Coshocton County, Ohio - Chapter 4: Important Incidents in Coshocton Indian Life Which Have Made This Region Famous in the Country's Indian History, 1909

From the raids and midnight attacks on settlers' log cabins along the Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky border the murderous savages brought back to these valleys the scalps of English colonists by scores. The crude sign of fagots or the hatchet pictured on each reeking scalp grimly told the victim's death at the stake or by the tomahawk.

Sometimes the Indians lost, and the home-coming of the baffled, flying remnant brought only howls and lamentations from the squaws and old men. Then again a successful war party, heralded in advance by runners, would be greeted with yelping joy for its rich plunder, scalps and prisoners.

In the orgies that followed it is curious to note how the squaws were the most hideous in their demonstrations, their taunts, and their tormentings of the prisoners. The victims one by one were forced to run the gauntlet between lines of yelping fiends who stoned them, tripped them, clubbed them, and tomahawked them.

Sometimes a mere caprice decided that a prisoner be spared for adoption. There was a young man eighteen years old captured in Braddock's defeat in 1755 near Pittsburg. He was brought to the Indian village of Tulhillas, where today stands the town of Walhonding, this county, and here the Delawares and the Mohicans adopted him. Colonel James Smith was the prisoner, and his account is described as most graphic and picturesque by Dr. George E. Ellis, president of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The day after his arrival in the Indian town on the Walhonding, young Smith's thoughts as to what his captors meant to do with him were soon answered. From the group of savages that gathered round the prisoner who was bound hand and foot, one came forward and began to pull the hair out of the captive's head.

"He frequently dipped his fingers in ashes on a piece of bark, in order to take a firmer hold," said the colonel. Only a tuft was left on his crown, and a lock which they wrapped with a narrow beaded garter, and another that they plaited. They bored his nose and ears to insert jewels. He was ordered to strip and put on a breechclout. They painted his head, face and body, hung a wampum belt on his neck, circled his arm and wrists with silver bands, and an old chief led him toward the village center, hallooing:

"They made signs for me to plunge myself," he related, "but thinking these young ladies wanted to drown me I did not. All three grasped me, and I opposed them, while the multitude on the bank roared." One of the struggling, almost breathless creatures holding him protested with earnest eyes, "No hurt you,' and the captive gracefully surrendered to their washing and rubbing "to remove the white blood from his veins.' They led him dripping to the council house, where ruffled shirt, ribboned and beaded leggings, moccasins and beaded garters awaited him. Again his head and face were painted. A bunch of red feathers fastened to his crown with a lock that was spared completed his Indian make-up. They seated him on a bear rug, gave him a tomahawk, a pipe and pouch of tobacco with punk, flint and steel.

"The Indians came in," continues the narrative, "all dressed and painted grandly, and sat in long, profound silence, smoking. The chief finally welcomed me in a speech as one of them. At the evening feast they gave me a bowl and wooden spoon which I carried with me to large brass kettles full of boiled venison and green corn. The chief made a short speech, and all ate. One chief was Tecanyaterighto or Pluggy, another Asallecoa or Mohawk Solomon."

The young man shared the life of the tribe for five years before he reached his home in Pennsylvania, and when we hear of him again it is as guide to Colonel Bouquet's expedition to Coshocton. Afterward Smith was colonel in the Revolution, and subsequently a member of the Kentucky legislature.

The treaty which closed the French and Indian war was a paper agreement on the other side of the ocean. France surrendered to Britain the territory here, but in this wilderness the French, still holding their posts, inflamed the Indians more than ever against the English. The French always were the more liberal with whisky and powder.

So war parties of Delawares and Shawanees from this region continued ravaging the Virginia and Pennsylvania border settlements. These tribes were active agents in the Pontiac conspiracy to annihilate the whites. Colonel Henry Bouquet drove back the tribes in a fight of two days and nights at Bushy Run in western Pennsylvania, and the next year pushed on to Coshocton with the first English military expedition to this region. It was a resolute stroke to overawe the Indians at this central point, a campaign which has made this region famous in the Indian history of the United States.

The sight which met the startled eyes of natives crouching in forest shadows was well calculated to strike consternation. White men fairly swarmed into the heart of this wilderness - so many that they did not move singly over the narrow trail in "Indian file,' but marched two and four abreast, the path widened for the cavalcade by companies of axemen that hacked away the bordering thickets and undergrowth and overhanging branches of trees.

As far as the eye could reach it was an unbroken column of English fighters with death-dealing firearms aslant their shoulders. First came the scouting parties and a corps of Virginia volunteers, followed by the axe companies, guarded by companies of light infantry. Following a column of Highlanders came the corps of reserve « and the second battalion of Pennsylvania militia; then the officers, several women, and the long train of pack-horses and the longer droves of bawling cattle and bleating sheep, with a company of light horse following. Altogether Bouquet's force was fifteen hundred strong.

Indians began coming to Bouquet, offering excuses for recent border massacres, as usual blaming their young men as the hottempered, impetuous ones, and abjectly suing for peace, promising to deliver white prisoners. Bouquet insisted upon deliveries, not promises, and pushed on. Nearing Coshocton the caravan detoured from the Tuscarawas valley in order, apparently, to avoid an Indian ambuscade along the river, and marched past what is now Ragersville in Tuscarawas County, down the valley past Fiat in Bucks Township, and down White Eyes Creek to south of Chili, in Coshocton County. Bouquet's journal, from this point, runs as follows:

"Thursday, Oct. 25, 1764 - Marched six and a half miles to camp in the forks of the Muskingum, as the most central place to receive the prisoners, the principal Indian towns lying around there from seven to twenty miles distant. Four redoubts were built here opposite the four angles of the camp. Ground in front cleared, provision storehouse erected, council house built."

The colonel's journal does not go into particulars regarding highland location of his camp, but his specific record that it was "in" the forks of the Muskingum has directed observation to the nearby Johnson hill, rising above the Basin in the forks to a height which commands today a magnificent view of the three valleys, a scenic panorama that is among the most beautiful pictures in all Ohio. To the south extends for miles the broad valley of the Muskingum. Eastward the eye looks upon the vast distance of the Tuscarawas, and westward is the far-reaching vista of the Walhonding. Thick timber growth in early days would have obstructed the view from this hilltop, but its military value as a strategic point is easily recognized. It is stated that traces of earthwork fortification could still be seen here by pioneer settlers, and that a spring at the foot of the hill on the eastern side supplied water enough for a camp.

Camp Bouquet rising like a tented city in the wilderness, with a population of nearly two thousand, well protected and well supplied, struck dismay to the hearts of the red men. They counciled anxiously among themselves around their campfire on the banks of the Muskingum.

One went as messenger from Chief Custaloga to inform Bouquet that the chief would soon deliver prisoners. The colonel fixed the time, and stared stonily at the red hand held out to him.

The eyes blazed in the copper skin as the savage stalked away. Then he remembered Bushy Run and this fighter. Subdued and awed he went back dully enough to his people.

So steadily did Bouquet adhere to his purpose of having every prisoner delivered without ransom before entering upon a truce that he even refused to talk with the Delaware chiefs, Custaloga and Beaver, while a single captive remained among them. Within a fortnight they had brought in all theirs except a dozen, as indicated by twelve small sticks. These they promised to bring within a few days.

The man whose decision and courage compelled the delivery of two hundred and six prisoners was also absolute in his demand for all captives, young or old, whom the Indians avowed had been adopted or married among the tribes. The delivery of these captives was a most dramatic scene, a startling manifestation of white people struggling against a return to civilization. They clung to their Indian friends, repelling the relatives who had come with Bouquet to rescue them. Young women would not give up their Indian husbands. Little ones, remembering nothing of parents and home, drew back from anguished mothers and fathers, and held to their red friends who wept over them. It was necessary to bind some captives hand and foot.

There were still a hundred prisoners that the sullen and haughty Shawanees had not delivered. The excuse was that they were with chiefs absent on distant hunts. Forty Shawanese warriors counciled with Bouquet in the presence of Delaware, Seneca and Caughnawaga chiefs and sixty warriors. Red Hawk spoke for the Shawanees. A translation follows:

"Brother, listen to us, your younger brother. We see something in your eyes that looks like dissatisfaction with us. We now wipe away everything bad between us that you may clearly see."

Bouquet's steady gaze fixed itself upon the speaker who went on with the same mixture of fierce pride and humble submission, while the hundred warriors squatting on the floor regarded them both intently.

"You have heard many bad stories of us,' Red Hawk continued. "We clean your ears that you may hear. We remove everything bad from your heart that it may be like the heart of your ancestors when they thought of nothing but good."

As he spoke Red Hawk held out to Bouquet a string of wampum. Near him from the peace pipe the smoke of the calumet floated away in a gauze-like film. The speaker was still talking:

"Brother, when we saw you coming this road you advanced toward us with tomahawk in hand; but we, your younger brothers, take it out of your hands and throw it up to the Great Spirit to dispose of as he pleases, by which we hope never to see it more."

As the buried hatchet of previous peace compacts had been dug up again it is likely Red Hawk's variation of the figure on this occasion was to signify a lasting treaty.

"And now, brother," he finished, extending the string of wampum toward Bouquet, ''we beg that you who are a warrior will take hold of this chain of friendship, and receive it from us, who are also warriors, and let us think no more of war, in pity to our old men, women and children."

It was better so. Outside the chill November blast warned Bouquet against winter hardship in the wilderness. The Shawanees had promised to bring the rest of their prisoners to Fort Pitt in the Spring, the Delawares, Senecas and Caughnawagas added their exhortations to the Shawanees to keep faith, and Bouquet took with him Shawanese warriors to hold as hostages. November 18 he broke camp and left the forks of the Muskingum to return to Fort Pitt.

In the years that followed there was no white man disturbing the Indian life of this region until the first faint mutterings of the Revolution were borne to the red man's ears. The question rose whether the Indian would stand neutral or fight for the British. In 1775, the year of the shot fired at Lexington that was heard round the world, the Colonial Congress sent commissioners to Pittsburg to explain to Indian chiefs convened there the dispute between the British and the Americans, and to enlist the Indians on the colonists' side.

"Suppose a father had a little son whom he loved and indulged while young, but growing up to be a youth began to think of having some help from him; and making up a small pack he bade him carry it for him. The boy cheerfully takes this pack up. As the boy grows stronger the father makes the pack larger. A hard-hearted adviser tells the father to make the pack heavier still, and the son says, 'Lighten the pack; I am unable to carry this load.' The father threatens to beat him. The son has no other choice than striking back to learn who is the stronger."

Delaware chiefs in the name of their nation declared they would remain neutral in the contest between "parent and son." One who particularly urged that the hatchet be not lifted against the colouists was the mighty and courageous White Eyes.

A haughty Seneca hinted that the Iroquois, the Six Nations, would talk for the Delawares who "had no will of their own." Stung by the sneer, White Eyes rose, while a hush fell on the assembly. The insult stirred every drop of fighting blood in him. He was facing the Seneca.

"You say that you had conquered me, that you had cut off my legs, had put a petticoat on me, giving me a hoe and corn pounder in my hands saying: 'Now, woman, plant and hoe corn and pound it for bread for us men and warriors.'" The chief's face was like a thunder cloud, his eyes blazing lightning, both arms raised. 'Look at my legs! If as you say you had cut them off they have grown again! The petticoat I have thrown away. The corn hoe and pounder I have exchanged for these' firearms, and I declare that I am a man!" He waved his hand to the west: "And all the country on the other side of the Allegheny is mine!"

Such defiance of the Iroquois by a Delaware was never heard before in an Indian council. The speech was followed by a division in the Delaware nation. That scheming, crafty chief of the Wolf tribe, Captain Pipe, who craved power, poisoned some Delaware minds with the lie that White Eyes was plotting with the colonists to enslave young Indians and enrich himself. Captain Pipe, as cheerful a liar as a modern captain of politics, sneaked about this country with his lie, and when he quit attending councils at the forks, conducted his lying campaign from his village, the present Walhonding.

Hostile Delawares from here joined Shawanees, Wyandots and Senecas in murdering and robbing settlers along the Ohio. The relations of Logan, the Mingo chief, were killed, and savages wreaked swift vengeance. The war of Lord Dunmore and the Virginians began against the Indians. William Robinson was captured by Logan. The chief formed a liking for his young prisoner. Three times murderous savages tied the captive to a stake, but no time was the fire lighted; for Logan, protesting with a power and vigor of speech that foamed the sides of his mouth, had his way, and finally placed the wampum belt on Robinson as the token of adoption.

Robinson was led captive through here in 1774, little dreaming then that twenty-seven years later he would return to make this his home. The Mingoes took him to their town up the Tuscarawas. In a few days Logan asked him to write a message which was tied to a war club and left to be found with the body of a murdered settler near the Ohio. The message was addressed to Captain Cresap, and voiced the feelings of Logan with the eloquence which breathed. through his celebrated speech later to Dunmore that has been characterized as challenging whole orations of Demosthenes and Cicero:

"What did you kill my people on. Yellow Creek for? The white people killed my kin at Conestoga a great while ago, and I thought nothing of that. But you killed my kin again on Yellow Creek, and took my cousin prisoner. Then I thought I must kill too. And I have been three times to war since. But the Indians are not angry; only myself."

Meanwhile Netawatwes, as the head of the Turtle tribe of Delawares, abandoned his capital on the Stillwater and with such of his people as remained faithful to him he established the new Delaware capital at Coshocton, or Cush-og-wenk as the Indians cailed it, Goshochking as the missionary Heckewelder spelled it, and Goschachgunk according to De Schweinetz.

Netawatwes and his grandson, Killbuck, hater of whisky, were like White Eyes in their friendship for the colonists and their efforts to keep the Indians off the war path. Apparently years of carnage had wearied these three. They were drawn to the religion of the missionaries.

Back in the days on the Allegheny Netawatwes had heard David Zeisberger, the Moravian missionary. The chief liked the pious German's preaching so well that he granted him the land on the Muskingum for a mission. Hither Zeisberger came in 1776 with eight families, thirty-five souls in all, including the Rev. John Heckewelder. Two miles south of Coshocton they laid out a town along the river, in the form of a cross with a chapel in the center, and called it Lichtenau, "The Pasture of Light."

Here Netawatwes and Killbuck and a few more Indians came to listen to the gospel of Peace, while off in the forest the smouldering fire of hate burned yet in savage breasts. The missionaries had need for caution in all things. Heckewelder hid his papers to prevent Indians seeing him write; for there was the ever-present suspicion that the white man's writing meant the taking of the land.

The British were whispering in the ears of such willing listeners as Captain Pipe that the colonists were land thieves who would steal all the Indian had. Against this insidious attack the missionary Zeisberger labored hard and desperately for peace.

The day came that a Wyandot warrior arrived in Coshocton bearing a message from the British governor of Detroit. The message was a hatchet wrapped in a belt of red and white beads. Any tribe refusing to accept it would suffer as an enemy. This was the ultimatum of the British governor conveyed by the Wyandot.

The reds that were squatted in the Coshocton council house smoked in silence. Then Cornstalk rose, noble and commanding. The celebrated Shawanese chief had not long since come from Chillicothe. He said in brief that, while all the Shawanese nation had accepted the hatchet, his tribe had settled at Coshocton in peace, and he advised the Delawares to hold fast to the colonists' chain of friendship.

Three times the Wyandot offered the war belt to the Delawares, and thrice they refused it. Again it was proffered; and to rid themselves of the insistent Wyandot they accepted it at last. He had hardly disappeared in the forest, however, when a Delaware messenger left Coshocton on the Sandusky trail to take back the belt. The messenger was White Eyes.

The British governor at Detroit scowled when the war belt was handed back to him. Then White Eyes took from his pouch a peace _ belt which he offered to the governor. The Briton in a rage slashed the belt with his sword. The pieces fell at White Eyes' feet. Sorrowfully the Indian came back to Coshocton.

Squads of hostile warriors began coming down the Mohican and the Walhonding in canoes, and hurrying over the eastern trails to scourge the settlements: Word came that Wyandots were on their way to destroy the Moravian mission at Coshocton, and carry to Detroit the scalps of White Eyes, Killbuck and Zeisberger. The Munsey chief, Newalike, had hastened from Sandusky to this region, stealthily keeping out of sight of hostile warriors and brought the warning.

Worse still the deviltry of renegades was afoot. The disappointed Simon Girty, unable to get a captain's commission in the colonial service, with Elliott and McKee, deserters of the American cause, had come from Fort Pitt to Coshocton, followed by a score of other deserters, and these spread terror here with an infamous lie. Washington, they said, had been killed, his army routed, and the colonists, thirsting for revenge, were on their way to massacre the Indians.

He called the Delawares to the council house. Addressing them with all the fiery eloquence of his impassioned oratory the fighting chief swayed them to his will. Some were even moved to tears.

In this imminent crisis White Eyes rose to reply, to make one last supreme effort to stay his people from the madness of war. What a battle of orators that was in the wilderness, a mighty plea of peace against the blood lust of war! White Eyes denounced the stories of the renegades as lies and the renegades as liars. Time was all he asked, time to expose the lie. Only a few days, ten at the most, and if word did not come showing those renegades were liars he would himself go to war with his nation.

His eloquence stayed them - but only for the ten days, while the warriors of Coshocton and the whole country round sharpened their tomahawks and overhauled their guns.

Fort Pitt heard of the threatened uprising. There was no time to be lost. Heckewelder, who had been away from Lichtenau and gone east a short time, was on his way back. At Fort Pitt they told him of the crisis in Coshocton. General Hand gave him peace messages and letters to take at once to the Delawares. Though jaded and worn, Heckewelder flung himself on his horse and was off, followed by an attendant.

It was midnight of the second day when their foam-flecked horses galloped into Gnadenhutten. There they learned the ten days had all but expired. Only a night remained. Again they mounted and dashed through the night in the race against time.

"Washington lives!" His voice swept over the town. "The Americans have taken Burgoyne and his British army! The Americans are your friends.'"

With a flash of the old friendly spirit White Eyes took the hand he had refused a moment before. There was an immediate paw-waw to accept the peace message. The war paint came off. There was no sign of Captain Pipe or the renegades. They had vanished the moment the truth arrived to confront their lies. Pipe and his Munsey band took the Sandusky trail, later to war against colonists for British pay. j

The renegade Girty prowled about Coshocton. He had heard of a British price put on the capture of Zeisberger. Girty plotted with eight murderous Mingoes. The plot was overheard: by a friend of the missionary. Zeisberger with two guards started from Lichtenau tor the Schoenbrunn mission up the Tuscarawas.

Two Delaware hunters had suddenly sprung into view, their guns leveled at Girty and his band. The Mingoes, startled and cowed, fled panic-stricken, followed by Girty.

The missionary reached Schoenbrunn. Later his associate, Heckewelder, and other workers with Indian converts left Lichtenau to the hostile Wyandots and Mingoes, and went up the Tuscarawas. So ended the three years' life of the only Moravian mission in Coshocton County. Netawatwes, its first red friend, lived to see the "Pasture of Light" abandoned to heathenism.

effective means of compelling peace. On General Lachlan McIntosh's march from Fort Pitt to this region White Eyes died from smallpox. He had guided the white men here to crush those warriors who still gave willing ear to Captain Pipe's bloody intrigues.

"White Eyes," moralized Pipe, "was a great man. But his ways meant the country's ruin, so the Great Spirit took him, in order that the Indian nations might be saved."

While Pipe in Coshocton history figures mostly as a bad Indian, there was another side of him seen in Detroit when Zeisberger, Heckewelder and other missionaries were taken there to be tried on the charge of befriending colonists and opposing the British. Their accusers were Pipe and other Indians. Some of these had once known the Christian kindness and good will of the missionaries, and the memory of those days came back as the red men gazed into their old friends' faces. Mute and dejected, the Indians hung their heads.

The British governor became impatient. Again he demanded, were the stories against these men true? There was no answer. At last Pipe spoke. He exonerated the missionaries, and took the blame on himself. The men were acquitted. They owed it to their Indian friends; for it was true that the missionaries sympathized with the Americans. Colonel Brodhead had written to General Washington and General Gates that news of British movements at Detroit reached him through Indian friends of the missionaries, including Joshua the Mohican spy.

Colonel Daniel Brodhead conducted the colonial military expedition to Coshocton from Fort Pitt, arriving here April 19, 1781. His force of three hundred took the Delaware capital by surprise. Only two score Indians were found here, and these were captured without a shot. Fifteen of the prisoners were taken out of sight of terrified squaws and children, and tomahawked and scalped.

Other Indians had gone across the river and could not be followed because of high water. In the morning an Indian on the opposite shore hallooed to join his people in peace. They told him to come, and as the anxious brave drew himself up the bank he saw too late that relentless foe of his race, Lewis Wetzel. In an instant Wetzel crashed his tomahawk through the Indian's skull.

When Brodhead turned back to Pittsburg naught but dreary waste was left of Coshocton, a few desolate huts, the ruins of the Delaware seat of empire, deserted forever by the red man.

There was desolation throughout this region. Wolves, bears and panthers roamed the lone wilderness. The fruit trees, blooming in the spring, told of the missionary planters who had passed this way. The wild beasts and hissing snakes were the only life save an occasional raiding warrior hurrying along the river trail with reeking scalp.

Although Cornwallis had surrendered at Yorktown the British were yet bent upon gaining the upper hand by inciting the Indians to further ravages of Ohio settlers. The march of colonization had crossed the Alleghanies; settlers' cabins began dotting the Tuscarawas Valley; and soon civilization flung its outpost at Coshocton. 'The prized hunting grounds of the red men were fast slipping away.

Captain Pipe, Black Hoof, Red Hawk, Little Turtle, Blue Jacket and other chiefs rushed through on fleet horses, blood-stained hatchets in hand, to hold tomahawk title to the land.

Virginia ceded the Ohio territory to the United States in 1784, and the next year there was a treaty with the Delawares and Wyandots moving the Indian boundary from the Ohio River farther back into the wilderness to Coshocton along the Tuscarawas and the Cuyahoga. This surrender of the Ohio River boundary brought a warwhoop from the Shawanees who protested they were cheated and defrauded out of the Muskingum Valley. The Muskingum, which means Moose-Eye, was the favorite elk hunting ground. Oft through the snows of winter had the Shawanees tracked the swift-footed .moose, and followed his roaring rush through the forest.

The upshot was that all the Indians renewed their border warfare. Settlers built block houses and surrounded their cabins with the picket stockade, tree trunks set close together and rising fourteen feet high.

After the rout of General St. Clair in Darke County, 1791, the Delawares rushed down from the black forest, yelling the warwhoop along the Mohican and Walhonding and past Coshocton, breechclouted and with buffalo heads drawn over their own, giving them the appearance of horned devils, with the scalps of slaughtered soldiers dangling at their heels. As the red demons urged their horses on-

But "Mad Anthony" Wayne was yet to be heard from. In the last desperate struggle of the red men to resist him in the Miami country the Delawares were in the forefront, Girty with them, and British aid in the background. In the end the Indians were driven still farther westward, forced to retreat more and more. They had made their last stand here. These hunting grounds were lost to them forever.