Ohio History Journal

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30 Ohio Arch

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

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