the opinion, speaking generally of the Mound Builders, that there was no definite period of their occupancy of this part of the continent, or that covered their activity, pointing out that in some of the mounds there have been found imple- ments and weapons that had been procured from the white men; while, on the other hand there are those of a different way of thinking who claim that these relics had been placed in the mounds, already long constructed, by Indians of later years who selected these tumuli as places of burial for their dead, citing instances where iron tomahawks had been dug up from a mound upon which trees centuries old were growing. There is therefore still the question remaining to be answered : Who were the Mound Builders ?
That there was a race of mound builders, and that they have left numerous evidences of their activity is, however, undisputed, and that their work is confined within very well defined boundaries is acknowledged. That they were anterior to the Indians the Europeans found here is also generally conceded, but by what appellation they went among themselves; what their origin was; how long they endured ; what brought about their extinction ; nothing is known-only that they were and are not.
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HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY
They had no written history, nor is there anything pertaining to them in hieroglyphics to be found anywhere ; only remains of their works, and these, widely distributed, are counted by the thousands. The Mound Builders were probably numerous at one period, for many of their re- mains would indicate this, such relics as extensive defenses of the char- acter of forts; mounds that were the places of sepulture, perhaps of chief men; works that may have been temples of worship; others of singular form, the purpose of which conjecture may busily occupy itself with; and yet others of such diversity of forms and designs in each group that nothing in the circumstances or conditions of the people of the present period can suggest an explanation for.
The territory of the Mound Builders was a vast one, including the whole interior of the continent of North America within the boundaries of the Alleghanies, the Rocky Mountains, the Great Lakes, and the Gulf of Mexico. They were always, it would appear, dwellers by the streams, which undoubtedly were their highways, and these streams the popula- tion appear to have followed practically to their sources.
As to their system of government or mode of life there can be nothing known, save that scant degree of knowledge that comes from inference; based upon the relics that have been found. They were of the stone age (as, of course, were the Indians of the Discovery), but upon the borderland, for it can be determined they were, for their position in the scale of development, skilled miners of copper and galena; they were artisans in a rude way; their stone implements they fashioned to their use; with these they wrought in wood, forming various utensils ; they were potters; they undoubtedly constructed boats or some other form of embarkation; they had a system of barter or exchange, and therefore a commerce. All of this comes from deduction based upon the relics that have been found.
It will serve, here, to introduce briefly an account of some of the most notable works of the Mound Builders, so-called. Fort Ancient, on the Little Miami river, in Warren county, Ohio, thirty-three miles northeast of Cincinnati, is situated upon a plateau or terrace, all of which it occupies, and the total area of the fort or fortification is about one hundred acres. Yet, following the brow of the hill, upon which it stands, with all the bends and irregularities, the wall that encloses this fortification is five miles in length. The embankment that forms the enclosure is composed of stiff clay, and, ranging from five to twenty feet in height-the average between nine and ten feet-the wall contains 628,800 cubic yards of excavation. The fortifications had over seventy gateways or openings, and it is the supposition that these spaces were at the time the fort was in use filled with timber gates or stockades. The presumption is that what is now called an embankment was orginally a wall of sundried brick, averaging twelve feet or so in height, but long ago modified by the action of natural forces-rain, frost, wind and the
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HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY
slow process of change by the operation of vegetation-into the rounded embankment, grass-grown or covered with brambles, that was its condi- tion when the white man first found it. The enclosure and the hill were covered with the primitive forest-that is to say, there was no means by which the timber covering of Fort Ancient could be distin- guished as differing from the woods that composed the adjacent forest. This was undoubtedly a work of defense, and military men who have surveyed and studied it pronounce it remarkably strong, and presenting evidence of the military genius of that strange and unknown people.
Other notable works of the same epoch are the fortification at Bourneville, near Chillicothe, Ohio, 140 acres in area, surrounded by a stone wall two and a half miles in length; the famous mounds scattered through Ohio and down the valley of the Ohio river, some of them eighty feet in height; the sacred enclosures or temples (so-called), a notable one on the Licking river, near Newark, Ohio; the symbolical mounds, such as the Great Serpent, in Adams county, Ohio, and the Big Elephant mound in Grant county. Wisconsin ; and the curious and inter- esting plantation or garden.
Now, taking into account the character of these works, many of them prodigious in their proportions ; and their vast number, for there are upwards of ten thousand in the state of Ohio alone, the inference is logical that there must have been a large population. There is also the other natural inference, namely, that they were an agricultural people, for otherwise they could not have existed in such numbers. The result of a careful computation of the possibilities of support without the aid of agriculture is that it would require 50,000 acres for the support of one hunter who subsisted upon nothing but the chase. This would give the whole state of Ohio a population of only 509 able-bodied men sup- ported from the flesh of wild beasts. The evidences from the works that remain as relics of the mound building Indians are that an infinitely greater number at one time occupied that land. The construction of such a work as Fort Ancient would alone employ a force many times greater than the entire population of the state, had they been dependent upon hunting for their subsistence. On the other hand, the product of a single acre of maize may support 200 men for a year. Was it not, then, the cultivation of this remarkable grain that had made possible the construction of these numerous works, themselves proof of the existence of a numerous population ?
And here comes in a most interesting and embarrassing fact: the existence of maize or Indian corn. It is a vegetable problem, a puzzle alike to the botanist and the cultivator. It is a puzzle, because undoubt- edly having had a native or wild origin, it is known now only as the highly developed grain, differing in no essential particular from what it was when the European first became acquainted with this western con-
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HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY
tinent. The original of the Indian corn is not known, though the botanists have for many years been diligently searching for it; that it has been highly developed from its original form is the general belief, and if this is true how many centuries-how many thousand years-have been necessary to bring it to its present perfection. If it is the result of careful and intelligent cultivation, that careful and intelligent cultivation was bestowed upon it by the aborigines of America, for zea mays, as the botanist has named the Indian corn, is an American plant, and its existence here may be proof of the extreme antiquity of the human race in Amer- ica; perhaps to establish the fact that the Mound Builders were an earlier and distinct race as compared with the Indians of the Discovery, or perhaps that even the builders of the mounds were modern as com- pared with the cultivators who developed the maize.
But, to return to these builders of the mounds and defenses, occupy- ing the vast territory they did, and existing in such numbers as they seem to have, how did it come about that they disappeared from the face of the earth, leaving none behind to tell their story, nor even a tradition to come down to later days? There is no answer and there is no relic to invite inference or excuse conjecture. Were they driven out by an incursion of nomadic hostiles? Was their land overrun as were European countries by the Goths and the Huns? Or was there no change beyond the gradual drifting into new modes and customs ?
And when did the change take place? It was before the advent of the red man, whom the white man, come from Europe, mistakenly called Indians. It was long before their time, because there is no tradition that the white man has ever had from the red that tells of any race but themselves. It was so long ago that forests have grown up and decayed upon the works this mysterious people left behind them. Cen- turies are undoubtedly repeated between their exit from the stage of human affairs and the entrance of the people who came to be known as the American Indian-the people we have known for now upwards of 300 years.
This race of Mound Builders-if it was indeed an earlier and a different race-has left in Erie county a part of the record of its exist- ence, for what is now Erie county appears to have been the northeastern corner of the territory occupied by these interesting and remarkable aborigines. If they were a race distinct and preceding the American Indians, then they were perhaps the earliest inhabitants of Erie, and should be given this place at the beginning of a history of the county. If they are not a distinct and separate race but only the progenitors of the modern Indian they were still the earliest inhabitants. So that in any event they are entitled to place. Their relics are comparatively numerous. Among the best known is that found in Wayne township a short distance from Corry, which consists of a circular embankment of earth surrounded by a trench from which the earth had been dug,
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HISTORY OF ERIE COUNTY
the whole enclosing about three acres. This embankment. still visible, is reduced to between one and two feet in height, but when discovered by the early settlers was higher and covered with forest trees. A little west there was another and smaller circle of much the same character, which being plowed over was at length obliterated. Smaller than the Wayne mound or circle is that of the John Pomeroy place on Conneaut creek, near Albion. It encloses an area of a little less than an acre, and the embankment of this was three feet high and six feet broad at the base. Large trees grew upon this and an oak, when cut down indi- cated an age of 500 years. On the same farm there is an interesting mound a hundred feet long and fifty feet wide by twenty-five feet high. There are stories of finding the skeletons of giants in one of the Conneaut township mounds, but the measurements given are incredible. Remains of works of a similar character exist in Girard. Springfield, Harbor- creek, Fairview, Le Bœuf and Venango.
In the neighborhood of Wintergreen Gulf, on both sides of Four- mile creek, there are a number of relics of ancient aboriginal defenses, one on the west side being especially well preserved and notable because of the belief on the part of the early settlers that it had been a French fort. There are traditions of cannon balls having been found embedded in trees that grew hard by and stories made to fit these traditions of an engagement between the British, who occupied a similar fort on the east side of the ravine, and the French on the west. There is a tale that has been told of two strangers who came in the early day, speaking a strange language and carrying unfamiliar instruments for surveying. who haunted the old fort. at length dug in a spot determined by careful measurements, finding a chest of treasure which was carried away. They were French men, according to the story, and obtained their data for locating the valuables from an old manuscript which gave an account of the fight with the British, the concealment of the treasure and the evac- uation of the fort.
But it is all a romance. The fort, if it be a fort, indeed, was there long before the French came this way, and for years,-maybe centuries -was in as ruinous condition, almost as it is today.
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