Ohio History Journal

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Unveiling of the Cresap Tablet

Unveiling of the Cresap Tablet.              141

 

vation of their historic sites, mounds, circles, squares, and the tokens

of a bygone civilization found therein.

To you, and to your keeping, we present this Tablet, and are happy

in so doing.

We realize that you, and the great State of Ohio, are leading in the

procession of progress. To you, the custodian of the glories of the past,

peoples, records, and their trophies of valor, we consign this Tablet, and

leave it under your protection, and that of "Old Glory." Once again in

behalf of the Cresap Clan, we thank you.

 

With like purpose words of appreciation in behalf of the

descendants of Captain Michael Cresap were tendered to the

State Society by Mr. Charles H. Lewis, who is a descendant of

the one in whose honor the tablet was erected. His closing words

were:

"In this beautiful setting, now filled with peace and plenty,

unafraid we breathe the spirit of pioneer heroism. Here met civil-

ization and savage. Short the story-

Buried, -lost forever is the tomahawk;

Broken, and useless is the flintlock;

The voice of Logan is silenced."

 

In connection with this occasion Mr. Frank Tallmadge had

offered a money prize to the school pupils of Circleville for

the most meritorious essay on the historical plains of Pickaway

Township. The prize was awarded to Miss Arista Arledge.

The essay is here given in full:

 

PICKAWAY COUNTY.

Pickaway County is one of our most historical counties in Ohio.

It was formed January 12, 1810. The name is a misspelling of Piqua,

the name of a tribe of Shawnee Indians. We learn that most of our

formal Indian settlements were near the Scioto river in the Pickaway

Plains.

The remarkable Pickaway Plains may be designated as the section

lying between the Scioto on the west, Salt Creek on the east, and extend-

ing north and south between lines which would run respectively east

and west through Circleville and Chillicothe. This rich bottom land, the

most fertile in Ohio, was the most favorite location of the prehistoric

Mound Builders, as well as the most historic field of the Ohio Indians.

Of the earliest inhabitants of the Ohio Valley, the Indians had

neither knowledge nor tradition. They belong to the prehistoric ages

and, -"These ages have no memory, but they left a record."