THREE CENTURIES OF THE MAUMEE VALLEY
By M. M. QUAIFE
The name "Maumee" is a variant
of Miami, and comes from
the Miami Indian tribe. When the French
first came into the
Northwest they found the Miami living in
eastern Wisconsin.
Following LaSalle's advent in the
Illinois country they moved
southward around Lake Michigan and for
many years (c. 1690-
1702) one of their important towns was located in the present-
day Chicago Loop. Eventually they
journeyed eastward to the
Maumee, with villages at Fort Wayne,
Defiance, and other points,
and their name became permanently
identified with the beautiful
river and valley they had appropriated.
In the era when wilderness was king and
practically all travel
was by water, the Maumee and Wabash
rivers constituted one of
the chief highways of travel between the
Great Lakes and the
Mississippi River system. For this
reason the Maumee Valley is
associated with the earliest activities
of the French in the western
country. Over its possession red race
and white, and French,
British, and American nations for
generations contended. Before
the white man arrived the lovely valley,
"fair as a garden of the
Gods," was the highway of uncounted
war parties from the Great
Lakes journeying southward to wage
against the southern tribes
the long warfare which made of Kentucky
a vacant wilderness
and won for it a name which means
"the dark and bloody ground."
In 1749 the French army of Celoron from
distant Montreal, re-
turning from its mission of warning the
English out of the Ohio
Valley, descended the Maumee from Fort
Wayne to Lake Erie
and Detroit, and a memorial of this
expedition still remains in
the name of Celoron Island, lying in the
mouth of Detroit River.
In 1752, young Charles de Langlade led
his Ottawa warriors from
Mackinac up the Maumee on his mission of
vengeance against
Pickawillany, and the chief, Old
Britain, for the crime of showing
(3)
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL
QUARTERLY
friendship to the English, was "put
in the kettle" and literally
boiled and eaten. In the Pontiac War and
for many weary years
following the opening of the American
Revolution, armies red
and white, too numerous to mention,
traversed the valley. Daniel
Boone and Simon Kenton were but two of
hundreds of Kentucky
and Virginia captives carried northward
to Detroit. Governor
Hamilton ascended the Maumee in 1778
going to ignominious sur-
render at Vincennes, and his conqueror,
George Rogers Clark, ate
out his heart in bitterness because he
could never achieve the re-
turn campaign to Detroit, the goal of
all his endeavors. The
Detroit armies of Captain Bird (1780)
and Captain Caldwell in-
flicted grievous blows upon Kentucky,
and that commonwealth
still annually solemnly mourns the
destruction of her manhood by
Caldwell at the Blue Licks in 1782. British
redcoats garrisoned
Fort Miamis, above Toledo, from 1794 to
1796, and President
Washington sent three armies in
succession (1790-95) northward
from Cincinnati with the Maumee as their
objective; General
Wayne built and named Fort Defiance and
defeated the red man
at Fallen Timbers; and when the British
yielded the northwestern
forts to the United States in 1796, it
was a detachment of soldiers
from the Maumee that first raised the
Stars and Stripes over
Detroit.
The War of 1812 opened in the
Northwest, and the Maumee
again resounded to the tramp of
contending armies. General Hull
pressed northward to disgrace and a
coward's doom at Detroit.
General Winchester led his Kentuckians
to another mournful de-
feat at the River Raisin. General
Harrison built, and British
General Procter twice besieged Fort
Meigs; and Harrison and
Perry together achieved victory and
military fame at Lake Erie
and the Battle of the Thames. American
rule in the Maumee
Valley was thenceforth permanent and
undisputed.
But peace has her achievements no less
notable than those of
arms. In 1816, the British and American
governments entered
upon that policy of border disarmament
and peaceful diplomacy
which, despite many strains, has endured
for a century and a
quarter. Michigan lost her Toledo Strip
to Ohio, but losing,
MAUMEE VALLEY HISTORICAL
PROCEEDINGS 5
gained instead the Upper Peninsula. The
canal connecting Lake
Erie with the Ohio, whose abandoned
ruins add much of present
charm to the Maumee Valley, represents a
great peacetime achieve-
ment whose solid glory was early
obscured by the advent of the
"iron horse." In 1837, the
Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad was put
in operation between Toledo and Adrian.
It was the first railroad
in the Northwest, built when Toledo was
still Port Lawrence, and
the entire population of Michigan was
less than that of Grand
Rapids in 1940. Today, fur
trade and canal, red men and massa-
cres are but dim memories; at either end
of the Maumee are busy,
prosperous cities, whose manufactures
are distributed throughout
the earth to make possible an easier and
better way of life. Still,
as of old, winter snows and summer
sunlight refresh the beautiful
valley; still the noble forests offer
their restful shade to the way-
farer; still the dancing waters press
onward toward their goal in
the bosom of the Atlantic.