Ohio; first fruits of the ordinance of 1787

Front matter

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Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

L Introductory 1

II. The Wilderness . . „ „ „ . 10

Appendix

No. 1. The King’s Proclamation in 1763 : an Extract 419

No. 2. Nathan Dane as to the Authorship of the

Ordinance of 1787 422

No. 3. Ballad : “ Sainclaire’s Defeat ”... 427 No. 4. Letter of General Harrison . . . 430

No. 5. The Grape and its Gradual Failure in Ohio 432

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Chapter I. Introductory

Ohio — now third among the States in her strength of population — was admitted as one of the United States in 1803, and in the order of time, therefore, is seventeenth in the galaxy of the Union.

In the broad domain between the Ohio River, the Mississippi, and the chain of northern lakes known of old as the Northwest Territory, this State comprehends most of the space between the Ohio River and Lake Erie ; and usually is estimated to be about two hundred miles square, an area of 25,600,000 acres. The Domesday-book, or tax duplicate of the State, for the year 1883, showed that 26,713,421 acres of land were returned in that year, to which the acres of the cities and towns should be added. The returns for the year previous were 25,507,981 acres, and those of 1884 were but 24,971,170 ; rendering it somewhat difficult to ascertain officially just how large a state Ohio is.

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Its northerly extreme is at the northeast corner, close upon the forty-second parallel of latitude. Its most southerly point is in the bend of the Ohio River, opposite the boundary line between West Virginia and Kentucky, or about thirty-eight and a half degrees north latitude.

The landmark of the State is the ridge of hills dividing the basin of the Ohio from that of the great lakes. It begins east of Buffalo, and, following the general course of the lake shore, enters Ohio near the line between the counties of Ashtabula and Trumbull, thence extending diagonally south of west across the State. The contiguity of these basins is such that Lake Chautauqua, a feeder of the Ohio, is but nine miles from Lake Erie, and the heads of streams which flow into it are not more than three miles from that lake.

Lake Chautauqua is said to be 726 feet above Lake Erie ; but as the Ohio River at Pittsburg is but 172 feet above that level, it would seem that this must be more nearly the height of Lake Chautauqua above the ocean. At the Muskingum the level of the Ohio at low water is eight feet below that of Lake Erie. At the Scioto it is ninety feet below the lake, and at Cincinnati 133 feet. The lake level being 564 feet above that of the ocean, the altitudes at these points will thus appear.

The State, therefore, lies in a zone and environments which, with other conditions to be men-

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tioned, afford a double climate and temperature, signally favorable to a variety of soil and products. The summers of southern Ohio, and the winters in the northern part, are sometimes intemperate, but the spring and autumn, in both sections, compensate for the excess. The equable temperature which Lake Erie diffuses upon the adjoining country has proved of immense value to orchards, vineyards, and pastures, while in the southern part of the State these have suffered much deterioration in fifty years.

The geological formation of the State is most interesting, but cannot adequately be sketched in this narrow compass, and from recent developments will, perhaps, require to be reconsidered. The outcrop produces the elevated table land extending from Pennsylvania southwesterly toward the heads of the Scioto, Miami, and Auglaise rivers, crowned with broken hills, which, according to railway and geological reports, rise in Richland County to an elevation of 802 feet, and in Logan County 773 feet above the lake level, or 1,366 feet in the former, and 1,337 feet in the latter, above the ocean. These, if correct, are the highest points in the State, though not so reported in early times.

The water-shed, thus traversing the State, has divided the rivers uniformly into a course northwardly to the lake or southwardly to the Ohio ; of incalculable advantage in the early growth of the country, when these waterways were almost

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the only channels for transporting its heavy productions to a market. Their heads are so closely interlaced in the highlands, that the Indians and early traders easily transferred their light canoes from one to the other. The great valley of the Maumee, or Miami of the Lakes, and those of the Sandusky, the Cuyahoga, and several lesser streams, drain the northern part of the State into Lake Erie and the St. Lawrence. The Mahoning, Muskingum, Hocking, Scioto, and the two Miamis carry off the waters of a larger surface to the Ohio and the Gulf of Mexico. These latter streams were once so considerable that, in the freshets, valuable cargoes of provisions were sent regularly to New Orleans in the Kentucky boats better known as the flatboat, and in keel-boats. In the early period there was a confident theory that the streams increased as the country was settled. It seems many severe droughts had occurred. The mouth of the Little Miami, as General Butler reported in 1783, was literally dried up. Captain Trent related that in crossing over from Mad River to the mouth of the Scioto River, in 1752, his horses and dogs died of thirst, not a stream or spring being found. But time has reversed the theory. Of all these rivers, the Maumee barely holds its own.

This happy intervening of rivers, valleys, and uplands, with a soil nowhere sterile, but generally rich or fertile, covered with forests or open woodlands, and spreading out in many parts into

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savannas or natural meadows, formerly known as prairies, wet or dry, struck the hardy pioneers as a land made for their happiness, and unhappily, also, as being entirely insufficient for them and the natives both. The dry prairies, such as the Pickaway Plains, were prolific of crops. Wet prairies were found here and there in all parts of the State, but most extensively in the central and northwest quarter. They were luxuriantly clothed in grasses, wild rice, and flowering plants, changing with the seasons, and of gaudiest hues. Clumps and groves of the black-jack were interspersed, like islands, through their flat and oceanlike expanse. Beautiful as they were, their features were often tiresome to the traveler, who, after his day’s journey through the soft mire, fancied in looking around that he was just where he had started in the morning. The southeastern quarter of the State, on the contrary, is serrated with hills, and though not so fertile contains hidden treasures of mineral, which in later days have justified its settlers as wiser than they knew. All parts of the State were peculiarly rich in game. The river, the lake, and the inland combined to form a country which the red man and the white alike admired and coveted as a garden of delights. No wonder that the savage died rather than yield it ; no wonder that enterprising spirits in the old settlements were eager to enjoy a land so attractively pictured by all who came back from it ; the more the pity that, between

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these conflicting passions, justice and mercy could not have upheld the pious Moravians in their effort to devise a way for an equal enjoyment by both. But as this was not to be, we shall find nature’s bounteous gifts enhanced to the white race by the wisdom of Congress in the first laws which it impressed upon the new soil ; most vital of which was the great ordinance of 1787, and the provision inserted by Mr. Dane, almost fortuitously it seems, at the last moment of its passage, extirpating slavery, already introduced by the French, and dedicating the soil to the labor of freemen ; an edict by no means so highly prized among the early settlers as now.

Another measure, which added incalculably to this influence, was the law by which the public lands were sold in small tracts and at low prices by the government directly ; free from the exactions of speculators, who might have engrossed all for their own profit. It was, nevertheless, a circumstance of much import that, by the large grants of land previously conceded by the government to the holders of Virginia military certificates, and to the Ohio and the Miami companies, the first colonization of the State, in different quarters, by bodies of emigrants of several and distinct origins, imparted characteristics and peculiarities which even now strongly diversify the people of these different sections.

In less than a century Ohio has become more populous than all the thirteen colonies when they

IN TROD UCTORY .

declared independence. Such a growth would be marvelous but for the equal strides with which her sister states of the Northwest Territory are advancing under the same auspices and policy. But what renders the growth of Ohio phenomenal, as compared with these her sister states, is, that for forty years Ohioans have been largely an emigrating people. Vast numbers of them have, like their fathers, gone farther West for cheaper land and new homes, and Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, and the states on the Pacific contain well-nigh a million of the sons of Ohio or their descendants.

The city population has already outrun the ordinary proportion of the interior states. Besides Cincinnati, with an estimated population of 300,000, and Cleveland with its 200,000, there are fifteen cities having more than 10,000 each ; chief of which are Columbus, the capital, Dayton, and Toledo. But the population and wealth of the State are still principally agricultural, and when the public lands shall ultimately be taken up, in the enormous market kept open by the emigrant and naturalization laws, the superior productiveness of the old territory of the Northwest, as a food-supplier, will probably be found unequalled by any portion of the continent.

The changes wrought upon the face of the country are equally striking. The Indian, notwithstanding the noble effort of the Moravians, has vanished. Not one of his villages is left. The great forests, the beautiful prairies, the flow-

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ing rivers and their fresh springs, have shrunk away, and the farm, the village, and the city have so far supplanted them that already forestry associations are anxiously agitating measures to save what is left. Eighty-eight counties, each with its court-house and cluster of local institutions, divide and dot the administrative map of the State. The great national road, earliest link of Ohio with the Atlantic States, and two canals uniting the lakes and the Ohio, invaluable still, though attempts have been made to destroy them, were the early pride of the State. Then came the era of turnpikes, and this in turn was succeeded by the railway system, which, numbering more than a hundred companies, great and small, has rendered every county in the State accessible by rail. Among these railways are links in the vast transcontinental lines; pointing out the narrow belt between the Ohio and Lake Erie, at the Pennsylvania line, as the natural passage between the oceans.

The rise of Ohio, in less than a century, from these wilds, will be the subject of the following chapters. They will not form a mere chronicle of the changes which have occurred since the foundation of the State ; rather, they are sketches interweaving with annals some account of the early combination of emigrants, events and incidents, which has led to the development of the State and the traits of its people, as they now present themselves. Such sketches may be com

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nected without being strictly continuous. The details, so abundantly supplied in the many local histories of the State, must necessarily be restricted by the proportions of this volume. As a centenary memoir, its purpose is to set forth the foundations of the State rather than its full growth.

Chapter II. The Wilderness

The dawn of the history of Ohio appears about the middle of the last century. There are stories and traditions, and some imperfect relations of an earlier date, but they are too uncertain to be at all credible as history.

At that period the region now occupied by the State of Ohio, which has become the gateway to the great West, was an almost unbroken wilderness, without ruler or law, and tenanted only by the wild beasts or a race of wilder men. It was a vast waste of luxuriant nature, where, amid scenes apparently of primeval solitude, the explorer might have thought that war’s invading foot had never trod. Wild and neglected as these solitudes seemed to be, there were visible monuments of a prehistoric age, and also buried relics of extinct races of men and animals. Throughout the eastern valley of the Mississippi, and to some extent west of it, there are huge works of men not only without a history, but of whom the red men first met by the Europeans had neither tradition nor legend. They were dwelling among these ruins without the least curiosity as to their builders. The keenest efforts of explorers to penetrate

THE WILDERNESS.

their origin and antiquity are still baffled. The most remarkable works of the people known as the “ Mound Builders ” are probably to be found in Ohio ; notably those in or near the valleys of the Miamis, the Scioto, and the Muskingum. It is supposed that ten thousand of them, large and small, are dispersed over the State. It is certain that some of them are not of the prehistoric age. Later races, and to some extent the modern Indians, have not only utilized the older mounds for burial purposes, but appear to have constructed some for themselves. A difference is observed, also, between the lighter forms of embankment, in the works near Lake Erie, and the heavy and more elevated ramparts in the middle and southern parts of Ohio. This has led to the conclusion that the former, which are found also in New York and further east, were the base of stockade forts built by the later races. The extensive lines at Newark and Portsmouth, each of which amounts to about fifteen miles of lineal embankment, and the heavy works at Fort Ancient, Circleville, Chillicothe, and Marietta, though not so extended as the former, are the most important. Military men, such as General Wayne and General Harrison, were of opinion, however, that some of these works were built for enclosures rather than as fortifications.

The exploring party of Major Long to the St. Peter’s reported a singular observation that in these ancient fortifications the ditch is found

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inside of the rampart. They report that their examination of Fort Necessity, the little earthwork thrown up by Major Washington in his first encounter with the French and Indians in 1754, showed this peculiarity, and hence was inferred to “ comport better with Indian warfare.” Bishop Madison, a diligent inquirer into these ancient works, regarded this peculiarity as proving that they were not for military purposes. Colonel Whittlesey, in his survey of the works at Newark, found a circular embankment twelve feet high, with an interior ditch seven feet in depth. The ditch inside of the parapet, he stated, is not uncommon.

The mounds are the most numerous as well as most promising objects for exploration. It is to their contents, mainly, that researches as to the key or clue to the mysterious builders must be directed ; and they are various, not only in their forms and dimensions, but in the purposes which they are supposed to have served. Some, like those at Cahokia and Grave Creek, are of huge proportions, the former having a base of six acres and height of ninety feet, flattened at the top to a platform of five acres. Some are sepulchres ; others were used for altars or religious rites ; those of a truncated form, or terraces, are supposed to have been for residences ; and many are extended on lines, or in an order, indicating that they were connected with defensive works, as advanced posts or signal stations.

THE WILDERNESS.

There has been little discrimination in the claims made for the antiquity of all these works, but even as to those agreed to be the most archaic there is much dispute. Judge Force, who has diligently studied the various hypotheses, is inclined to consider the lapse of a thousand years sufficient to explain all the possible conditions for construction which have been presented. The absence of all history or trace of the people who constructed them he does not regard as significant, inasmuch as it would be entirely accounted for by the successive annihilation of each other by transient tribes or nations sweeping over the continent, and that a few centuries only would suffice for complete obliteration. A simple circumstance referred to by him disposes of the argument drawn from the existence of the aged trees surmounting many of the mounds and embankments. No little hillocks are found at these spots to indicate the uprooting of an older growth of trees prostrated either by storms or the decay of age.

Until recently, the labors of antiquarians had unearthed little save bones and ashes of the dead, flint and stone implements, shells and rude pottery, denoting remains of a people superior in some respects, perhaps, to the modern Indian, but not so much advanced as the Mexicans, or even as the Natchez, who are supposed by some to be their relicts. Copper utensils and ornaments, some of them plated, had also been found,

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and the best of these are said to be in the collection of the Historical Society of Wisconsin.

The recent systematic researches of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology at Cambridge, Mass., have been rewarded with richer and more important revelations as to the lost race than any which had previously been brought to light. As a result of the explorations by the Museum staff and some local savans , mounds in the northeast part of Hamilton County, near Cincinnati, have been found to contain, besides human remains and implements and pottery of the common sort, a deposit of thousands of small pearl beads, and, what is esteemed of higher significance, “ masses of iron,” manufactured and unmanufactured. This discovery, and the treasure trove thus exhumed by superior skill under the very eyes of the people of Ohio, and now to be taken away from them, are of sufficient interest to justify a full extract from the report of Mr. Frederick W. Putnam, curator of the Museum : —

“ On the estate of Mr. Michael Turner, in the northeastern corner of Anderson Township, near the Little Miami River, is a group of earthworks which has proved to be in several respects the most important and interesting of the many which have been investigated in Ohio. The whole group embraces thirteen mounds and two earth circles, all of which are enclosed by two circular embankments, one of which is on a hill and is connected with the other by a graded way. Several of the mounds contained altars or basins of burnt

THE WILDERNESS.

clay, on two of which there were literally thousands of objects of interest. Two of these altars, each about four feet square, were cut out and brought to the Museum. Among the objects from the altars are numerous ornaments and carvings unlike anything we have had. One altar contained about two bushels of ornaments made of stone, mica, shells, the canine teeth of bears and other animals, and thousands of pearls. Nearly all these objects are perforated in various ways for suspension. Several of the copper ornaments are covered with native silver, which had been hammered out into thin sheets and folded over the copper. Among these are a bracelet and a bead, and several of the spool-shaped objects which, from discoveries made in other mounds of this group, I now regard as ear ornaments. One small copper pendant seems to have been covered with a thin sheet of gold, a portion of which still adheres to the copper, while other bits of it were found in the mass of materials. This is the first time that native gold has been found in the mounds, although hundreds have been explored, and the small amount found here shows that its use was exceptional. The ornaments cut out of copper and mica are very interesting and embrace many forms : among them is a grotesque human profile cut out of a sheet of mica. Several ornaments of this material resemble the heads of animals, whose features are emphasized by a red color, while others are in the forms of circles and bands. Many of the copper ornaments are large and of peculiar shape; others are scrolls, scalloped circles, oval pendants, and other forms. There are about thirty of the singular spool-shaped objects or earrings made of copper, like the two described in the last re-

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port. Three large sheets of mica were on this altar, and several finely chipped points of obsidian, chalcedony, and chert were in the mass of materials. Several pendants cut from micaceous schist are of a unique style of work. There are also portions of a circular piece of bone, over the surface of which are incised figures, and flat pieces of shell similarly carved. Several masses of native copper were on the altar.

“ But by far the most important things found on thh altar were the several masses of meteoric iron and the ornaments made from this metal. One of these is half of a spool-shaped object or ear ornament, like those made of copper with which it was associated. Another ear ornament of copper is covered with a thin plating of the iron, in the same manner as others were covered with silver. There is also a folded and corrugated band of iron, of the same shape and of about the same size as the band of copper found in a mound in Tennessee, and figured in the last report. Three of the masses of iron have been more or less hammered into bars, as if for the purpose of making some ornament or implement, and another is apparently in the natural shape in which it was found. As all these iron masses were exposed to great heat on the altar, they have become more or less oxidized ; and two of them were so much changed in external character that several good mineralogists, as well as myself, mistook them for limonite, or bog iron, which had probably formed since the mound was erected. The discovery of iron in the mound was of course a matter of great interest, from whichever side it was viewed, and it was therefore a matter of the first importance that its character should be accurately determined. For this

THE WILDERNESS.

purpose I have been fortunate in securing the cooperation of Dr. L. P. Kinnicutt, assistant in chemistry in Harvard College, who has become much interested in the work, and has made careful analyses of all the masses and objects of iron. Dr. Kinnicutt has found that each and all contained nickel, and that all the iron is unquestionably meteoric. As this is the first time that objects made of meteoric iron have been determined from the mounds, it is of great interest, and it will now be necessary to examine anew the statements made by Hildreth and Atwater in relation to the traces of iron which they found in mounds in Ohio over sixty years ago.

u It is worth recapitulating here that native gold, silver, copper, and iron were all found on the altar of the large mound in this group, and that all were manufactured into ornaments simply by hammering. A mass of lead ore, galena, was found in another mound of this group. On another altar, in another mound of the group, were several terra-cotta figures of a character heretofore unknown from the mounds/’

This discovery suggests possibilities which may prove marvelous. The prodigious number of pearls found in this tomb, the tomb probably of some grandee, would be incredible were it not that larger and finer specimens have been taken from the Little Miami River. But vastly larger numbers were plundered by De Soto from the graves at Cutifachiqui (Savannah river), said by the Gentleman of Elvas, a veracious man, to have amounted to “ fourteen arrobas (three hundred and ninety-two pounds), and little babies and

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birds made of them,” a point which may have some bearing upon the Peabody discovery. The pertinent question, however, is not so much as to the numbers, but how the perforation of the beads was accomplished. Were the lapidaries, whose wheels and drills did such cunning work, of the same race as the builders of the mounds ?

Whence or whither these people proceeded is an unsolved problem. From the concentration of the heavier and apparently more military works in southwestern Ohio, we can conceive that here they finally encountered the foe, equally obscure, who overwhelmed them. Extermination seems to have overtaken both alike. The subject admits of such an infinite deal of conjecture and credulity, that for the present it must be relegated to a place with the unknown status of the “Ice Sheet” and “Boulder” periods in Ohio history.

Still another mystery of the wilderness remains in the traces of the huge beast described by Cuvier as the Mastodon giganteus , and by Buff on as the Mastodon Ohioticus , though designated also by the latter as of the mammoth species. The most noted trace of this creature is at Big Bone Lick, a salt lick or spring in Kentucky, situated near the Ohio River, and about twenty-six miles below the Big Miami. The great deposit of bones found imbedded in the mud at this spot suggests that it may have been the meeting-place for terrific battles as well as refreshment, though

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possibly these are remains of the sick rather than of the vanquished. Explorations and removal of the bones preserved in this mineral soil were made at an early period. Longueil, the French commander at Detroit, sent one of the tusks to Paris in 1739. Captain Gist, in his exploration of Ohio in the winter of 1750-51, obtained two jaw-teeth, each more than four pounds in weight, and like fine ivory when cleaned. Robert Smith, a trader with whom he lodged at the Tawighti fort (Piqua), had found them seven years previously at Big Bone Lick, and assured Gist that the rib -bones of the largest of these animals whose remains he found there were eleven feet in length, and the skull six feet in breadth across the eye sockets. Several of the horns, as he styled the tusks, were more than five feet in length and as much as a man could carry. The French Indians, he reported, had taken away many of these remains. George Croghan, the Western deputy of Sir William Johnson, and also Captains Hutchins and Gordon of the British army, distinguished as Western geographers, all visited the place before the revolutionary war, and from their reports and specimens the scientific men of Europe derived their principal information.

The immense proportions of the skull described by Smith to Gist are confirmed by the size of tusks found elsewhere, and much larger than those which he has reported. Several have been unearthed in the deep gravel bed on which part of

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the city of Cincinnati is built. The largest was exposed in excavating this bank for the building of a public school house, on the north side of Third Street, between Elm and Plum streets. It was ivory-like, slightly curving towards a point, and almost perfect as it lay horizontally in the gravel, about twelve feet below the surface. Both ends were worn off by percolation. What remained was fully seven feet in length, and the lines, if produced, would have extended it to nine feet. Being saturated with water, and unskillfully handled, this rare and valuable specimen fell to pieces before getting into proper hands.

Descending to the times when the history of Ohio begins to emerge, in a fragmentary way, it would seem that late in the seventeenth century, or early in the eighteenth, the Indian tribes had become distributed through the country now comprised in Ohio in about the following ranges: The part east of the Muskingum, together with the country on the upper Ohio and Alleghany rivers, was held by the Mingoes (Senecas). The Wyandots (Hurons), after being driven from the St. Lawrence across upper Canada to the northwest and then back again, had seated themselves opposite Detroit, but a large body of them had also taken their abode on the Sandusky River, extending as far as the Scioto ; and at the time of Gist’s tour had their chief village on the Tuscarawas, near its junction with the Wahlhonding. Certain clans of the Miamis, known then as the

THE WILDERNESS.

Twightwees (Tawightis or Tawixtis), probably Piankeshaws and Ouiatanons (Weas), extended across from the Wabash to the upper valleys of the Big and Little Miami rivers, having a fort and large town on or near the present site of Piqua. The Shawanees were on the Ohio, Muskingum, and Scioto, their chief town being on both sides of the Ohio, at the mouth of the Scioto. The Delawares at this time were scattered among the Mingoes, Shawanees, and Wyandots. There were Kickapoos, and bands of Northwestern Indians, Pottawatomies, Ottawas, and Chippewas in villages on the Maumee. There were also small detached bands or villages of Cherokees and Caughnawagas ; the former in Ross County, the latter in the Western Reserve.

These were the local tribes, but none of them were indigenous. There was a theory, presently to be explained, that all of them were admitted to this region by permission of the Five Nations. The latter had not yet become Six Nations ; the Tuscaroras not being incorporated with them until about the year 1713. The Mingoes were not a nation, but refractory wanderers or outlaws of the Five Nations, chiefly Senecas and Cayugas ; the Senecas being the western flank of the Five Nations, and extending from the Genesee to the Alleghany River. These borderers became known as the Mingoes ; a name of bad repute, as readers of the Leather Stocking tales will remember, and derived from Mengwe, an appellation given by