Ohio History Journal

THE SANDUSKY FORTS.

 

 

 

BY CHARLES A. HANNA, NEW YORK.

Several addresses on "Old Fort Sandusky," and the in-

scriptions on the monument erected last spring near the site of

one Sandusky Fort, were printed in the October, 1912, number

of the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Society's Quarterly.

Some of these addresses and inscriptions are so full of in-

accuracies, misleading statements, and incorrect inferences, that

they should be corrected.

The bronze tablet on the west face of the Harrison-Perry

Embarkation Monument-erected under the direction of the Ohio

Historical Society-reads as follows:

"FORT SANDOSKI. 1745-1748. 1750-1751. 1761-1763. The First

Fort built by White Men in Ohio, erected by British Traders from Penna.

and Va., in 1745, under the protection of the Huron Chief, Nicolas; and

destroyed by him after his defeat by the French in 1748, prior to his

removal to the Illinois Country.

"Rebuilt by British in 1750, and 'usurped by the French in 1751.'

Again rebuilt by British soldiers in 1761, after the surrender of Quebec

and French Sovereignty in America." etc.

The tablet on the south face of the monument recites that

DeLery landed near the spot on which the monument stands,

"and discovered the ruins of the Old Fort, Fort Sandoski, 1745-

1748, 1750-1751."

The first and only Fort erected near this spot, or on the

north shore of Sandusky Bay, was built by the French in the

winter of 1750-1751, as stated in John Pattin's Narrative (Wis.

Hist. Colls., xviii, 145), and in DeLery's Journal of 1754

(Wilderness Trail, ii., 168). The Britsh never built a fort on

the north side of Sandusky Bay. No fort on either side of the

bay was built by the British in 1750.

The first British Sandusky Fort was built on the south side

of the Bay by a Company of British soldiers and artisans under

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The Sandusky Forts.               323

 

command of Lieut. Elias Meyer, who wrote to General Bouquet

September 1, 1761, that he had arrived at Lake Sandusky, and

had "fixed on 3 spot for a Block-house, three miles from a village

called by the Indians, Canoutout, where all the traders unload

[their pack-horses] and load [into boats] their goods for De-

troit. It is almost in the middle of Little Lake Sandusky."

(Calendar of Bouquet MSS., Canadian Archives, 1889, p. 190.)

Lieutenant Meyer wrote Bouquet again from "Fort Sandusky,"

November 29, 1761: "The Block-house, palisades, etc., are now

finished."

The late William Darlington, in his Christopher Gist's Jour-

nals, states that this English Fort Sandusky stood at the mouth

of Mill's Creek, and cites as his authority a letter in the Canadian

Archives from Bouquet to Amherst, dated December 2, 1761.

A "Fort Destroyed" near the "Little Portage," on the north

side of the bay, is marked on a small sketch of the bay, made by

an officer in 1761, and now with the Bouquet MSS. in the library

of the British Museum. This manuscript map also shows the

location of the Indian villages and the British block-house on the

south side of the bay.

The correct location of this fort is also shown on Thomas

Hutchins's map of 1764, published with his account of the

Bouquet Expedition. Lieutenant Hutchins visited this fort in

the summer of 1762, and knew whereof he wrote.

In all probability there never was a fort built by English

Traders, either on the north side or south side of Sandusky Bay.

The assumption that there was such a fort is based on the er-

roneous account of the conspiracy of Chief Nicolas, published

by Mr. Goodman in his Journal of Captain William Trent. The

principal incident in the rebellion of Nicolas was the murder of

five French traders in the spring of 1747, during their return

from the White River to Detroit. Mr. Goodman, following the

editor of the New York Colonial Documents, erroneously identi-

fied this White River with the White River of Southern Indiana,

a tributary of the Wabash; while it was really the Cuyahoga,

and close to Mr. Goodman's own home. Nicolas and his band

did not retire to the Illionis country, as Mr. Goodman thought,

and as stated on the inscription quoted above; but they fled to

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324       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

the Muskingum, and with the co-operation of George Croghan,

built a town which they called Conchake, near the north bank of

the Tuscarawas, just above its mouth. A town built some years

later by the Delaware Indians, a mile or two lower down, on the

Muskingum, was given a Delaware form of the name of the

Wyandot, or Huron, town which it succeeded, and has ever since

been known as Coshocton.

These facts are mostly set forth in DeLery's Journal of 1755.

Until some authority can be produced for Mr. Goodman's

assumption that English traders built a fort for Nicolas at San-

dusky in 1745, that statement cannot be accepted as a fact; and

it is a pity that the fiction should be perpetuated in bronze.

Nicolas's band of Hurons (now called Wyandots) seem to

have settled on the south side of Sandusky Bay in the summer

of 1740. "The 16th of September, 1740, Monsieur de Noyan

writes that the third chief of the Hurons, named Angouirot

[Orontony, or Nicolas, was the great chief of that nation], had

just arrived from Sandoske, where he had left nearly all his

brothers, cutting down trees to extend their fields."  (French

manuscript from the Canadian Archives, printed in Wis. Hist.

Colls., xvii., 286).

De Lery's Journal and maps show that the fort of Nicolas

was built on the south side of Sandusky Bay, and the Journal

states that it was built by the Hurons themselves.

The Pennsylvania traders did build a fort for the Miami

Indians at Pickawillany, in Ohio, before 1750; and this fort may

have been the "first fort built by white men in Ohio." It is cer-

tain none of the Sandusky forts were.

It is not improbable that the site of Nicolas's village and

fort was identical with that of Junundat (the Ayonontout of the

French). DeLery gives its name as Aniauton, or Anioton. This

was also the name of another Huron chief, an ally of Nicolas,

and the village probably took its name from this chief. Hutchins

locates Junundat three and one-half miles to the south of the

English Fort Sandusky in 1762, and four and one-half miles to

the north of the Cold Spring at Castalia. DeLery does not

locate the village with exactness; but from the fact that Anioton

was the first Indian village south of the bay on the Conchake

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The Sandusky Forts.                325 Trail in 1755, the location agrees with that of Junundat, as given by Hutchins in 1762. From the record as given above, it would seem that the "Fort Sandoski" tablet on the Harrison-Perry Portage monu- ment contains at least seven untrue statements and suggestions, all of which are set forth as historical facts, and all of which are false. This is indeed a new way of "making history." As a member of the Ohio State Archaeological and His- torical Society, the undersigned wishes to register his vigorous protest against that society standing sponsor for the Fort San- doski tablet.

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