30 Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.
Battle of Point Pleasant Treaty twenty years before was its be- ginning. Had the pioneers been successful in that conflict the Americans would not have rebelled. It would have shown the impossibility of success. But Colonel Lewis was successful, and Anthony Wayne was successful. The Revolution culminated in independence, but not for Ohio until Wayne fought the last battle that gave our people instead of England the land upon which we now stand. England could not be induced to accept the provisions of the Treaty of Paris as it related to the Northwest, whose conquest was made by George Rogers Clark, and she persisted in her claim to the land northwest of the river Ohio, and she persisted in sending her savage allies into the settlements hoping to thus make American settlement impossible. The incursion that massacred the settlers at the place known in history as Big Bottom, called attention to England's intention as God directed, and Harmar, St. Clair and Wayne, under the same powerful Director, made it possible for us to dedicate this monument. ADDRESS OF PROF. M. R. ANDREWS. The young men who came to this spot a hundred and fifteen years ago formed the extreme outpost of the New England |
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settlement that had been made at Marietta two years earlier. It is almost impossible for us now to realize the difficulties and dangers which beset those struggling colo- nies. I doubt if there were more than two thousand actual settlers on this side of the Ohio, from the Muskingum to the Miami, when the little band of pioneers were mas- sacred at this place. On the edge of this great territory small parties of bold men watched and toiled, waiting for the time when British agents would cease to send the |
savage on his errands of murder. The first seven years of the settlement along this border was, as has already been said, a continuation of the Revolutionary War, which began at |