Ohio History Journal

PIPE'S CLIFF.       A. J. BAUGHMAN, MANSFIELD. Pipe's Cliff is the highest point of a ledge of fragmentary rocks that for a mile or more skirt Pleasant Run Valley on the north, nine miles southeast of Mansfield, Richland county, Ohio. The cliff is named for Captain Pipe, a chief of the Monsey

branch of the Delaware In- dian tribe. Captain Pipe's home was at Jeromeville, on the Jerome Fork of the Mo- hican from 1795 to 1812- the period between the sign- ing of the treaty of Green- ville and the war of 1812. He was last seen in these parts at the great feast at Greentown, in 1811. The meaning of that feast was not explained to the white settlers, but is now under- stood to have portended the war of 1812, which soon followed.

The way Pipe's Cliff got its name was as follows: Round Head, an Indian warrior, married Onalaska, a sister of Captain Pipe. He, with his wife and child, were fleeing in 1781, from the Coshocton to the Sandusky country, and had encamped upon the high ledge of rocks, the highest of which is known in history as Pipe's Cliff. In pursuit of this party of Indians was a squad of troops belonging to Colonel Broadhead's expedition against the Indian villages of the forks of the Muskingum, known in history as the "Coshocton campaign." The Indians seeing the troops coming up the valley fired upon them, and the troops (253)

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254       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.   returned volley for volley, and although they could not see the party in ambush on account of the thick foliage, they fired at the place from which the smoke issued. Tradition says that Onalaska, with her pappoose in her arms, received a ball in her breast and fell dead at the foot of the cliff. It is said that Captain Pipe made frequent visits to this cliff where his sister had met such a tragic death--hence the name Pipe's Cliff. Pipe's Cliff has an elevation of over a hundred feet above the valley, of which it commands a fine view. Around the base and along the sides of this ledge of rocks are caves and caverns, whose depths and length have never been explored.

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