Editorialana. 101
under discussion; the tide was against
the enactment on the ground
that the Society did not merit the
State's aid. Mr. Griffin hastily summoned
the writer to the cloak-room of the
House and asked a full explanation of
the situation. It was given. Mr. Griffin
returned to the floor and in a
most vigorous argument and enthusiastic
plea changed the prevailing senti-
ment and carried the bill through. He
was the friend of the Society and
deserves the kindliest thought and most
grateful memory of its members.
To the surviving wife, son Mark and
daughter Ethel of Toledo
and daughter Mrs. N. Coe Stewart, of
Worcester, Mass., we extend the
sympathy and well wishes of the members
of the Ohio State Archaeo-
logical and Historical Society.
OHIO AND THE WESTERN RESERVE.
Mr. Alfred Mathews, recently made
honorary member of the Ohio
State Archaeological and Historical
Society, has given the public one of
the most valuable little books on Ohio
history that has been issued
within recent times. The book bears the
title Ohio and her Western
Reserve, with a story of three states,
the states being Connecticut,
Pennsylvania and Ohio. Mr. Mathews is a
tireless student of history.
He has apparently exhausted the subject
of his volume. With great
detail, but always in a delightful and
polished style he gives the history
of the Connecticut colony, its claim of
a wide strip of territory across
Pennsylvania and the northern part of
Ohio into Michigan and Indiana.
His chapter on Wyoming gives the most
complete and satisfactory his-
tory of the Connecticut settlement at
Wyoming, the tragic history of
that settlement, the battle and massacre
of Wyoming, that we have ever
seen in print. It will be recalled that
this settlement by the Connecticut
colonists at Wyoming was the first
pioneer settlement of the Connecti-
cut people within the boundary of Penn's
province on the Susquehanna
river, and within the territory claimed
by Connecticut, and was made
largely to preempt and establish by
right of possession the title of Connecti-
cut to that western extension. "It
represented the first overt act of an
inter-colonial intrusion; the initial
movement of that persistent, general,
systematic invasion which resulted in
the settlement of Wyoming and the
establishment of a Connecticut
government on Pennsylvania soil; a de-
termined effort to dismember the state
and to create another, to be
carved from the territory of
Pennsylvania." Wyoming was founded by
what was known as the
Connecticut-Susquehanna company, which made
its settlement with about two hundred
Connecticut men about a mile
above the site of Wilkesbarre in the
Wyoming valley in the early spring
of 1762. As early as 1754 the company
sent agents to Albany to purchase
from the Indians of the Six Nations the
land in the Wyoming Valley.
This was all done under the protest of
the Pennsylvanians and their
102 Ohio Arch. and His. Society Publications.
governor Hamilton. What was known as the
"Pennamite" war subse-
quently ensued. There was much incipient
warfare against and perse-
cution of the Wyoming settlers until the
early summer of 1778 when the
Wyoming wives besought their husbands to
return from the Continental
Army of the Revolution to their Wyoming
homes to protect their threat-
ened destruction. At the same time these
people called upon the Con-
tinental Congress and the Pennsylvania
authorities for justice and pro-
tection for the threatened settlement.
But the sorm could not be stayed.
The Indian and British and Tory forces
were concentrated at Tioga on
the Susquehanna some distance above
Wyoming. "No more heterogen-
eous herd of murderous soldiers and
savages was ever seen in America.
Its total is not far from twelve hundred
fighting men. There were
four hundred British provincials with a
rabble of Tories from New Jersey,
New York and Pennsylvania. There were
not far from seven hundred
Indians chiefly Senecas with detachments
from the Mohawks and other
tribes. This army was in almost every
conceivable dress from the mar-
tial dignity of trained soldiers down to
the ruffian type of the low
abandoned and depraved of the Tories.
The regulars were in smart uni-
forms. Col. John Butler's Rangers in
rich green; the Tories and rene-
gades in every form of backwoods
rusticity and tattered motley; the
Indians half naked were in savage attire
with their war-paint and bar-
barous adornment varied with martial
trappings of soldiers slain in
northern battles." This nondescript army was under the command
of
Colonel John Butler a remote relative of
Colonel Zebulon Butler who
was in command at Wyoming. The real
leader of the Indian contingent
under Colonel John Butler was Catherine
Montour a halfbreed and reputed
daughter of one of the French Governors
of Canada. She had been
liberally educated, and the best society
of colonial Philadelphia, Albany
and New York had petted and feted her as
a romantic and engaging
young woman in whose veins coursed a
mingling of cultured and savage
blood. She was now the widow of chief,
known as Queen Esther, and
enjoyed the repute of a seeress. She
possessed peculiar power over her
Indian race.
The forces at the Wyoming settlement and
fort numbered all told
only about three hundred men, and nearly
all of these, according to
the inscription of the monument erected
in their honor, were "The un-
disciplined, the youthful and the
aged." There were two hundred and
thirty enrolled men, many in fact
minors, and the remaining seventy were
all either boys or old men. They were
divided into six companies, and
mustered at Forty Fort on the west side
of the river where the families
of the settlers on the east side had
taken refuge. Such was the situation
on that memorable day, the third of
July, 1778, when the British and
Indians having advanced intrepidly down
the valley were finally met in
battle. The result was inevitable. Col.
Zebulon Butler's brave three
hundred, like those of Leonidas at
Thermopylae, were cut down. One
Editorialana. 103
hundred and sixty men were killed, and a
hundred and forty escaped only
to be subsequently captured. A debauch of blood followed for the
special delectation of Queen Esther who
personally participated in the
battle. "That seemingly insane
savage ordered a score of the prisoners
brought before her for torture. They
were compelled to kneel above a
large rock, and then the fanatical fury
chanting a wild song swept swiftly
around the circle and dashed out the
brains of sixteen victims while
the warriors crowded closely about the
scene of butchery expressing their
fierce joy with leaps and
yells." Nearly all of the three
hundred men
were killed in the attack or subsequent
massacre. Of the wretched people
remaining there were made that day in
the valley one hundred and fifty
widows, and nearly six hundred orphans.
Mr. Mathews deals at much length upon
the settlement of the
Western Reserve by the Connecticut
Yankees. This phase in our state
history he entitles "Connecticut
Triumphant in Ohio." He does full
justice to the great influence of the
New England character in its trans-
plantation from Connecticut to the
shores of Lake Erie on the Western
Reserve. The part which the Western
Reserve has played through its
distinguished characters, military,
political, literary and otherwise is
fully set forth. There is a very
admirable and succinct statement of the
origin and nature of the great ordinance
of 1787, and the Marietta settle-
ment which immediately followed the
creation of the North West Terri-
tory. Mr. Mathews also briefly states
the chain of events leading to the
evolution of Ohio from the North West
Territory into statehood. "Ohio
was never formally admitted as all other
states since the original thirteen
have been, to the Union; and it has been
a matter of much contention
as to which one of a half dozen dates is
the true one from which to
compute her age." That of April 30,
1802 is not the true one, that date
was simply the one upon which Congress
passed the first enabling act
paving the way for the admission of Ohio
into the Union. A better
one would be that of November 29, in the
same year, when the consti-
tution was adopted by the convention at
Chillicothe, or January 11, 1803,
when the first state election was held;
but these and several others are
unsupportable for various reasons. On
February 19, 1803, Congress passed
an act for the execution of the laws of
the Union within the state of Ohio,
"and so is the nearest approach to
the act of admission, from which the
existence of other states is determined.
This date has been generally sanc-
tioned by historians as the true one.
But the legislature first assembled
on March 1, 1803, and the Ohio
Archaeological and Historical Society
has officially designated that date to
be the proper one of the state's
origin and it is therefore now generally
so accepted." Mr. Mathews de-
votes an interesting chapter to the
analysis of Ohio's ascendency in the
sisterhood of states. This he attributes
mainly to its mixture of racial
forces. "It has been tritely told
that New England was sown with selected
seed from Old England, but Ohio was sown
with selected seed from all
104 Ohio Arch. and
His. Society Publications.
New England and all the colonies. Her
uniqueness, historically speak-
ing, lies in the fact that hers was the
first soil settled by the United States.
New England was peopled by the Puritans
and others from Old England;
New York by Dutch and English;
Pennsylvania by Quakers and Ger-
mans and Scotch-Irish; Virginia again by
the English but quite differ-
ent from those of Massachusetts and
Connecticut; Maryland by still
another element; and so on. Of the
states not included among the
original thirteen, but admitted to the
Union before Ohio: Vermont was
settled by Massachusetts and New York;
Kentucky by Virginia; and Ten-
nessee by North Carolina; but Ohio was
settled by all of these-by
elements from each and every state in
the confederacy; in other words,
Ohio was settled by the people of the
United States. Ohio was the first
territory to be representative of the
entire people, colonists of English
Puritans and Cavaliers and Quakers, of
Scotch-Irish and Germans. And
thus in a certain senese were not the
Ohioans truly the first Americans?"
THE ACOLHUANS.
This is the age of the historical novel.
It is being produced from the
press ad infinitum if not indeed ad
nauseum but it has remained for
General John Beatty, a life and honored
member of the Ohio State
Archaeological and Historical Society,
to be the author of a prehistoric
novel. General Beatty's book is
therefore unique as a literary feature
of the day. This volume, as confessed in
the apology, purports to be
a free translation from the Norraena of
the story of a man living in the
tenth century. It is the self-told
narrative of the hero Ivarr Bartholds-
son, a grandson of a former king of
Norway, which king spent many
years of his early life in the court of
Athelstan of England. Ivarr with
his father had drifted to Greenland,
whence Ivarr with an adventurous
party travels to the land of the
Acolhuans who occupied the Ohio val-
ley, and were none other than the Mound
Builders of that territory.
The book is thenceforth an account of
the lengthy sojourn of Ivarr among
its prehistoric people, whose customs,
life, habitations, government, and
social system so far as it went, are
ingeniously and in imagination de-
scribed. The author takes this form to
tell what is supposed to be known
about these people who left no written
records. Ivarr in his wanderings
strikes the northern boundary of the
present Ohio at the mouth of the
Sandusky river where was a chief
settlement of the Acolhuans. The
hero and his friends assist these people
in one of their campaigns against
a rival race known as the Skraelings.
There is a naval encounter on the
lake in their rude boats, and a hand to
hand contest with clubs and bows
and arrows on the land. Ivarr visits the
various chief settlements such
as those at Chillicothe, Newark and
Marietta. These Mound Building
settlements are graphically portrayed,
the business and domestic life of