Guernsey County, Ohio - Indian Occupancy Territory Acquired by White Men, 1911

Indian Occupancy Territory Acquired by White Men

La Salle, the famous adventurer and explorer, was beyond much doubt the first white man to tread the soil of what we now call Ohio. With a feufollowers and led by Indian guides, he penetrated the vast country then held by that powerful tribe of North American Indians known as the Iroquois and went down the Ohio as far as the "Falls," or where the city of Louisville now stands. There his band abandoned him and he traced his steps back north alone. This, it is believed, was in the winter of 1669-70 - two hundred and forty years ago - and this was more than a hundred years before Marietta, Ohio, was settled by the white race. This daring French explorer doubtless camped at the mouth of the Muskingum river. In 1682 he reached the Mississippi river, descended to its mouth, and there proclaimed possession of the vast valley in the name of his king.

Prior to the middle of the eighteenth century, the French people reasserted their ownership of the Northwest and did actually take possession of what is now the northern part of Ohio, building a fort and establishing a trading station at Sandusky. Celeron de Bienville made a systematic exploration of the Ohio valley and formally declared by process verbal the ownership of the soil. August 16, 1749. he was at the mouth of the Muskingum river, which fact was revealed in 1798 by the discovery of a leaden plate deposited by him and which set forth the exploration. The plate was found protruding from a bank, after a freshet, by some boys, who cut away a portion of its inscription, not knowing its great historic value. The same was translated by William Woodbridge, later governor of Michigan. A similar plate was found in 1846, at the mouth of the Kanawha. These were to reassert the rights of the French government to this land. While the French had a good title to this state, it was not long before it was wrested from them by the British crown.

The Colonial Ohio Land Company was organized in Virginia in 1748. by twelve associates, among whom were Thomas Lee and Lawrence Augustine, brothers of George Washington. Under this company. Christopher Gist explored the Ohio valley as far as the Falls. The company secured a nival grant of half a million acres in the valley of the Ohio river. It was intended to at once found a colony, but the French opposed it, and the royal governor of Virginia sent George Washington, then a young man, to the commander of the French forces to demand their reason for invasion of British territory. Washington received an answer that was both haughty and defiant. He returned and made his report to the governor, who abandoned the idea of making immediate settlement, but at once set about asserting the English claims by force of arms. The result was the union of the colonies, the ultimate involvement of England in the war that ensued, the defeat of the French, and the vesture in the British crown of the right and title to Canada and of all the territory east of the Mississippi and south to the Spanish possessions in the South. Ben Franklin had tried to effect a union of the colonies, but was unsuccessful. He had proposed a plan of settlement in 1754. and suggested that two colonies be located in the West - one upon the Cuyahoga and the other on the Scioto, which tract he declared had not its equal on the North American continent, having timber and coal almost on the surface ready to mine.

But the English did little toward improving their title or effecting settlement here in Ohio. George Washington made a journey down the Ohio in 1770 with several others interested. He camped at Duck creek, as is shown by his diary. Through his instrumentality, the western scheme was revived. A large colony was formed, which included the old Ohio Company and the Walpole scheme, as well as recognizing the bounty act of Virginia volunteers in the French and Indian war. Had it not been for Indian troubles coming on this would have been a wonderful success.

Col. Henry Bouquet had made the first English expedition into the Ohio country in 1764. for the purpose of punishing the Indians and recovering from them the captives they had taken during the previous years on the Pennsy+vania and Virginia borders. No blood was shed, the Indians assenting to the terms offered them. The expedition was directed against the Delawares upon the Tuscarawas and Muskingum. Bouquet obtained two hundred captives at the hands of the savages, and returned to Fort Pitt (Pittsburg) with an army of fifteen hundred men. For a time this quieted the Indians of the Ohio country, and the next ten years passed peacefully.

But to resume the history first spoken of. The Shawnees had become very hostile, on account of the prospect of their having to lose their lands and because of the murder of Logan, the famous Mingo chief, who had been dwelling with them at old Chillicothe. To quell the disturbance thus arising. Lord Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia, organized an army of invasion into the Indian country. He had command of one wing and entrusted the other wing to Gen. Andrew Lewis.

The forces of Lewis were attacked by the Indians, south of the Ohio river, and the ensuing combat, known as the battle of Point Pleasant, was one of the bloodiest in Indian border \varfare up to that date. Dunmore did not get into a real engagement with his wing of the army. A treaty was held at Camp Charlotte, in which all agreed but old Logan, the Mingo chieftain, who there made the speech which all school boys used to delight in reading and "speaking," being the most eloquent one ever coming from the lips of an Indian, and equal, so Thomas Jefferson said, to any made by classic scholars the world round.

The Revolution came on. and the West was no longer the scene of military action. But a soldier who served under Dunmore, - George Rogers Clark, - of whom the late lamented James A. Garfield remarked, "The cession of that great territory, under the treaty of 1783, was due mainly to his foresight and courage, and who has never received the adequate recognition due him for so great a service" - at the close of the Revolution was instrumental in making the Northwest territory a portion of the United States, instead of leaving it to be possessed by the English, in the terms of peace that were made. Had it not been for this, the Colonies would have been owners only of the country east of the Alleghanies. unless the West should be later conquered by them from the British. He sought out Governor Patrick Henry, then governor of Virginia, who allowed him (Clark) to raise seven companies of soldiers and to seize the British posts in the Northwest and this brought the territory rightfully into the territory agreed upon when the treaty was finally effected between the Colonists and England. He also made two other expeditions - both against Indians upon the Miamis - in 1780 and 1782.

Indian History

In August. 1831, the first treaty for the removal of the Indians from Ohio was made, and in September. 1832, the first removals were made by David Robb and H. A. Workman. The tribes removed were Shawnees and Senecas. David Robb had been a former prominent citizen and official of Guernsey county, was sheriff and senator and representative in the Legisla- hire and publisher and editor of The Washington Republican, the first Democratic paper of Guernsey county, published at Washington. He was appointed Indian agent by President Jackson.

David Robb published a very interesting history of his connection with the Indians as agent in The Belle Fountain Republican, and of his several overland journeys with them to their new "hunting grounds" west of the Mississippi river.

The last Indian tribe to be removed from Ohio was the Wyandottes. Rev. James B. Finley, of the Methodist Episcopal church, was a missionary among the Wyandottes, and gives in his autobiography many interesting incidents of his connection with this tribe.

The Indians who lived in and fished in what are now the bounds of Guernsey county were the Delawares, Shawnees, Senecas and Mingos. These tribes had towns at the forks of the Muskingum. It is mistaken history when it is said that there were no Indian towns in Guernsey county. There were at least five, Old Town, above Byesville, one at the Fish Basket, north of Cambridge, one on Salt Fork creek, one on Indian Camp run, and one on Bird's run. Many of the tribes referred to resorted to Guernsey waters because of the fish they contained and of the riffles where they could securely set their "fish baskets."

All of the Indians did not take kindly to the wish of General Jackson, the then "Great Father." that they give up their hunting grounds in Ohio in exchange for hunting grounds west of the Mississippi river, and roving hands of the peaceful but dissatisfied red men moved about through the state. In September, 1834, one of these bands visited Cambridge. The Guernsey Times, then published by Hersh and McPherson, gives us a local note, "that a band of Indians are in camp near this town." It is left for an eye-witness, although then young, to complete that local of 1834.

The Indian camp was located south of Gaston avenue, on the site now known as "Silver Cliff." At that time the ridge was covered with oak and beech trees. The water for the use of the camp was gotten from a spring in the old Asher-Williams lot. There were perhaps a hundred men. women and children. They remained in camp there for ten days or more. They wore, when they wore anything (for it was warm and pleasant weather), the usual Indian dress of blankets and breech-clouts. The men were peaceful and quiet, except when they had been presented too freely with "whisk."

They had no arms except bows and arrows and tomahawks. The women had Indians' trinkets, which they peddled about the town. The men put in the daytime mostly shooting with their bows and arrows at

"fips and levies," set up in split sticks driven in the ground. Their principal shooting place was in the street west of the Hutchison tavern. The distance was sixty feet. The "fips and levies" stuck in the splits were the prizes to the shooters who hit the mark. The squaws, with their pappooses tied to boards and hung on their backs, or set up against the houses, stood around and enjoyed the sport and cheered the lucky Indian who took the prize.

Those who took the most interest in the shooting contests and mingled most with them were Edward Rogers and G. W. Mulholland. Rogers was a silversmith, having a shop in the east room of the Ogier house. Mulholland was a tailor, and had a shop in the Seneca Needham house, located on the now Ofme Hardware Company corner. They were strong Jacksonians, and would try to make the Indian chiefs understand that the "Great Father," at Washington City, would deal justly with the Indians. But these Indians were on a strike against the "Great Father," and they only "ughed" at the praise given by these Democratic followers of the "Great Father." These Indians were a mixture of tribes, Delawares, Shawnees. Wyandottes and Senecas. They came to Cambridge from the south, crossing Wills creek below the old Gomber-Moore mill. They had a few old wagons and carts. The tent poles and many of the trappings were tied around the necks of the ponies and horses and dragged upon the ground. The squaws had charge of the train, and, according to Indian custom, did most of the work, while the big, lazy "bucks" rode horses and the children who were big enough to ride rode the ponies. The older men and women and the small children rode in the wagons and carts. Some of the women rode on ponies, two to each, and some rode sidewise and some astride. It may have been that these rovers were visiting their old hunting and fishing grounds on Wills creek.

When they broke camp, they moved towards the north. To the writer then, and in a backward view now, it was a better "wild west" parade than "Buffalo Bill" ever made at Cambridge. It was a parade of the pure, unadulterated "Ingen," without spangles, feathers or paint. With the tribe were two white women, who bad been captured in infancy, who had lost all trace (if their white ancestry, and were the apparently happy wives of two big, lazy "bucks."

There were in 1S05 five Indian families residing in this vicinity. Two brothers, named Jim and Bill Lyons, who had their huts up the bottom where William Tedrick's house now stands; Joseph Sky, who lived at the mouth of Brushy fork, near where Lynn's mill now is; one Doughty, who

Doughty's extra squaw was an incumbrance, however, being one of Simon Girty's, which he and the Lyons brothers were under obligations to support for some service Girty had rendered their fathers. She was exceedingly ill-favored and very intemperate.

These Indians hunted in that neighborhood during the summer, and when winter came would pack up and move off to Big Stillwater, where they had a sort of Indian town. They were, however, very friendly and not troublesome.

Jim Lyons had a white wife, a girl that his father had taken prisoner when a child: having adopted and raised her, his son married her. In her dress, appearance and manner she was as much an Indian as any of them. and could not have been distinguished had it not been for her hair, which was fairer than that of the Indians and inclined to be wavy. She was very reserved in her manner towards the whites; seemed to avoid their societv. and was never known to speak to a white person, or in their presence. In one respect the Lyons brothers were an exception among Indians - they didn't like whisky; and as Girty's old squaw wouldn't do without it, she lived most of her time at Doughty's hut. and would get drunk, whenever she could get liquor enough, and swear and tear around, and quarrel, and "take on" equal to any of the "white trash."

In the year 1791 or '92, the Indians having made frequent incursions into the settlenTents along the Ohio river, between Wheeling and Mingo bottom, sometimes killing or capturing whole families, at other times stealing all the horses belonging to a station or fort, a company consisting of seven men rendezvoused at a place called the Beech bottom, on the Ohio river, a few miles below where Wellsburg has been erected. This company were John Whetzel, 'William McCollough. John Hough. Thomas Biggs. Joseph Hedges. Kinzie Dickerson and a Mr. Linn. Their avowed object was to go to the Indian towns to steal horses. This was then considered a legal, honorable business, as we were then at open war with the Indians. It would only be retaliating upon them in their own way.

woods from their youth. Perhaps the western frontier at no time could furnish seven men whose souls were hetter fitted, and whose nerves and sinews were better strung to perform any enterprise which required resolution and firmness.

They crossed the Ohio, and proceeded, with cautious steps and vigilant glances, on their way through the cheerless, dark and almost impervious forest, in the Indian country, till they came to an Indian town, near where the headwaters of the Sandusky and Muskingum rivers interlock. Here they made a fine haul, and set off homeward with fifteen horses. They traveled rapidly, only making short halts to let their horses graze and breathe a short time to recruit their energy and activity. In the evening of the second day of their rapid retreat they arrived at Wills creek, not far from where the town of Cambridge has since been erected.

Here Mr. Linn was taken violently sick, and they must stop their march or leave him alone to perish in the dark and lonely woods. Our frontiersmen, notwithstanding their rough and unpolished manners, had too much of my Uncle Toby's "sympathy for suffering humanity," to forsake a comrade in distress. They halted, and placed sentinels on their back trail, who remained there until late in the night, without seeing any signs of being pursued. The sentinels on the back trail returned to the camp, Mr. Linn still lying in excruciating pain. All the simple remedies in their power were administered to the sick man, without producing any effect.

Being late in the night, they all lay down to rest, except one who was placed as guard. Their camp was on the bank of a small branch. Just before daybreak the guard took a small bucket and dipped some water out of the stream : on carrying it to the fire he discovered the water to be muddy. The muddy water waked his suspicion that the enemy might be approaching them, and were walking down in the stream, as their footsteps would be noiseless in the water. He waked his companions and communicated his suspicion. They arose, examined the branch a little distance, and listened attentively for some time ; but neither saw nor heard anything, and then concluded it must have been raccoons, or some other animals, puddling in the stream.

After this conclusion, the company all lay down to rest, except the sentinel, who was stationed just outside of the light. Happily for them the fire was burned down, and only a few coals afforded a dim light to point out where they lay.

The enemy had come silently down the creek, as the sentinel suspected, to within ten or twelve feet of the place where they lay, and fired several guns over the bank.

Mr. Linn, the sick man, was lying; with his side towards the bank, and received nearly all the balls which were at first fired. The Indians then, with tremendous yells, mounted the bank with loaded rifles, war-clubs and tomahawks, rushed upon our men, who fled barefooted and without arms. Mr. Linn, Thomas Biggs and Joseph Hedges were killed in and near the camp. William McCullough had run but a short distance when he was fired at by the enemy. At the instant the fire was given, he jumped into a quagmire and fell; the Indians, supposing that they killed him, ran past in pursuit of others. He soon extricated himself out of the mire, and so made his escape. He fell in with John Hough, and came into Wheeling.

John Whetzel and Kinzie Dickerson met in their retreat, and returned together. Those who made their escape were without arms, without clothing or provisions. Their sufferings were great, but this they bore with stoical indifference, as it was the fortune of war.

Whether the Indians who defeated our heroes followed in pursuit from their towns, or were a party of warriors who accidentally happened to fall in with them, has never been ascertained. From the place they had stolen the horses they had traveled two nights and almost two entire days, without halting, except just a few minutes at a time, to let the horses graze. From the circumstances of their rapid retreat with the horses it was supposed that no pursuit could possibly have overtaken them, but fate had decreed that this party of Indians should meet and defeat them.

As soon as the stragglers arrived at Wheeling, Capt. John McCullough collected a party of men, and went to Wills creek and buried the unfortunate men who fell in and near the camp. The Indians had mangled . the dead bodies at a most barbarous rate. Thus was closed the horse-stealing tragedy.

Of the four who survived this tragedy none are now living to tell the storv of their suffering. They continued to hunt and to fight as long as the war lasted. John Whetzel and Dickerson died in the county near Wheeling. John Hough died a few years since, near Columbia, Hamilton county, Ohio. The brave Capt. William McCullough fell in 1812, in the battle of Brownstown, in the campaign with General Hull.