Ohio History Journal

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  395

 

 

 

 

 

OHIO IN EARLY HISTORY AND DURING THE

REVOLUTION.

 

BY E. 0. RANDALL, PH. B., L. L. M.

Secretary Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Society; President

Ohio Society Sons of the American Revolution.

No territory, in the new world at least, perhaps not in the

old, presents so much of interest, at once to the archaeologist

and the historian, as the inland portion of America now and for

a century, designated as the State of Ohio. Ohio, or the land

thus labeled, has been the arena for the activities more or less

pronounced of two prehistoric races. The good book records

that the earth was created, lifted from chaos into form,

when the morning and evening was the third day. We there-

fore know that Ohio was born on Wednesday, but we have no

calendar at hand to tell us the month or even the year. Scientists

guardedly remark that the mundane origin which includes

Ohio was simply "eons ago." At subsequent periods there were

various "doings" of a geologic character and then this fair state,

with other sections of the Northwest, was submerged under

fields of congealed water and the original "ice man" had a mo-

nopoly of surface affairs. Then nature repented, grew sympathetic

and warmed up and there was a great "melt" and the hills peeped

forth, the valleys grew green and the streams rippled and ran

their courses through the glad earth. At this point science,

ever nimble and wily, takes a sort of hop, skip and jump, and

suggests the ice man may have been succeeded by the "midden"

man or shell people; but he is merely a "perhaps" in this locality;

if he did ply his game, he left no chips and his entry and exit

are undefined though his pet animal, the mastodon, is occa-

sionally discovered in skeleton form, beneath the Buckeye soil.

Doubtless the next tenant, and possibly the first one we really

feel sure about, was the mysterious mound builder. Ohio must

have been his favorite field, for it is dotted over, as is no other

• 1
 

396       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

state in the union, with thousands of his relics, many massive

and magnificent, well preserved monuments of his existence and

primitive life. He left no written record, but he made his in-

delible mark in graves, village sites and earthen structures of reli-

gious or military significance, "silent witnesses of a busy but

unfathomable antiquity" that unmistakably betoken an ambitious

and strenuous life.

As the mound builder seemed to recede from the haunts

of life, the great savage, known as the Indian, came into view.

Somewhere between these two peoples, the moundmen and the

redmen, is to be located the line between the prehistoric and the

historic. To this wild and picturesque Indian Ohio was a chosen

hunting and camping ground; here were his great rallying cen-

ters; many of his numerous nations and tribes wandered over

its extent, or battled with each other for tribal supremacy and in

concert or singly combated their common enemy the pale face.

In Ohio the great Indian heroes, Pontiac, Cornstalk, Little Tur-

tle, Logan and last and greatest of all, Tecumseh, contended

for the rights and preservation of their people. It was here, as

nowhere else, between the majestic Ohio and the great lakes that

the terminal, tragic contest took place between the retreating

savagery of the forest and the advancing, invincible civilization

of Europe. Again the two great branches of this European

transplantation, the Latin or French, and the Anglo-Saxon or

British, transferred their interminable antagonism of the early

and middle centuries for superiority on the old continent to the

newly discovered world and the soil of Ohio was the scene of the

last bitter encounter. Then came the reckoning between the

divisions of the Anglo-Saxon, the English and the American.

Ohio has thus been the greatest battle ground of American his-

tory and one of the chief battle grounds of all history. Her

inhabitants have listened in dire dismay to the war whoop of

many different savage nations and have been subservient to the

banners of France, England and the United States. There is

no historical narrative comparable to it.

• 2
 

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  397

 

 

UNDER THE FRENCH FLAG.

The adventurous and chivalrous French first claimed Ohio.

Under the patronage of the elegant and ambitious Francis I,

who, as the politicians phrase it, "viewed with alarm" the dis-

coveries the English and Spanish were making in the new world,

Jacques Cartier (in 1534) navigated the unknown waters of the

broad St. Lawrence. Others followed till Champlain (1603)

"the father of New France," was the first white man to look

across the waters of Lake Huron. He planted the colony of

Quebec (1608), and in 1620 was appointed by the King (Louis

XIII) Governor of Canada. Then followed rapidly the western

water discoveries (1618-42), and the navigations of Lakes On-

tario, Erie, Huron, Michigan and Superior by Champlain's asso-

ciates or successors, as Brule, Nicolet and Joliet. These were

the early days of the Jesuit Missions, and the straggling and

struggling settlements of New France along the great water

ways from the St. Lawrence to the Straits of Mackinac and be-

yond. The Indian contested the encroachment of the French,

but the intrepid fur trader and the zealous missionary were not

to be dislodged, though the war of the savage with the civilized

races was to continue for a century and a half. The enterprising

French merchant like Radisson and the dauntless missionary

like Marquette, moved on into the trackless West while the

English colonies, content with religious freedom were growing

apace along the Atlantic coast. New France occupied the St.

Lawrence and the Great Lakes territory, but farther west the

pious priest and the pushing peltry trader ventured; across the

lakes and by portage to the head waters of the Wisconsin river,

down which they floated "till caught and whirled along by the

onrushing Mississippi," then accomplishing a discovery that in

the words of Bancroft "changed the destinies of the Nations."

Parkman graphically recounts how La Salle in the Griffin

sailed (1679-81) the waters of Lake Erie bearing "the royal

commission to establish a line of forts along the great lakes

whereby to hold for France all that rich far country," and pass-

ing on through Lakes Huron and Michigan, descended the Illi-

nois river and the Mississippi to the mouth, naming the great

• 3
 

398       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

valley through which he passed Louisiana, and claiming it for

his sovereign, Le Grand Monarque, Louis XIV. East of the

Mississippi all the land included in the triangle of territory from

Quebec west along the lakes to the head waters of the Mississippi,

thence along its course south to the Mexican Gulf, was claimed

by France, all except a strip of land lying along the Atlantic

coast and extending scarcely a hundred miles back into the wil-

derness, in which the claim of England for its colonies was

allowed to remain undisputed.

Thus the territory we call Ohio by right of discovery and

occupation was the property of that nation whose banner bore

the Lillies of the Bourbons. Meanwhile Spain had made land-

ings and settlements about the Gulf of Mexico and along the

Florida coast. Spain set up feeble and tentatious claims to

the territory between the Mississippi and the Atlantic, extend-

ing indefinitely north into the province of France. But no at-

tempt was made to make good this claim.

 

 

FRENCH AND ENGLISH COMPETITION.

All this while the Anglo-Saxon, the inveterate foe of the

Latin, was slowly but surely getting a firm foothold on the rug-

ged coast of the Atlantic and preparing to cross swords with

his old time enemy for the conquest of the West. The Alle-

ghany Mountains were not to be his western limitation. The

Anglo-Saxon has always been for ample expansion. The An-

glo-Saxon has always been a land grabber and a land holder, and

in extenuation be it said, a land improver. In the year 1498,

more than a third of a century before Jacques Cartier's little

vessel plowed her way up the broad St. Lawrence, and before

Columbus had made his last voyage, the Cabots (John and Se-

bastian, under Henry VII) touched the continent of North

America and sailed along the shores from Labrador to the Ches-

apeake. In 1607 the Jamestown (Va.) Colony became the first

permanent English settlement in America. This was just one

year before (1608) the foundation of Quebec as the capital of

the New French Empire. It was a neck and neck race between

the Gaul and the Teuton for American stakes. Under its char-

• 4
 

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  399

 

ter of 1609 the Jamestown company "became possessed in abso-

lute property of lands extending along the sea coast two hun-

dred miles north and the same distance south from Old Point

Comfort, and into the land throughout from sea to sea." In

1620 came the memorable Pilgrims under the charter of the

Plymouth Company, by which had been conveyed "all the lands

between the fortieth and forty-eighth degrees of North Lati-

tude." It is familiar history how other colonial settlements fol-

lowed under various forms of charter and patent, how many of

these charters called for land from the Atlantic to the unknown

limit on the West, how these colony claims often conflicted and

overlapped. The English settlers in the Atlantic colonies began

to look with longing eyes to the vast expanse beyond the Alle-

ghenies, to that domain claimed by France. The pilgrim had his

keen puritanic eye on the Frenchmen. Virginia seemed to be the

center that attracted the most enterprising English colonists and

she sent forth the most venturesome settlers into the great north-

west, for Virginia settlements were on the frontier lines of west-

ward pioneer emigration. Virginia's claim of territory extended

west to the Mississippi, and north to a line covering most of

what is now Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. The territory between

La Belle Riviere, as the French poetically called the Ohio, and

the waters of the placid Erie, was to be the storm center of the

conflict of the two great races over their respective claims, a

vast conflict that was in its consequences to determine, not merely

the career of these two peoples, but the destiny of the world.

 

 

FIRST OHIO COMPANY.

By the year 1748 the plucky and sturdy Pennsylvanians and

the belligerent and brave Virginians had worked their way well

up to the eastern foot hills of the last range of mountains sepa-

rating them from the promised land. The time for the Eng-

lish colonists to scale the great mountains and invade the coun-

try claimed by the enemy, had been slow in coming, but it was

sure to come. This year (1748) the first Ohio Company, con-

sisting of prominent Virginians and Marylanders, was organized.

The avowed purpose of this company was a real estate venture;

• 5
 

400       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

to speculate in western lands and carry on trade with the Indians.

It does not appear to have contemplated the settlement of a new

colony. The company obtained from the English crown a con-

ditional grant of 500,000 acres of land in the Ohio Valley, to

be located mainly between the Monongahela and Kanawha rivers.

 

 

BIENVILLE'S (FRENCH) EXPEDITION.

The French proposed to head off this invasion of their ter-

ritory by the Ohio Company. They decided to occupy the Ohio

Valley in force. Preliminary to active military operations, the

Chevalier Celoron De Bienville, at the command of Gallissoniere,

then governor of Canada and Commander-in-Chief of New

France, was sent to take formal possession of the Ohio, concili-

ate the Indians and thwart the English. Bienville, with a band

of more than two hundred French soldiers and boatmen, pro-

ceeded to the Alleghany river and in birch canoes floated down

the Ohio, stopping here and there to treat with the Indians and

to tack upon some tree, or to bury at the mouth of some tribu-

tary, a lead plate inscribed with the flower-de-luce and bearing

a "nota bene" to the effect that the French thus posted and filed

their title to the Ohio river and of all those rivers that flow into

it, as far as their sources. In the vernacular of the day, the

descendants of the ancient Gauls were asserting a "tinplate"

monopoly of the country. Bienville descended the Ohio as far

as the Miami then cut across the country by the Miami and

Maumee, thence by Lake Erie back to Montreal. His report to

the French governor was not assuring. Bienville had found

English traders scattered over the Ohio Valley and the Indians

generally well disposed to the English. He found an English

trading stockade near the present site of Piqua and another near

the mouth of the Scioto. Johnny Bull was not so slow, he was

in very conspicuous evidence.

 

 

GIST'S (ENGLISH) EXPEDITION.

In order to checkmate this exploring and "claiming with

confidence" expedition of Bienville, the Ohio Company (1750)

sent Christopher Gist down the northern side of the Ohio, with

• 6
 

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  401

instructions "to examine the western country as far as the Falls

of the Ohio (Louisville), to look for a large tract of good land;

to mark the passes in the mountains, to trace the courses of the

rivers; to count the water falls; to observe the strength of the

Indian nations." The Ohio Company was the original western

real estate boomer. Gist made the first English exploration of

Southern Ohio of which we have any definite detailed report.

Gist and his companions, among whom was the Irish Indian

agent, George Crogham, followed the old Indian trail from Fort

Duquesne (Pittsburg) to the Shawanese town of Old Chillicothe

on the Scioto. They camped at the "great swamp," bed of the

reservoir, now Buckeye Lake, thence proceeded to the town of

Tasightwi, (Piqua) on the Miami; then the capital of the pow-

erful western Indian confederacy and perhaps the strongest

Indian town on the continent. Gist returned by the Miami to

the Ohio, thence home by way of Kentucky. The exploring

tramps of Bienville and Gist were of thrilling interest. They

met Scotch Irish Indian traders in the deepest recesses of the

forest. Briton thrift knew no obstacle or opposition. These

preliminary outpostings through the primeval forest precluded the

racial encounter.  The governor general of Canada ordered

Bienville, with sufficient soldiery to proceed from Detroit into

the Ohio country and expell the English traders. At the same

time General Duquesne was dispatched from Montreal with a

force of French troops to establish posts at Presque Isle (Erie)

on Lake Erie, Venango on the Allegheny river and other points

necessary to cut off the approach of the English from the East.

 

 

LOGSTOWN CONFERENCE.

Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia, a member of the Ohio

Company, saw the importance of counter work. He resolved to

send a messenger to ascertain the numbers and intentions of the

French and to deliver to their commanding officer an imperative

remonstrance against the Gallic occupation of the Ohio Valley.

George Washington, then but twenty-one, but already familiar

with frontier life, was the envoy of that message. Washington,

Vol. X- 26

• 7
 

402       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

escorted by Gist, proceeded to Logstown, the Seneca Indian vil-

lage, eighteen miles below the present site of Pittsburg, and there

met (1753) the Half King of the six nations and the French

officer, St. Pierre, who represented Duquesne. It was a curious

council. The Indian chiefs claimed the country in question as

theirs; they had ordered the French away; the English, they

protested, had no better right, and both must cease "to poach on

their preserves;" "the land belongs neither to the one nor the

other; but the Great Being allowed it to be a place of residence

for us," was the plaintive and pathetic plea of the intuitive In-

dian. The French reply to the Indian was, that the Indians had

no right of possession to the Ohio country, as the French had

taken possession of it before the present Indian claimants had

moved in, and that the occupant Indian tribes were often at

war with themselves over their respective possessions.  The

English reply to the Indian was, that the Iroquois who had long

established rights by prowess, conquest and occupation, had in

various treaties ceded control of this land to the English. The

Iroquois had conquered the Eries (Northern Ohio) as early as

1656. Particularly in 1744 had the Iroquois deputies at Lan-

caster, Pa., confirmed to the English the territory "beyond the

mountains" in the Ohio Valley. Again at Albany in 1748, the

bonds binding the Six Nations and the English together were

renewed and strengthened, and in this the Miami Ohio Indians

had united. Well may we dwell upon this singular and unique

historic episode. Three great and powerful races as disputants

in a dramatic and eventful scene. The savage of North America,

the child of the unbroken forest "as free as nature first made

man," and the latter day Latin, wishful of the revival of the

faded laurels of centuries of conquest-the Latin whose glories

and triumphs reached back for two thousand years into the days

when the gods sat on Olympus; and the Anglo-Saxon scion of

the Teuton, that race that rose across the Alps and from the frigid

fields of the North, like the thundering Thor they worshipped,

poured forth with irresistable front, rude warriors of bygone

ages, to trample beneath their feet "the grandeur that was

Rome." And now these two races, foes from days of fable, once

again in the Western wilds of the newly discovered world, stand

• 8
 

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  403

 

face to face while the redman halts trembling between. The

conference came to naught. There was no alternative. Wash-

ington reported results to the Lords of trade in London. They

addressed to the governors of the colonies the advice to congre-

gate and consult upon united action against the usurpation of

the French. The Colonist Convention for the proposed purpose

was held at Albany, June, 1754. That convention failed of its

object, but was of paramount significance to the colonists be-

cause it was the occasion in which all unwittingly the mother

country had given her American children a suggestive lesson

in self government. Benjamin Franklin, who was present, con-

tributed to the assembly a well devised plan for definite union

of the colonies under a common governor to be appointed by the

crown; a plan adopted by the convention but rejected by both

the colonies and the crown; by the American colonies because it

smacked too much of monarchal prerogatives, and by the British

ministry because there was in it too much of democracy.

 

 

UNDER THE ENGLISH FLAG.

The guage of war alone was to settle the alleged rights of

the various claimants. The Indian was to be ground between the

other two and a great historian says, "the issue at the opening

of the struggle was, which of the two languages should be the

mother tongue of the future millions of the great West-

whether the Romanic or the Teutonic race should form the seed

of its people." But the question soon became wider than the

West. France at this critical moment "had two heads-one

among the snows of Canada and one among the cane-brakes of

Louisiana; one communicating with the world through the Gulf

of St. Lawrence, and the other through the Gulf of Mexico."

These vital points were connected by a chain of military and

trading posts, feeble and few and far between, reaching through

the wilderness nearly three thousand miles. Midway between

Canada and Louisiana lay the Valley of the Ohio. If the Eng-

lish could seize that Valley they would, Napoleonic like, sever

the enemy and cut French America asunder.    The French

forces with the St. Lawrence as a base, began moving southward

• 9
 

404       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

in the direction of the Ohio; the English forces, with the seaboard

as a base, began moving northward toward the same destination.

These two moving lines converged at the Monongahela near the

forks of the Ohio, July 9, 1755. The French contingent con-

sisted of a motley mixture of Canadians and Indians, a thousand

strong under De Beaujeu. The blustering Braddock led fifteen

hundred British regulars. The cautious advice of Washington,

who was on Braddock's staff, was unheeded - the English were

ambuscaded and Braddock met a brave death amid a disgraceful

defeat. That battle was the initiative of Washington's career

and fame. This was the overture to the French and Indian War.

It threw Europe even in a turmoil, and led there to the Seven

Years' War (1756-63), and was, as Macauley notes, the first and

only European war that began on this side of the ocean. We

cannot follow the fortunes of this interesting war. On the con-

tinent of the old world the contest was far-reaching. Mr. Green,

the historian, speaking of Pitt, at this time the genius of the

English cabinet, says: "He felt the stake he was playing for was

something vaster than Britain's standing among the powers of

Europe. Even while he backed Frederick the Great in Germany,

his eye was not on the Weser, but on the Hudson and the St.

Lawrence." As to America, the conflict terminated September

13, 1759, when the armies of Montcalm and Wolfe engaged on

the Heights of Abraham. John Fiske wrote of it: "The tri-

umph of Wolfe works the greatest turning point as yet discov-

erable in modern history." The next year witnessed the capit-

ulation of Canada. By the treaty of Paris (1763), in which the

results of the seven years' war were adjusted, France yielded

to England her American possessions east of the Mississippi and

north of the Great Lakes and along the St. Lawrence. Louisiana

west of the Mississippi went to Spain, which sided with France.

And Spain in turn ceded to England her Florida possessions.

The British flag floated over the Ohio Valley and the "tin plate

titles" of France were no longer valid.

• 10
 

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  405

 

 

RESULTS OF BRITISH RULE.

The treaty of Paris signed, the policy of English suprem-

acy began to change. The dominating spirit of John Bull quickly

asserted itself.  Previous to the war England had virtually

affirmed the principle that the discoverer and occupant of the

coast was entitled to all the country back of it; she had carried

her colonial boundaries across the continent from sea to sea,

and as against France, had maintained the original chartered

broad limits of her coast settlements. On that principle the col-

onies stood her in good stead--they fought France for them-

selves, as well as for the mother country. Moreover the grant

to the Ohio Company in 1748 proved that England then had no

thought of preventing over-mountain settlements or of limiting

the western expansion of the colonies. But now that France was

vanquished and no longer to be reckoned with, it was different.

The courage and endurance the colonies showed in the war had

both pleased and disturbed the mother country; pleased her, be-

cause they contributed materially to the defeat of France, and

disturbed her because they portended a still larger growth of that

spirit of independence which had already become somewhat em-

barrassing. The eagerness with which the Virginians and Penn-

sylvanians were preparing to enter the Ohio Valley in the years

1748-1754, told England what might be expected now that the

whole country lay open to the Mississippi. The home govern-

ment undertook to meet the occasion with the royal proclamation

of October 7, 1763. In this arbitrary decree his Royal Highness,

King of England, declared in substance that the territory claimed

by France and now ceded to England, should still be kept apart

from the colonies and regarded as under the immediate domin-

ation of the crown, like the Province of Quebec. The coast col-

onies were not to profit by this "expansion" west save at the

"King's pleasure" - "the lands beyond the heads or sources of

any of the rivers which fall into the Atlantic were especially re-

served to the Indian tribes for hunting grounds." In short-

spite of the charter or patent to the contrary - the Valley of the

Ohio and the country south of the great lakes was not open to

settlement or purchase "without special leave and license." All

• 11
 

406       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

settlers located there were notified to "move off." Trade with

the Indians was largely prohibited by required licenses and re-

strictive regulations. Thus the Northwest was won, not for

the colonies, but exclusively for the crown. Peaceful relations

with the Indians, the extension of the fur trade, and the safety

of the colonies, were the reasons assigned for this policy. This

"first charter of the northwest" meant the raising of a despotic

and military rule by Great Britain over the newly acquired ter-

ritory and an embargo on western emigration and extension. The

government thought this would placate the Indian, as it prac-

tically assured him unmolested continuance in his possessions.

But the unerring instinct of the untutored savage read the royal

decree between the lines to mean a new and strong mastery,

blindly dictated by powers beyond the great waters. The Indians

rebelled against the new masters of these domains and rose in

open hostility, beginning with Pontiac's brilliant but futile con-

spiracy, which was met in turn (1764) by Bradstreet's expedition

against the Indians on the lakes and Bouquet's expedition to the

Muskingum, and his encounter with the Seneca, Delaware, Shaw-

nee, Ottawa, Chippewa and Wyandotte Indians. The policy of

expansion-exclusion by England was stolidly and stupidly en-

forced. Plans and applications for new colonies and settlement

rights in the Ohio Valley were obstinately turned down by the

English council. This continued for eleven years, till 1774; that

year was memorable for several odious and decisive occurrences;

it was the year of the Boston (closing) port bill, and the Massa-

chusetts bay bill; but no one of these measures was more obnox-

ious to the colonists than the Quebec act. This act among many

impolitic and offensive features, gave certain religious rights to

the French inhabitants, in order to propitiate and attach them

by interest and sympathy to England and so to prevent their

making common cause with the colonists in case trouble should

arise with the latter. But what more directly touched and aroused

the English colonists, especially in the West, was the extension,

in the act, of the Province of Quebec on the North to Hudson

Bay, and on the Southwest and West to the Ohio and Missis-

sippi. The Northwest was sealed as peculiarly a province of the

crown. The bars were raised and fastened as never before.

• 12
 

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  407

 

To the colonies the fertile lands along and north of the Ohio

were an irresistible temptation. The Quebec act meant mischief

for all parties. It was inevitable that the colonies could not be

confined east of the Alleghenies.  "Westward the course of

empire takes it way" is not mere poetry; it is a national impulse.

 

 

OPENING OF THE REVOLUTION IN OHIO.

The year 1774 marked the real opening of the Revolution

in the West as in the East. On September 5, the first Continental

Congress met in Carpenter's Hall, Philadelphia, in the opening

of which Patrick Henry, of Virginia, struck the "key-note" by

saying: "British oppression has effaced the boundaries of the

several colonies; the distinction between Virginians, Pennsyl-

vanians and New Englanders is no more. I am not a Virginian

but an American." The colonies were nerving themselves for

the first blow. It was the westerner, the frontiersman who

struck it. Moreover that blow was a double dealing one. It hit

the arbitrary power of the oppressor while it staggered his chief

ally, the supporting Indian. The peace provoking Quakers of

Pennsylvania, no less than the contentious Cavaliers of Virginia,

invaded, in no small numbers, the Ohio country. Under the

Quebec act, these westward movers and settlers had trespassed

upon the British domain, the reserved lands of the Indian. Both

sides courted trouble. It came without delay. One of the prin-

cipal provocations was the atrocious massacre of the family of

the Mingo chief, Logan, by the intruding whites. The border

Indian war burst aflame. The Earl of Dunmore, colonial governor

of Virginia was a descendant of the Stuarts and a Tory to the

core.  But he was tenacious of Virginia's prerogatives and

claimed her jurisdiction according to her chartered limits. Vir-

ginia "applauded Dunmore when he set at naught the Quebec

act and kept possession of the government and right to grant

lands on the Scioto, the Wabash and the Illinois." Dunmore was

for "war." He decided to raise an army of three thousand to

be in two equal divisions; one to consist of the more experienced

militiamen under himself, and the other of backwoods and fron-

tiersmen under General Andrew Lewis. While Lewis was mus-

• 13
 

408       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

tering his host of rude riflemen, Dunmore with fifteen hundred

soldiers proceeded to Fort Pitt, thence by flotilla down the Ohio

to the mouth of the Hockhocking, where he built a stockade

and named it Fort Gower. He then marched to the Scioto and

entrenched himself on the Pickaway Plains near the Indian town

of Old Chillicothe. He had with him as scouts, George Rogers

Clark, Michael Cresap, Simon Kenton and Simon Girty. Mean-

time the great Shawnee Chief, Cornstalk, had summoned some

twelve hundred, or more, daring braves and hastened with them

to the Ohio, which he crossed and met, on the Virginia side at

the Great Kanawha (Point Pleasant), on October 10, General

Lewis, who was advancing to join Dunmore. General Lewis

had some twelve hundred Virginian "soldiers." It might be

called a "pick up" army. The uniform of officers and men was

the individual costume of the frontier hunter. They wore fringed

shooting shirts, dyed red, yellow, brown and white; quaintly

carved shot bags and powder horns hung from their belts; they

had fur caps or soft hats and woolen leggings that reached to

the thigh. Each carried his own flintlock, tomahawk and scalp-

ing knife. They were "raw recruits" so far as military discipline

was concerned, but they were "fighters" from top to toe. They

knew every trick of the wily enemy. The battle was one of the

most bitter and bloody in the early history of the western coun-

try. It was hotly contested for several hours. But the Indians

were forced to give way. It was the first considerable battle in

which they fought without the aid of the French. The loss to

the Americans was great but their victory complete. It was a

purely American victory for it was fought solely by backwoods-

men themselves. They were not the king's "regulars" as at

Braddock's defeat. Has there ever been better soldiers than the

American volunteer? The results of this battle were of para-

mount importance. As Roosevelt says, it kept the Northwestern

tribes quiet for the first two years of the Revolutionary struggle,

and above all, rendered possible the settlement of Kentucky and

the winning of the West. Lewis with his victorious men crossed

the Ohio and pushed on to the quarters of Dunmore. A peace

conference was held with the Indians whose spirit had been

broken by their unexpected and decisive defeat. The crestfallen

• 14
 

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  409

 

braves assented to all the terms the "long knives," their con-

querors, proposed. They surrendered all claim to the lands south

of the Ohio. All the big chiefs were present at this conference,

save Logan, who refused to attend and addressed to Gen. John

Gibson, for transmission to Dunmore, that speech which ranks

with the first among savage outbursts of oratory. The expedi-

tion having been eminently successful, Dunmore's army took

up its march homeward. On nearing Fort Gower a most inter-

esting and significant incident occurred. The news for the

first time now reached them of the convening and session of

the American Congress. The officers held a notable meeting

and passed resolutions, which were afterwards published; they

complimented their general Dunmore; they professed allegiance

to their king and the British crown, but added that this devo-

tion would only last while the king deigned to rule over a

free people, for their love for the liberty of America out-

weighed all other considerations and they would exert every

power for its defence, not riotously, but when regularly called

forth by the voice of their countrymen, and they expressed

their warm sympathy with the new Continental Congress.

Noteworthy action on Ohio soil, the valiant backwoodsman

and militiaman, from Virginia, the first of the colonies, pro-

claim their sentiments of freedom and independence. Not

only from the rock-bound coast and eastern mountain side, but

alike from the banks of the far Ohio was the call of freedom

heard and answered.

 

 

THE OHIO VALLEY DURING THE REVOLUTION.

How unfit England was in the days of George III to be the

possessor of the Ohio Valley, was shown by the course she pur-

sued from the close of the French war to the beginning of the

Revolution. She was first anxious to secure possession of the

Ohio and then reluctant to see it put to any civilized use. Her

narrow and short-sighted conduct concerning the great West

was one of the chief causes leading to the war for independence.

The Revolution was inevitable. At Lexington and Concord

(April 19, 1775) was fired the shot that echoed around the world.

• 15
 

410       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

The die was cast. That echo reverberated across the Alle-

ghenies and adown the Ohio Valley. "Although a solitude and

because a solitude, the over mountain country had more at stake

in the Revolution than the Atlantic slope." On the sea board,

whatever the issues of the war, an Anglo-Saxon civilization,

though it might be greatly stunted and impoverished, was as-

sured; but in the western valleys such few seeds of civilization

as had been planted were Gallican and not Saxon. Moreover,

there were great uncertainties and perils growing out of the re-

lation of that country to the Franco-Spanish civilization of

Louisiana, that vast territory stretching from the Mississippi to

the Pacific. Between 1748 and 1783 the western question pre-

sented three distinct phases. In 1748-1763 it was the suprem-

acy of England or France in the west; in 1763-1775 it was

whether the country should belong to the redman or the white

man; and in 1775-1783 it was whether it should form a part of

the United States or of some foreign power.

Before the beginning of the French War the western In-

dians had been disposed to listen to the English envoys rather

than the French, but Braddock's blunder and rout gave them

a contempt for the British braves, and brought upon the Eng-

lish frontier settlements the brutal fury of the Western redmen.

"The Indians were products of the soil, like the trees and wild

game, but France could not transfer them (in 1763) with the

same facility to their new masters, the Saxon." The sagacious

savage understood perfectly well that the English were far more

dangerous to them than the French had been. The posting of

garrisons in the Western forts would surely bring to their best

hunting grounds swarms of colonists greedy for the lands and

proposing to be permanent occupants. The American Revolu-

tion in the Ohio Valley was a continuation of the French and

Indian War, the old conflict, renewed with some change of

parties. The infant and independent states find the savage power

of the Northwest arrayed against them as before; France had

dropped out and England, the imperial England, had taken her

place, succeeding to many French methods, even that of employ-

ing the tomahawk of the savage against her revolted colonies.

As England had employed the Hessians to do her fighting at the

• 16
 

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  411

 

front she proposed to engage the Indians to do her fighting in

the rear of the colonial territory.  The fiendish proposition

of the British Ministry to secure the scalping knife in aid

of the mother country called out from Lord Chatham-

the great commoner--one of his immortal bursts of elo-

quence.  It was also repugnant to the feelings of General

Howe, Commander-in-Chief of the English forces, and Sir

Guy Carleton, British Governor of the Province of Quebec, but

it was heartily approved by Henry Hamilton, Lieutenant Gov-

ernor and Superintendent at Detroit. The latter at once made

ready to use all the resources that his position gave him, to bring

upon the rear and flank of the rebelling states the only form of

warfare known in those regions. He subsidized the Indians.

Time and again he sent the war belt to the tribes, summoning

them to bloody forays that he himself had planned. His inhuman

instigation led to a hundred attacks upon outlying stations and

defenceless settlements. The situation in the Ohio Valley at this

period may have been in a measure a nondescript one. Between

the Ohio river, the Mississippi river and the Great Lakes there

were not more than five thousand white and Indian inhabitants

in all. It was a bizarre, guerrila warfare scattered over a vast

territory--the French more or less openly favored the colonists,

the Indians casting their lot with the crown authority. France

declared war (1778) against England. Spain also declared (1779)

war against England, and seized the English ports of Mobile,

Natchez and Baton Rouge, which stations together with St.

Louis, gave Spain practically the control of the Mississippi Val-

ley. So the little "tempest in a teapot," initiated in Boston,

December 16, 1773, had grown to an international warfare, em-

bracing the three greatest nations and disturbing the peace of two

continents. The events transpiring in the Ohio Valley during

the Revolution present a history as rich and romantic almost as

do the often rehearsed, and more prominent deeds on the Atlan-

tic coast. The thrilling careers of the Girtys, (Simon, James

and George), of McKee, Elliott and scores of others, read like

the tale of a most imaginative novelist, and include deeds of

adventure and daring equal to any annals of history or biography.

• 17
 

412       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

The great history of the United States has not yet been written.

When it is written, it will be by a Western man, and it will be

written with the Valley of the Ohio as the central basis and

proper point of view. The struggle for independence was being

waged not merely in New England, but also, and mercilessly,

in the Northwest and especially on the soil that later was to

constitute the Buckeye state. This is a striking and farreaching

fact, generally ignored, often from prejudice or ignorance, by

the writers who, with the least labor, confine their partial narra-

tives to the events more noticeable and graphic but hardly less

potent that transpired in the eastern and southern colonies. The

time will come when the warfare in the Ohio Valley, which was

an inseparable part of the Revolution will receive full justice at

the hands of the historian.* Theodore Roosevelt in his admirable

and accurate western history has the correct vision and justly

appreciates the richness and perspective value of this field. Vir-

ginia, the state which took the leading part in the Revolution,

occupied a two-fold position, she was the border state; she

touched the contest on the East, even to the sea board, and

reached well into the dense and trackless west.

 

 

EXPEDITION OF CLARK.

Under her auspices and the leadership of George Rogers

Clark, Virginia "broke the back" of the British power on

the Western line of the Colonies.   Clark saw that so long

as the British held the commanding forts, Detroit, Kaskaskia,

Vincennes and the connecting stations, so long would England

be able to keep up an effectual warfare along the rear of the

colonies and render abortive any victories the states might

achieve in New England. Clark presented his plan of conquest

to Governor Patrick Henry, George Wythe, George Mason and

* It is true that some recent works, such as those by John Fiske,

William H. English, Charles Moore, Justin Winsor, B. A. Hinsdale, and

others, give more or less detailed accounts of the occurrences in the

northwest during the period in question, but even these valuable works

fail to sufficiently emphasize the relation of the events described to the

American Revolution.

• 18
 

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  413

Thomas Jefferson.  He would win victories in the west that

should compare in importance with the colonial triumphs in the

east. Under instructions from Patrick Henry, Clark raised an

armament of two hundred volunteers and woodsmen, companies

of veritable Rough Riders, and in May, 1778, started on his

famous campaign. The history of Clark's expedition for bravery,

hardships, hair breadth adventures and escapes, for strategy

and warcraft, for generalship, intrepidity, patience and patriotism,

is equal to that of any similar effort in all the annals of mixed

savage and civilized warfare. Starting at the Falls of the Ohio, he

left the river at Fort Massac forty miles above the mouth, and

began the march into the interior. He took from the English

Kaskaskia and Vincennes and relieved Cahokia and invaded the

Indian inhabitated interior. It was the conquest of the territory

of the Illinois and the Wabash; it was to the Revolution what

Sherman's march to the sea was to the Rebellion. Though Clark

did not secure Detroit, his capture of Vincennes and the Illinois

posts paralyzed the English attempts to carry on an offensive

campaign on the frontier of the United States, and confined their

efforts to petty warfare in the shape of Indian raids against

the Ohio and Kentucky settlements. To Clark's wise valor

and military genius was due more than to any other, the secur-

ing of the Northwest to the new republic. He won and held

the Illinois and the Wabash in the name of Virginia and of the

United States. Had the contest of the western frontiersmen un-

der Clark and other leaders failed, it is more than likely that,

though the New England colonies would still have achieved their

independence, the territory of the Ohio and Mississippi Valley

would have continued subject to British rule, as Canada did

north of the Great Lakes. The result of Clark's warfare was

of incalculable importance in the course of the American

Revolution.  Although Detroit remained in British hands the

flag of the Republic raised by Clark over the interior of the

Northwest was never lowered. No officer in the Revolution ac-

complished results that were so great or far reaching with as

small a force, as did General George Rogers Clark. Clark's

first and most famous campaign lasted till August, 1779, when

he returned to the Falls of the Ohio. Early in 1780, at the in-

• 19
 

414       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

stance of Thomas Jefferson, then Governor of Virginia, Clark

built Fort Jefferson near the mouth of the Ohio. From there

he made various invasions into the Ohio interior against the

hostile and British paid Indians, driving them from their chief

quarters at Old Chillicothe, Piqua and elsewhere.

 

 

UNDER THE AMERICAN FLAG.

The theatre of events now shifted to the heart of Ohio.

While Clark was pushing toward Detroit, with the intention of

eventually aiding him from the East or at least destroying the

Indian stronghold at Sandusky (now Upper Sandusky) Colonel

William Crawford, a personal friend of Washington, and Gen-

eral Lachlin McIntosh, with the approval of Washington, erected

in the fall of 1778 two forts, Fort McIntosh, near the present

limits of Ohio at Beaver, Pa., and Fort Laurens, on the west

bank of the Tuscarawas, in what is now the county of that name.

In 1778-9 General McIntosh made an unsuccessful campaign

from Fort Pitt into the West and Fort Laurens was abandoned.

Ohio was now the hot bed of Indian movements and outbreaks.

Numerous invasions were made by the Americans to dispel or

destroy them. These more or less illy directed forays were made

from Fort Pitt (Pittsburg), the frontier military station and

headquarters of the States. By March, 1782, the Revolution

was virtually at an end; but the Indian raids in the Ohio Valley

continued unabated, Detroit was still an English stronghold, and

indeed, so continued till 1796; moreover among the restless fron-

tiersmen at Fort Pitt there was talk and even plottings, of an

irruption into Ohio and the formation of an independent state.

To put a stop to both these disturbances, an expedition against

Sandusky (Wyandot county), in May, 1782, was inaugurated

under Colonel William Crawford. With a force of some five

hundred men he started from the present site of Steubenville.

It was but two months after the cold blooded slaughter of the

Moravian Indians at Gnadenhutten under Colonel Williamson,

the great blot on American history. At the approach of the

Crawford army the various Indian forces were rallied by the

British commander at Detroit, the distinguished De Peyster.

• 20
 

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  415

 

Wyandots, Hurons, Pottawotamies, Chippewas, Ottawas, Shaw-

nees, Delawares and Mingoes, were enlisted and united by Brit-

ish bribes and influence. Captain William Caldwell led the

allied Indians and the British contingent. That unfortunate ex-

pedition, its details and disastrous end is a well known and oft

repeated story. Crawford's forces were overcome by superior

numbers and obliged to flee. Colonel Crawford himself was cap-

tured and brutally burned amid indescribable tortures at the stake.

The Indians and their friends, the British, seemed to possess

Ohio. Emboldened by their successes the redmen made daring

and destructive invasions into Kentucky and committed terrible

carnage at Blue Licks. General Clark once more took the war-

path, and with a force of one thousand riflemen in November,

1782, struck into the center of Ohio, drove the Indians before

him, and destroyed their leading towns on the Miami river, Old

Chillicothe, Piqua and other villages. This incursion also played

havoc with the British trading establishments, practically driving

the British out of the country. With this final brilliant and rapid

dash of Clark the Revolution in Ohio should have ended, for while

Clark was achieving the last victory, indeed almost on the very

day when he struck his last blow against the Indians, the prelim-

inaries of peace between England and America, were being signed

at Paris, November 30, 1782.

The war between England and America was indeed termin-

ated; but for the Northwest and particularly Ohio, the peace

that had come to the New England States was not to be enjoyed

for many long years. The Revolution had but rolled up the cur-

tain on the tragedy that was not to close permanently for Ohio

until the treaty of Ghent, December, 1814.

 

 

THE WAR CONTINUED IN OHIO.

Ohio had been the scene in turn of the contests between the

Indian and French, the French and the English, the English and

the American, and now it was to be the arena for a third of a

century of the desperate and decisive struggle between the red-

man and the white - on the frontier of the advancing new Amer-

ican civilization and national life. On the hills and in the val-

• 21
 

416       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

leys of the Buckeye state the noble redman took his stand to

stay if possible his manifest destiny; to the white man he said:

"Thus far shalt thou go and no farther." The poor Indian at

every turn of events seemed to have prophetic intimation of his

doom. First he opposed the French, the first invaders of his

domain, then with the French he disputed the ingress of the

English, and then with the English he fought the colonists, and

at last, one ally after another having been repelled and driven

from the field, the lone Indian must unaided contend for his in-

vaded home.

The result of the American Revolution gave the great North-

west to the United States, but at once opened many conflicting

claims between the states as to respective rights to the newly

acquired territory. For be it remembered the original states

had charters for the land as far west as it might go. The various

states were now asked to yield to the new national government

these western claims; which the government might sell for the

common good and out of which new states might be created. This

cession on the part of the various states followed, and the great

territory of the Northwest was government domain subject to

government disposition.

 

 

THE (SECOND) OHIO COMPANY.

While the states were yielding up to the federal government

their western claims, and Congress was wrestling with the prob-

lems which this newly acquired and vast territory created, im-

portant and interesting "doings," as to Ohio, were transpiring

both East and Wrest. In the fall of 1785 a detachment of United

States troops, under the command of Major John Doughty,

built a fort, on the right bank of the Muskingum at its junction

with the Ohio. With the exception of Fort Laurens, (1778)

it was the first military post erected within the limits of Ohio

(to be). The Muskingum fort was called Fort Harmar. The

first Ohio Company, consisting mainly of Virginians, organized

in 1748, as we have seen, came to naught. Its schemes and efforts

were engulfed in the current of events with which it unsuccess-

fully struggled. But Ohio was to be the Eldorado, the promised

• 22
 

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  417

 

land of the Revolutionary veteran and his descendants. The

cause of liberty triumphant, the Revolutionary officers returned

home to beat their swords into plowshares and engage in the

pursuits of peace. The distinguished engineer and manager,

Rufus Putnam, sought his humble Rutland (Mass.) farm house

to plan the building, not of fortifications, but of a state- "a new

state west of the Ohio." As early as 1783 he and associate offi-

cers had applied to Congress for the location and survey of

Western lands upon which the weary and impoverished heroes

of the war might settle and build new homes for their declining

days. The Ohio Company was the outgrowth of this endeavor

to secure the bounty lands due and guaranteed for military ser-

vice in behalf of their country. But Congress needed time to

consider and properly act. On March 1, 1786, the Ohio Company

was formed at the "Bunch of Grapes" tavern, Boston. Rufus

Putnam, Manassah Cutler and Samuel Parsons were made direc-

tors. Subsequently Winthrop Sargent was chosen secretary. The

purpose of the company was to raise funds for buying lands be-

yond the Ohio, and locating thereon. Many of the foremost

men of the nation became members, if not to emigrate, at least

to hold stock and share in the success of the undertaking. In one

sense it was the inception of a patriotic and national enterprise.

in another aspect it was a real estate syndicate. A fund of a

million dollars, mainly in continental specie certificates was to be

raised for the purchase from the government of lands in Ohio.

There were to be a thousand shares of ten dollars each. A vast

tract thus secured was to be divided by equitable methods among

the share holders. The winter of 1786-7 was spent in perfecting

the plans. The negotiations between the company and Congress

were tedious and lengthy. Congress was busy with the all im-

portant question of a form of government for the Northwest

Territory.

ORDINANCE OF 1787.

On July 13, (1787), the great "Ordinance of Freedom,"

as it is properly called, was passed by the Continental Con-

gress in session in New York.    Next to the Federal Con-

Vol. X -27.

• 23
 

418       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

stitution, which was adopted September 13, 1787, by the Con-

stitutional Convention assembled at Philadelphia, the Ordinance

of 1787 is acknowledged as the greatest of all American legis-

lative acts. Daniel Webster said no one single law of any law-

giver, ancient or modern, had produced effects of more distinct,

marked and lasting character than this document.

Through the instrumentality of this ordinance the Northwest

Territory was to be opened and developed. But not without

great cost of effort and sacrifice, indeed of bloodshed and life

itself. The magnificent and fertile Ohio Valley that had been the

favorite haunt of the Indian, and which for two hundred years

or more he had "put to uses but little superior to those of the

buffalo, the bear and the wolf;" that the French adventurer and

claimant had used for purposes but little higher than those of the

Indian; and that the Englishmen had refused to use at all, was

now, says a noted historian, to be devoted to the greatest of

human purposes - was now to become the home of a progress-

ive people, excelling in all the arts of civilized life.

Ohio was the first and immediate product of that illustrious

legislation. Almost simultaneously with the passage of the ordi-

nance, Congress authorized (July 23) the Board of Treasury to

sell the Ohio Company a tract of land lying between the seven

ranges and the Scioto, and beginning on the east five miles away

from the left bank of the Muskingum. This tract was selected

by the advice of Thomas Hutchins, Esq., "geographer of the

United States." He considered it "the best part of the whole

western country." Thus the establishment of the great North-

west Territory and the settlement of Ohio were events of

twin birth.  Says Mr. Poole, "the Ordinance of 1787 and

the Ohio purchase were parts of one and the same trans-

action. The purchase would not have been made with-

out the ordinance, and the ordinance could not have been en-

acted except as an essential condition of the purchase." That

is the New England Revolutionary survivors would not buy

the land unless a satisfactory government - one that meant free-

dom, education and religion - was secured, and Congress would

not have enacted the ordinance had it not been for the immediate

• 24
 

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  419

 

opportunity of making a large sale of the lands, at the same time

assuring their settlement by the staunchest patriots of New

England."

OHIO MAYFLOWER.

It was October 27, 1787, however, that the "bargain was

clinched" between the company and the national treasury com-

missioners. The agreement called for one and a half million

acres of land at sixty-six and two-thirds cents per acre. The

company, however, only came into possession of one million acres

or less, as some of the subscribers failed to pay for their certifi-

cates, and thus a portion of the land reverted to the government.

It was the spring of 1788, when the band of western pilgrims

had worked their way across the country from New Eng-

land homes and had assembled at Sumrill's Ferry, on the

Youghiogheny river, some thirty miles above Pittsburgh. At

last all was ready, and the quaint little fleet floated down

the Ohio.   It consisted of the forty-five ton galley, Ad-

venture, afterwards re-christened the Mayflower, the three ton

ferry called the Adelphia and three log canoes. After a five days'

voyage this famous flotilla, that was to figure so largely in west-

ern history, arrived, April 6, 1788, at the mouth of the Mus-

kingum. "No colony in America," said Washington, "was ever

settled under such favorable auspices as that which has just com-

menced at the Muskingum. Information, property, and strength

will be its characteristics. I know many of the settlers person-

ally, and there were never men better calculated to promote the

welfare of such a community." There were forty-eight men in

the Ohio Mayflower; they were made of similar stuff, if not the

same stock as the forty-one men who plowed the deep in the

original Mayflower and landed on the bleak New England shore

(1620). Both were Pilgrim stock "pithed with hardihood."

The voyagers of the latter pilgrimage founded the first colony

in Ohio, and called it Marietta. Their new home was pictur-

esquely pitched at the confluence of the Ohio and the Muskingum.

Oddly enough in the precincts of their classically laid out town

was an imposing mound, the silent and mysterious monument

of that elder prehistoric race that roamed the forests or the fields

• 25
 

420       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

ere man's records began. Strange contact on this spot, of the

people buried in oblivion and the representatives of the New

American civilization-the race that is to be. Marietta was at

once the seat of government of the newly made Northwest Ter-

ritory. The first Fourth of July (1788) on Ohio soil, indeed in

the Northwest, was celebrated in genuine New England style.

Thirteen guns from Fort Harmar ushered in the Republic's

natal day, and the same rang through the hills at eventide. A

banquet was served in the "bowery" on the banks of the Mus-

kingum and toasts were drank. The menu on that memorable

occasion embraced almost exclusively buffalo and bear meat, ven-

ison steak and the wild game of the season. Delmonico never

did better. Several invited Indians were present, and wonder-

ingly enjoyed the festivities, all, it is said, except the cannon-

ading. The fort guns were unpleasantly suggestive. At dark

the fort was illumined, not with electric lights, but tallow dips

and bark fires. It was midnight ere the patriotism was extin-

guished.

ARRIVAL OF GOVERNOR ST. CLAIR.

On the 9th of July the newly appointed territorial governor,

Arthur St. Clair, arrived at Fort Harmar. St. Clair was a vet-

eran soldier of both the French and Revolutionary Wars, a

trained officer and an accomplished gentleman, a stirling patriot,

a personal friend of Washington, and president of Congress when

the Ordinance of the Northwest was passed. He was received

with all the ceremony and pageantry the infant colony could

supply. He was welcomed in the "bowery" by General Putnam,

the judges and secretary of the territory, and "prominent citi-

zens"-many had arrived since the first comers. And so the

governmental machinery of the great West was officially set in

motion. One of the first acts of the governor was to establish

Washington county, which was made to include nearly half of the

present Ohio. And now the tide of emigration set in. Another

land purchase, second only to that of the Ohio Company, was made

in 1787- the Miami purchase of Symmes' tract of one million

acres, lying on the north bank of the Ohio between the two

Miami rivers. Three colonies were planted in this tract in the

• 26
 

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  421

year 1788; Columbia, at the mouth of the Little Miami; Losanti-

ville, opposite the mouth of the Licking river; and North Bend,

at the farthest northern sweep of the Ohio west of the Kanawha.

For a time each one of these settlements aspired to the leader-

ship but the second, Losantiville, founded December 24, 1788,

having been chosen as the seat of a military post, and also as the

county seat of Hamilton county, soon outstripped both its com-

petitors. It was renamed by St. Clair, Cincinnati, a name bor-

rowed from the celebrated society of Revolutionary officers of

which he was a prominent member. Here lived the Governor,

and here sat the first Territorial Legislature.

 

 

SCIOTO COMPANY.

A neighboring settlement that deserves more notice than

we can give it was the peculiar and rather picturesque

colony of Gallipolis. This colony was an unfortunate out-

come of the Scioto Company, a sort of side issue of the Ohio

Company. This enterprise was instigated by William Duer, sec-

retary of the Government Board of Treasury. He was a schemer

that would do credit in his methods to the most advanced "pro-

motor" of to-day's western city "booms." Duer attached his

project in a way to the negotiations of the Ohio Company. Be-

sides the actual purchase made by the Ohio Company, Manassah

Cutler and Winthrop Sargent personally got from the govern-

ment "for themselves and associates" an option to further pur-

chase some three million acres adjoining the lands of the Ohio

Company. An interest in this "option" was granted to Duer, Tup-

per, Putnam and others. Joel Barlow was made agent for the

enterprise, and sent to Paris to seek customers. As the Scioto

Company really had no title, Barlow could only sell the "right

of pre-emption." Barlow arrived (June, 1788) in Paris amid

the ominous rumblings of the approaching French Revolution.

His American lands were exploited and advertised as havens of

profit and peace for the distracted and Bourbon burdened French-

men. For a year Barlow pushed his project. It was the popular

topic of the voluble French capital. Volney, the celebrated

French writer of that period, said "Nothing was talked of in every

• 27
 

422       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

circle but the paradise that was opened for Frenchmen in the

Western wilderness, the free and happy life to be led on the blissful

banks of the Scioto." Curious coincidence of history, the denizens

of storm-ridden Paris looking to the forest fastnesses of Ohio as a

refuge from the horrors in store for them at home. While the

infuriated mob was leveling the Bastile, Barlow was disposing of

his option titles to deluded patrons and publishing pamphlets in

aid of the French Revolution. A French company for American

emigration was formed, called "the Company of the Scioto."

Some hundreds invested and sailed for their American possessions.

They were not constructed for pioneer pursuits. They were

artists and artisans, tailors, barbers and laundrymen, indeed,

many were "gentlemen of quality," some with titles and the others

were skilled in only those occupations that polish the frequenter of

the drawing room. Life in a Parisian parlor was different from

life in the Ohio woods. The first invoice of these infatuated

Gallicans arrived at the site they called Gallipolis Oct. 20, 1790.

They were not the Frenchmen of the days of La Salle and Cham-

plain. Their rosy dreams were soon dispelled. They were not

the possessors of an Eldorado but the purchasers of a "gold

brick." The Ohio Company, or leading members thereof, did the

best they could to help the strangers from France who found, in-

stead of a home, a titleless, howling wilderness, made more than

desolate by the prowling Indian. The lurid endurances of the

Reign of Terror would have been tame compared to their exper-

iences in unbroken forest with wild beasts and savage men.

They drifted on west to the French settlements, Kaskaskia, Vin-

cennes, Detroit and elsewhere. Some cast their lot with the Ohio

Company. Congress, in 1795, granted these defrauded emigrants

twenty-four thousand acres in Scioto county.

 

 

DIVERSE SETTLEMENTS IN OHIO.

Of the various phases and conditions of the eastern emigra-

tion Ohiowards, it is not here pertinent to speak at any length.

The Virgina Military District, embracing six thousand five hun-

dred and seventy square miles of the fairest part of Ohio, be-

came the seat of a group of settlements, the families of which

• 28
 

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  423 were the Virginia veterans, entitled by service in the Revo- lution to the homes in this land, for that purpose set aside by the government. General Nathaniel Massie and Governor Dun- can McArthur laid out the town of Chillicothe in this district. These Virginia colonies drew to themselves numbers of able

and accomplished men who exercised a marked influence upon the nascent society of Ohio. The Western Reserve was regarded as the next center of early colonization within the limits of Ohio; when with the other states, Connecticut (1786) ceded to the United States her claim to the Western lands, she "reserved" a strip along Lake Erie in the northeastern part of Ohio. It was called New Connecticut or the Western Reserve and included

• 29
 

424       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

some four million acres. In 1796 Connecticut sold the Western

Reserve (exclusive of the Firelands) to the Connecticut Land

Company. General Moses Cleveland was the advance agent of

that company. He and his associates landed from New Eng-

land at the mouth of the Conneaut Creek, July 4, 1796. It was

the opening of emigration for New England and the Middle

States to northern Ohio. As General R. B. Cowen has concisely

noted in a recent address, "In Ohio we had some five centers of

original settlement by people of different origin. At one point

known as the 'Symmes Purchase,' lying between the Great and

the Little Miami Rivers, the pioneers were chiefly from New

Jersey, with a dash of Huguenot, Swedish, Holland and English

blood. East of it the Virginia Military District, with its center

at Chillicothe, the first settlers came principally from Virginia

and were of English lineage, with a tincture of Norman and

Cavalier. At Marietta, the first settlement in Ohio, the pioneers

were from Massachusetts and other New England states. Their

fathers were English Protestants who emigrated thither in search

of religious freedom. In the century and a half since their mi-

gration from Europe they had drawn widely apart from the Vir-

ginians and the other colonies and acquired an individualism

all their own. On the 'Seven Ranges,' so called, extending from

the Ohio River north to the fortieth parallel, being the first of

the surveys and sales of public lands in Ohio, the first settlers

were of Pennsylvania, some of the Quaker stock introduced by

William Penn, others of Dutch, Irish, Scotch and Scotch-Irish.

On the Western Reserve they were of Puritan stock, from Con-

necticut, with center at Cleveland. West of the "Seven Ranges"

to the Scioto River and south to the Greenville Treaty line was the

United States Military Reservation, where the first settlers were

holders of the bounty land warrants for military service and they

came from all the states and from beyond the sea."

These series of settlements are barely mentioned to exhibit the

diverse but admirable character of Ohio's first citizens in point of

time. They were mainly of the "best blood" of the early colonies.

The Vanguard of Ohio's pioneers were the heroes who had fought

for independence at a sacrifice of property and all worldly pros-

pects, and now sought to found a state worthy their last efforts

• 30
 

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  425

and fitting to be the home of their children. Ohio in its found-

ers is peculiarly, almost exclusively the child of the American

Revolution. One difference between French and American col-

onization in the Northwest is strikingly shown by the fact that on

April 7, 1788, when Marietta was founded the village of Sault

St. Marie was 120 years old. The Latin was a failure as a col-

onizer. He was not progressive. He was not a seizer of oppor-

tunity.

THE ENGLISH AND INDIAN WAR.

These scarred veterans of Bunker Hill, Trenton, Monmouth,

Stony Point, Saratoga and a hundred battles of the Revolution,

were not yet to enjoy the peace merited by their past honors and

patriotic labors. The Northwest Territory, the Ohio Valley, had

passed to the United States and had been opened to their people.

But the Indians were still in a large measure its occupants and

in some degree its possessors. Nor was the last enemy of the

American, the British, entirely expelled or even suppressed. The

Revolution, though some years since a "closed incident" to the

New England states, still dragged its weary length along the

frontiers of the great west. It will be recalled that according

to some of the articles (IV, V and VI) of the Paris Treaty

(1783) it was agreed that the creditors on either side should meet

with no lawful impediment to the recovery of the full value in

sterling money of all bona fide debts heretofore contracted; Con-

gress was to recommend to the state legislatures provision for

the restitution of all estates, rights and properties which had been

confiscated from the British subjects, etc.; and there was to be no

future (after the peace) confiscations of property because of any

part individuals had taken in the War. As an indemnity or

security on the American part to the Brtish government for these

agreements, Great Britain for some thirteen years (1783-1796)

retained possession of a large part of our territory or at least

continued a dominion over certain sections by uninterrupted oc-

cupancy of numerous posts of fortified stations, and this in viola-

tion of England's promise "with all convenient speed * * *

to withdraw  all their armies, garrisons and fleets from  the

United States and from every post, place and harbor within the

• 31
 

426       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

same." These posts to which his Majesty still clung, with British

bull dog tenacity, were Michillimakinak, (Mackinac), Detroit,

Niagara, Oswego, Oswegatchie, (Ogdenburg), Point au Fer

and Dutchman's Point, and Presque Isle, (Erie), and at the mouth

of the Sandusky and Miami (Maumee) Rivers. While the pre-

tense of England for holding these posts was the fulfillment on

our side of the Treaty, the real causes were desire to retain the

advantages these points afforded for British agents to carry on

the fur trade and more especially for the purposes of perpetuating

from these centers the Indian hostility to the Americans. The

British government desired to keep control and influence over

the Indians to the end that the trade (fur) be secured and that

in case of war with America or Spain, the tomahawk and the

scalping knife might once more be called into requisition. Great

Britian hoped the league of states would prove a "rope of sand"

and would soon dissolve and an opportunity be afforded to bring

back the new republic to colonial dependence. The Indians were

assured of the friendship and sympathy of their former English

allies. They were given to understand that they would be cared

for. The Indian with this "moral" support at his back was not

long in renewing his protests at the occupation by the American

of his beloved Ohio valley. In studying the events of American

Western history from now (1783) to the close of the War of

1812 this British background must not be lost to sight. One of

the first duties with which Governor St. Clair was charged was

the negotiation of a treaty of peace with the Indians. In 1789

at Fort Harmar a treaty was concluded with several tribes located

in that vicinity, whereby the Indians relinquished their claims to

a large part of Ohio. But only certain tribes entered into this

agreement. Many others refused to be bound by it. They de-

manded that the whites should retire beyond (south and east)

of the Ohio. The long Indian War ensued; in which the Red-

men had the sympathy, and at times the actual support of the

British. The Indians began to feel the pressure of the white

settlements in Ohio and elsewhere. They began, more or less at

the instigation of the British agents, to commit depredations and

destroy property and even lives of the settlers in Ohio.

• 32
 

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  427

 

 

HARMAR'S EXPEDITION.

General Josiah Harmar, a Revolutionary veteran, was ap-

pointed Commander-in-Chief of the United States army Septem-

ber 29, 1789, and was at once directed to proceed against the

Indians. He centered a force of some fifteen hundred men at

Fort Washington (Cincinnati). His army consisted of some

three hundred regulars and eleven hundred "militia," which

really meant indiscriminate volunteers mostly from Kentucky,

aged men and inexperienced boys, many of whom had never

fired a gun; "there were guns without locks and barrels without

stocks, borne by men who did not know how to oil a lock or fit

a flint." With this "outfit" General Harmar proceeded (Sep-

tember 30, 1790), into the heart of the Indian country, around

the head waters of the Maumee and the Miami. The Indians,

less than two hundred, say the historians, led by the Miami

warrior Chief Little Turtle, divided the army, defeated and

routed them, Harmar, chagrined and humiliated retreated to

Fort Washington after suffering great loss of men. It was a

stunning blow for the New Republic, and created dismay and

terror among the Ohio settlers. The Indians were highly elated

and emboldened to further and more aggressive attacks upon their

white enemies. It was now evident to the government that large

measures must be taken to establish the authority of the United

States among the Indians and protect their Ohio settlements.

Washington called Governor St. Clair to Philadelphia, and with

the approval of Congress placed him in command of an army

to be organized for a new Indian expedition.

 

 

ST. CLAIR'S EXPEDITION.

October 4, 1781, General St. Clair, at the head of some three

thousand troops, hardly better in quality than those under Har-

mar, set out from Fort Washington. The plan was to proceed

northward along the present western line of the state and estab-

lish a line of forts to be properly maintained as permanent points

for military operation and protection. Forts Hamilton, St. Clair

• 33
 

428       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

and Jefferson, the latter near Greenville, were erected. But when

the expedition, now about twenty-five hundred strong, had reached

a branch of the Wabash in what is now Mercer county, some

thirty miles from Fort Jefferson, it was attacked by an allied

force of Indians, fifteen hundred strong under Little Turtle. It

was a desperate, irregular combat, the troops were completely

demoralized and panic stricken, and indulged in "a most igno-

minious flight," with the woeful loss of over six hundred killed

and two hundred and fifty wounded, a loss equal to that of

the American army at Germantown, when General Washington

suffered one of the worst defeats and greatest losses of the Rev-

olution. Great public odium rested on St. Clair, and he asked

that a committee by Congress be appointed to investigate his

conduct in the battle. It was done and the report fully exoner-

ated him. In all the story of Washington's life there is no more

human passage than that which narrates how the news of this

calamity was received by him on a December day while he was

at dinner. It is related that on this occasion the dignified and

impassive president gave way to wrath and profanity. The In-

dian question had now become more serious than ever before,

and there was great danger of the disaffection spreading among

the Six Nations. The retention of the posts and the complicity

of the English agents and garrisons with the Indians, was cause

for much parleying between the American government and the

English cabinet. The people of New England were becoming

restless and impatient over the situation. An unsuccessful cam-

paign always brings trouble and condemnation upon the govern-

ment. The condition of affairs tested the sagacity and diplo-

macy of Washington, the wisdom of Congress and the patience

and confidence of the people. It was evident that the mutual

interests, and indeed, combined efforts of the British and the

Indians in Ohio, must be overcome by no indecisive measures,

before the Republic could achieve the territorial independence

which was thought to be assured by the Paris treaty of 1783.

Washington anxiously scanned the list of officers for a reliable

successor to St. Clair. The choice finally fell upon Anthony

Wayne, the dashing, intrepid hero of Ticonderoga, Germantown,

Monmouth and the stormer of Stony Point. The appointment

• 34
 

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  429   caused the English some solicitude. They had heard of Wayne. Mr. George Hammond, the English Minister to the American government wrote home that Wayne was "the most active, vigi- lant and enterprising officer in the American army, but his tal- ents were purely military." But they were sufficient.     WAYNE'S EXPEDITION. Wayne arrived at Fort Washington April, 1793, and by October had recruited his army and was ready to move. He

cautiously crept his way into the interior as far as Fort Green- ville, which he erected, and where he spent the winter, and from whence he forwarded a detachment of several hundred to build Fort Recovery, in commemoration of the defeat of St. Clair, at that point. This fortification was attacked by the advancing Indians, one thousand strong, under their puissant general Lit- tle Turtle, who made a desperate charge only to be repulsed and compelled to retreat. It was their first serious check. In Au- gust, 1794, Wayne with his "Legion," as his army was called,

• 35
 

430       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

 

reached the confluence of the Auglaize and Maumee. Here he

established another link in the chain of forts, named Defiance.

The Indian allies had concentrated about thirty miles down the

river at the rapids of the Maumee, near the British fort, Miami,

one of the retained posts and recently re-occupied by an English

garrison from Detroit, under the direction of John G. Simcoe,

lieutenant governor of Canada. Wayne's forces were three thou-

sand in number, by this time well trained, hardened and trusty.

The Indians with some three hundred Canadians and English

were as numerous. In the hope of avoiding the impending bloody

encounter, Wayne offered the enemy proposals of peace. Many

chiefs, the warriors and statesmen of their people, were present.

Blue Jacket, the Shawnee chief, was for war to the bitter end.

His people, he argued, had crushed Braddock, Harmar and St.

Clair, and Wayne's turn was next. Little Turtle, the Miami, was

for peace. True, he allowed, they had defeated the other gen-

erals of the "long knives" and turned back their expeditions,

but Wayne was different. He had recently tasted of his valor.

Now they would meet foemen worthy their steel. But the British

had rallied the Indian courage and bravado; had urged them to

confederation and a renewal of their claims for the Ohio coun-

try; and had nerved them to unrelenting resistance against the

usurping Americans. The British stockades of Fort Miami, like

a sheltering shadow, were close at hand, and the Indian cause

could not fail. There was no alternative but battle. The field

chosen was at the Falls of the Maumee on the wind swept banks,

covered with fallen timber. The ground gave the Indians every

advantage, as they secreted themselves in the tall grass amid the

branches and roots of the upturned trees. Wayne directed his

front line to advance and charge with trailed arms, to arouse the

crouching Indians from their coverts at the point of the bayonet,

and when they should arise to deliver a close and well pointed

fire on their backs, followed by an instant charge before they

might load again. The savages were outwitted and overwhelmed.

They fled in wild dismay toward the British fort. Wayne's

triumph (August 20, 1794,) was complete, the brilliant and dash-

ing victory of Stony Point was won again. Wayne had become

the hero of the second Revolution in the Western wilderness,

• 36
 

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  431

 

as he had been the victor of early years in the historic fields of

New England. The name of Wayne was ever after a terror to the

savages. They called him the "Tornado" and the "Whirlwind."

He was mettlesome as the eagle, swift and unerring as the arrow,

The Indian warfare was shattered. Moreover, the Indians were

crushed and incensed at the perfidy of the British, who not only

failed to come to their assistance with troops from Detroit as they

had promised, but closed the gates of Fort Miami to them

on their panic stricken retreat from Fallen Timbers. At Green-

ville Wayne was visited by numerous chiefs and warriors to

whom he explained that the United States having conquered

Great Britain, were entitled to the peaceful possession of the

lake posts, and that the new nation was anxious to make terms

with the Indians to protect them in the occupation of abundant

hunting grounds and to compensate them for the lands needed

by the white settlers. The Indians were prepared to negotiate

but the British agents, John Graves Simcoe, Alexander McKee

and Joseph Brant, stimulated them to continue hostilities; advised

the Indians to make pretense of peace so as to throw the Amer-

icans off their guard and thus permit another and more success-

ful attack. These Machiavelian British miscreants even advised

the Indians to convey by deed their Ohio land to the king of

England in trust so as to give the British a pretext for assisting

them, and in case the Americans refused to abandon their posts

and quit their alleged possessions and go beyond the Ohio on the

West and South, the allied British and Indians might make a

general attack and drive the Americans across the river boundary.

It will thus be seen that England was still (1794) fighting

the Revolution and endeavoring to regain in Ohio what she had

lost a dozen years before on the New England coast and the in-

land western frontier. It is not claimed that the English minis-

try was a direct and intentional party to these mischievous machin-

ations,but it is certain that Canadian authorities and British agents

engaged in them and that the principal-the home government in

London-could have known and should have known and was thus

really responsible, if not immediately guilty. Indeed the Lon-

don government did know for the American government made

constant complaints. English history is replete with the acts of

• 37
 

432       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.   treaty violation on her part. The practice did not cease with the period we are dealing with. But the Indians began to realize their critical condition. They had learned at dear cost the power and skill of the Americans and the trickery and treachery of the Brit- ish. GREENVILLE TREATY. The famous Greenville Treaty was entered into in August, 1795, between General Wayne for the United States and the repre- sentatives, over eleven hundred in all, and some eleven leading In-

dian tribes. The Indians for certain considerations, payments, annuities, etc., agreed "to cede and relinquish forever all their claims to the lands lying eastwardly and southwardly of a general boundary line" --all of the present Ohio, save the northwest cor- ner comprising about one-fourth of the state, which portion the Indians held as a Reservation till 1818, when the United States bought this land and the Indians then thereon moved westward. Almost contemporaneus with the Greenville Treaty the Jay Treaty between the United States and England was effected, which pro- vided for the evacuation of the British posts in the United States

• 38
 

Ohio in Early History and During the Revolution.  433

 

by June 1796. Thus the Revolution beginning with Dunmore's

War in 1774, lasted in Ohio for twenty-two years, till 1796. It

continued in Ohio for a period three times as long as in New Eng-

land. But at last the American Revolution even in Ohio was

ended, and a period of peace and prosperous growth was per-

mitted. The settlements in the southern, eastern and northern

parts of the state multiplied apace. Rapid strides were made in

population and cultivation statewards. From the achievement

of national independence by the Treaty of Paris, 1783, to the pass-

age of the Ordinance of 1787 the great west so far as it was gov-

erned at all was governed by the Continental Congress. When

the new Federal government went into operation, March 4, 1789,

it became necessary to make such changes in the territorial stat-

utes as would conform them to the new order of things. For the

most part these changes were that the territorial officers should

hereafter be appointed by the President instead of by Congress. By

1790 the thirteen original states had each in turn ratified the new

constitution. Vermont joined the sisterhood in the following

year. Kentucky was the first of the western states to be received,

with Tennessee next.

 

 

OHIO ADMITTED TO THE UNION.

By the Ordinance of 1787 whenever the Northwest Territory

should contain five thousand free males, of adult age, the people

should be allowed to elect a legislature and enact all necessary

laws for the territorial government. The required population

having been reached, in pursuance of a call issued by Governor

St. Clair, a legislature was elected on December 3, 1798. There

were twenty-two members representing the nine counties into

which the territory had been divided, viz: Hamilton, Ross, Wayne,

Adams, Washington, Jefferson, St. Clair, Randolph and Knox.

The first legislative session convened at Cincinnati, September

16, 1799 and elected William Henry Harrison territorial delegate

to the National Congress. On account of the wide expanse of

country embraced within the Northwest Territory, it was found

difficult to administer the affairs of government in its remote parts.

To obviate this difficulty the Territory was divided by Congress

Vol. X - 28.

• 39
 

434       Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.

in 1800 into the territories of Ohio and Indiana, the latter having

its capital at Vincennes. Early in 1802 a census was taken in the

eastern (Ohio) division of the territory and it was found to con-

tain forty-five thousand and twenty-eight persons. The Ordi-

nance of 1787 required sixty thousand inhabitants to entitle the

district to become a state and yet a petition was made to Congress

for a law empowering the inhabitants of that division to call a con-

vention and form a constitution preparatory to the establishment

of a state government. On April 30, 1802 an Enabling Act was

passed by Congress authorizing the call of a convention to form

a state constitution. The election was held, as provided in said

Enabling Act, to choose the members of the constitutional conven-

tion to meet at Chillicothe on the first Monday of November, 1802.

The convention assembled on that date. It was in session until

November 29. It agreed upon the form of a state constitution

and did not require its submission to the people, as this was not

conditioned by the Enabling Act of Congress. When the state

convention adopted the constitution for the proposed new state, it

also passed a resolution accepting the Enabling Act of April 30,

1802, by Congress with certain other alterations and modifications

which it asked Congress to grant. Congress formulated these

new concessions into a bill which it passed March 3, 1803, and

Ohio became the seventeenth state in the Union on March 1,

1803.

[The date when Ohio actually became a state has been in great dispute,

but the better authorities agree upon March 1, 1803. For a full and satis-

factory discussion of this question see the article by Rush R. Sloane,

"When Did Ohio Become a State," Vol. IX, page 278, Ohio Archaeological

and Historical Publications- E 0. R.]

• 40