Wyandot County, Ohio - Location and Extent - Natural Features, 1884

Location and Extent - Natural Features

BY reference to the State maps, the reader will observe that Wyandot County lies in the northwest quarter of the State of Ohio, nearly equidistant from Lake Erie on the north, and the Indiana State line on the west. That the counties bordering upon it are Seneca on the north; Crawford on the east; Marion and Hardin on the south; Hardin and Hancock on the west; and that its thirteen subdivisions, known respectively as Antrim, Crane, Crawford, Eden, Jackson, Marseilles, Mifflin, Pitt, Richland, Ridge, Salem, Sycamore and Tymochtee Townships, contain eight square miles more than eleven surveyed townships, or 258, 560 acres.

Its Streams. - Lying near the great water-shed of the State, just on its northern slope, it contains no large streams. Tymochtee Creek with its tributaries, and the head-waters of the Sandusky River, comprising the Little Sandusky and the Broken Sword Creeks, and the small streams known as Sycamore Creek, Tyler's Run, Sugar Run, Negro Run and Rock Ran, are the drainage system of the county. Their general course is due north, ex cept that the eastern tributaries of the Sandusky have a direction westerly or southwesterly, until they descend upon the area of the water-lime, and are well within the drainage valley of the Sandusky. The Tymochtee Creek, throughout the most of its course in Wyandot County, is a slow stream and has a clay bottom. Its valley is as wide and its banks as high as those of the Sandusky itself, although less water actually passes down its channel. The Sandusky, on the contrary, more frequently runs on a rock bottom, and its current is more rapid. It affords occasional water-power privileges. The same is true of the small creeks entering it from the east.

The Surface. - The topography of the county is quite simple. The western half is gently undulating or flat. The excavated valley of the Tymochtee Creek, which is usually about a hundred rods wide, and rarely exceeds two hundred rods, presents, in its abrupt descents, the most noticeable changes of level. There ai'e several extensive prairie- like tracts, which have a black soil and were never clothed with forest. They are in the higher levels, and give rise to some of the tributaries of Tymochtee Creek. One is north and west of Carey, extending largely into Seneca and Hancock Counties, known as Big Spring Prairie. Another covers much of the township of Richland, known as Potatoe Swamp, and a third occupies the southeastern part of Mifflin and the southwestern part of Pitt Townships, extending also into Marion County. The Cranberry Marsh, in Jackson Township, also extends largely into Hancock County. That tract known as Cranberry Marsh, in Crane Township, and the marshy tract in the center of Tymochtee Township, are of less extent but in every way analogous to the rest. These marshes were probably, once the sites of lakes, which have become filled by the slow accumulation of vegetable matter, and the washing in from the adjoining land of the finer materials of the drift. This is particularly noticeable about the ridges and knolls which inclose Big Spring Prairie. Besides these untillable marshes, most of the territory lying between the Tymochtee Creek and the Sandusky River, has a black, loamy soil, and was once, probably, subject to inundation by those streams, although now it is generally laid out in fine farms.

East of the Sandusky River the surface is more broken, and there is a noticeable ascent from the area of the water-lime to that of the corniferous. There is a tract of elevated land, like a fragment of a glacial moraine, along the west side of Broken Sword Creek, extending from Eden Township to the Little Sandusky in Pitt Township. Besides these undulations in the original surface of the drift, that part of the county east of the Sandusky is subject to erosions by frequent small streams, which have worn channels in the drift and sometimes in the rock itself.

Where the streams of the county run through level tracts, they present the usual terrace and flood-plain. The former is the old drift surface, and rises from twenty to forty feet above the level of the water. The latter, which is constantly changing its position and its contents, is, of course, dependent on the greatest freshet rise of the stream. Along the Tymochtee Creek it is sometimes twelve feet or more above the summer stage of the stream.

The Soil. - The prevailing feature of the soil is clay. This, however, is variously modified. In the higher parts of the county, it is gravelly, and often contains stones and bowlders. It is compact, and almost entirely without stones or even gravel in the level tracts, especially where there has been a gradual tilling up, with slow or imperfect drainage. The soil of the prairies, which is black, consists very largely of vegetable matter in various stages of decay. Drainage is especially needed in the western part of the county.

The Geological Structure.* - The Niagara limestone underlies a tier of townships along the western side of the county, spreading to the east so a8 to include the village of JMarseilles. The western boundary of the Lower Corniferous enters the county from the north, about two miles east of Mexico, passes through Bellevernon and Little Sandusky, and leaves the couuty in Section 11, Pitt Township. Hence the most of the county, which is specially characterized by its flat surface, is underlain by the water- lime formation. It is necessaiy to say, however, that the western central portions of the county are entirely without rocky outcrops, and it may be that the Niagara underlies more area than has been ascribed to it; also that the boundary between the water- lime and the corniferous, as above located, is to a certain extent conjectural.

The Niagara limestone has near Carey an unusual and somewhat remarkable exposure The surface of the country for many miles in every direction is flat, without exposure of rock. At this point the Niagara swells up suddenly in two separate moands or ridges, which rise so obtrusively that the drift has been in many places entirely denuded. They rise to the height of forty to fifty feet. They are each about five miles long, and are so situated toward each other, and in relation to the direction of the natural drainage, that they inclose the marsh known as Big Spring Prairie. They are distinguished as the North Ridge and the West Ridge. The included prairie is of the shape of a horseshoe, the toe turned a little east of north, the West Ridge filling in the bow. It is usually about a mile wide, with a length of ten miles. It is drained in opposite directions. Spring Run drains it into the Sandusky River, and a stream known as the " Outlet " drains it into the Blanchard. The soil is so wet that at present it is impossible to till it. Good progress has, however, been made in draining some portions, which now produce corn of prodigious growth. The descent to the prairie from the north or from the west, su as nt5t to be intercepted by either of the limestone ridgeg, is very gradual, even unobservable. The soil changes imperceptibly from a more or less gravelly clay to a fine, tough clay; then by the addition or vegetable matter the surface soil becomes black and moist, and all vegetable growth disappears except grasses and sedges. Efforts were made to ascertain the thickness of this black muck, but no result was obtained other than the fact, that wkile it exceeds eight feet in some places, it is usually but four or five. It is thin about the margin of the marsh, and seems to be generally underlain by a tough, blue clay, often so calcareous as to constitute a marl. This blue clay is sometimes itself overlain by a bed of quicksand. Within the muck the horns of elk are said to have been found, and logs several feet in diameter. Along the south margin of the prairie, within the bow, there is considerable sand, as if the deposit of a lake shore. Within the bow of the prairie there is also considerable flat land not marshy, the surface rising very gently toward the south for the distance of nearly one mile, when the West Ridge rises suddenly to the height of nearly fifty feet. The prairie is crossed by three public roads. These are constructed by throwing together the dirt from two parallel ditches, on which is placed first corduroy, and afterward, when repairs are needed,. stone hauled from the ridges, giving the road a rough macadamizing. Many months in the year the prairie is covered with water, and it is only in the driest months that cattle venture on it for grazing. Within it are sometimes little undulations or hillocks, on which grow bunches of shrubs and large herbs.

The rock here exposed has been found to contain characteristic Niagara fossils only in the North Ridge. There are no perpendicular sections of the bedding, except in small quarries on the slopes of the ridges near their bases. In these openings the stone appears very different from that seen in bare places higher up the ridges and on their summits, and the dip is uniformly toward the low ground, whatever the position of the quarry.

The quarry of Mr. Samuel Shoup, situated on the western slope of the West Ridge, about three miles from Carey, shows the rock dipping about fifteen or eighteen degrees toward the southwest; that is, toward the nearest low ground. It is in thin, fragile beds, of a light drab or buff color, porous, and soft under the hammer, showing no distinguishable fos.=5ils.

In the quarry of Mr. Thomas Shepherd, northeast quarter Section 11, Ridge Township, about a mile northwest of Mr. Shoup's, the beds are thin and so carious they can hardly be lifted, in even sheets of a bufif color, sometimes reduced to sand by the weather. Then comes a bed three to eight inches thick; vesicular; of a buff color; easily worked. Then it is irregularly bedded; lenticular or massive; buff color; carious; with traces of fossils.

Mr. F. J. Worrello's quarry, northeast quarter Section 16, Crawford Township, is in the same kind of stone, but it is so far removed from the ridge that beds have not been tilted by it. They lie horizontal, or with a very slight inclination southwest. The rock is here very near the surface. The same is true at Carey, where it is sometimes reached in digging postholes for fences.

The quarry of Mr. Jonas Huffman is in the west slope of the North Ridge, situated in the northwest quarter of Section 4, Crawford Township, and shows the following descending section. Dip toward the west, 10°. The rock here is overlain by about two feet of drift and loose fragments; then comes about two feet of confused and lenticular in the bedding, with larger pores or cavities, sometimes filled with calcite; fossiliferous, showing two species of bivalves, cyathophylloids and favositoids. Then two feet of hard, close-grained; light drab; beds four to eight inches. The closegrained has a bluish tint.

Mr. Peter Kibbler's quarry at Springville affords a slight exposure of the same kind of stone, with a gentle dip west or toward the prairie. The stone here seems a little more firm, but is generally porous, with fine cavities; fossils wanting or so absorbed as to be undistinguishable. The color is a light drab, varying to buff, and also to gray, especially when thrown in piles. The stone is not handsome, the beds being uneven and containing some white chert. At Mr. David Smith's quarry, in the northeast quarter of Section 3, in Amanda Township, Hancock County, the stone is buff, porous and thin, the beds being only about two inches thick. Stone thrown out from these quarries becomes a light buff, sometimes almost white under the weather, and although not of a durable quality, it has been used considerably in ordinary walls and foundations.

In passing over the ridges which are occupied by good farms, stones are often seen gathered from the fields and deposited in piles or in the coi'ners of the fences, or laid up in walls. They consist of fragments from the underlying rock, and of northern bowlders, the former greatly predominating. Along the road the rock is frequently seen bare, and, as already remarked, it is different, lithologically, from that seen in the foregoing quarries. It is most frequently a dark drab or brown, hard, crystalline rock, apparently in a rough, massive condition, containing cavities sometimes two or three inches in diameter. It nowhere appears in even beds. It is rarely vesicular, like the stone seen in the quarries described, but contains large cavities, irregularly scattered through it. The color is sometimes a bluish drab, and it not unfrequently shows obscure traces of fossil remains. These occur sometimes in rock otherwise compact and solid, or they may be so numerous as to make the rock porous and loose, the interior shell being entirely wanting. The fragments furnishing these fossils are, however, more vesicular and lighter colored than the stone usually seen scattered over the surface of the ridges. They have the lithological characters of that phase of the Niagara seen in the Sandusky River at Tiffin, Seneca County, and at Genoa, in Ottawa County. In the northeast quarter of Section 32, Crawford Township, a ridge may be seen of the same kind of stone as those north of Carey, running north and south, visible about one-half mile, slightly exposed on land of Joseph Pahl.

It would seem a3 if the conditions of the ocean's bed in which the Niagara was formed were not uniform. While regular strata were being deposited in a wide area, including portions of Seneca and Hancock Counties, without disturbance or contortions, a concretionary and crystallizing force sprang into operation in the northwest corner of Wyandot County, which in working from below, caused the even beds of deposition to swell upward or over the growing mass or masses. In some cases, it aided in the preservation of fossil remains; in others it hastened th«ir absorption into the mass of the rock. This is a peculiarity of the rock formation not confined to the Niagara, but is displayed conspicuously in the water-lime above, and it has been seen in the Lower Corniferous. When the lapse of time brings such hardened masses into contact with the erosions of ice and water, they cause the prominent features of the landscape by the removal of the more destructible parts about them. Such may be the explanation of the remarkable ridges about Carey, the even, friable beds seen in the quarries about their flanks having once been continuous over the summits, but, unable to resist the forces of the glacial epoch, were denuded down to the more enduring rock.

Within these ridges are several caves, the entrances to which are small and have been accidentally discovered, sometimes by men plowing in the field. One particularly, on the farm of Mr. Adam Keller, northwest quartei' Section 2, in Ridge Township, is described as having a perpendicular descent of sixty-tive feet to a stream of water which is very deep and separates one apartment by a narrow passage from another. The entrance is about five feet across and the sides are of rock.

The Niagara, in the southwest corner of the county, rises rapidly in the same way from below the water- lime which lies to the north, the dip being northeast and to the amount of twenty-five degrees along Sections 18 and 13 near the county lines. It here appears as a thick-bedded gray and crystalline limestone. It also shows in the Tymochtee Creek, at the village of Marseilles, in a characteristic surface exposure. About five feet of thick, hard beds may be seen along the creek, lying nearly horizontal, or with a very slight dip south -southwest. It is slightly porous and fossiliferous. It is sometimes blotched with blue and drab. These are the beds that rise so rapidly about a mile further south, forming a little ridge or brow of prominent land facing north. On this brow is situated the residence of Mrs. Socrates Hartle. The rock is shown in the excavation for the cellar about the center of Section 13, in Marseilles Township, also, in a ditch by the roadside in Section 18, about sixty rods east of Mrs. Hartle' s house, where the rapidity of the current of water has cleaned ofi' the smoothed and striated rock in a handsome exposure. A little stream, locally known as Little Tymochtee Creek, makes eastward along the north side of this brow of land, and on Section 13, less than a quarter of a mile north of Mrs. Hartle's house, and perhaps thirty feet below the Niagara outcrop near it, the blue slaty beds of the water-lime may be seen in the creek.

In the southeast quarter Section 13, in Marseilles Township, Mr. Heckathorn has a qviarry in the Niagara. The beds here are three to six inches in thickness. The stone is rather firm, though somewhat porous. It is used for quicklime and for general building purposes. Southeast quarter Section 11, in Marseilles Township, D. Heckathorn burns lime from the Niagara; dip north; beds about four inches. Within forty rods north of Mr. H. 's quarry the water-lime appears in the Little Tymochtee Creek. In northeast quarter Section 11, Marseilles Township, H. H. Cary burns lime and supplies building stone from the Niagara; beds three to five inches-, dip east exposed eighteen inches. Near the village of Marseilles, in the same township, Mr. Charles Norris and Michael Keckler have small quarries of Niagara limestone.

The water- lime formation, which in counties further north presents three distinct, general lithological characters, in Wyandot County, is mainly reduced to one. That aspect of the water-lime designated "Phase No. -3," passes, with the addition of much bituminous matter, into a thin bedded, even, slaty condition, which, first black, weathers blue on the sides of the bedding, or lastly a chocolate color, while the fractured edge is a very drab. Throughout the couctry it is known in this condition as "blue slate." When the bituminous matter is more evenly distributed through the rock, instead of being confined to the thin partings, the beds are thicker and of a blue color.

The principal outcrop of the water-lime within the county is along the left bank of the Tymochtee Creek, in Section 27 and 34, in Crawford Township. The banks of the creek expose perpendicular sections of four to eight feet of these thin beds. The dip being continuously toward the southwest, a connected section of eighty- four feet ten inches may be made out in a descending order. The beds are homogenous, tough, thin, sometimes having so much bituminous matter as to appear like the great black slate. The thinnest beds are. however, streaked with alternations of dark drab, and a bituminous brown. When wet the brown is almost black, but when dry and weathered it sometimes assumes a blue color, and if long weathered it becomes chocolate. There are among these occasional patches of thicker, even drab beds, which finally become so pei'sistent upward as to require a special designation.

Mr. McD. M. Carey has a quarry in these thin, blue beds and on Section 27, which has acquired considerable notoriety for the large, smooth slabs or flagging it affords. Some of the thicker beds furnish also a handsome and useful stone for building. The dip is toward the south -southwest exposure abovit twelve feet perpendicular. The stone here shows the characteristic Leperditia aitu. The quarry is in the old river bank or hard-pan terrace, about forty rods from the stream. This water- lime is seen in the following places in Wyandot County:

In Section 16, southwest quarter, in Crane Township, at the old ' 'Indian Mill," these blue flags have been taken out of the bed of the Sandusky and used for foundations for the mill. But in the construction of the bridge at the same place, the stone used is said t,o have come from Leesville, Crawford County.

In Section 21, Crane Township, at Carters dam, in the Sandusky River, Mr. John Strasser has opened the water-lime. The stone is in irregular, thick and thin beds. When freshly quari'ied, it is blue-drab, and of a tine grain. Exposed a short time to the weather, the whole pile becomes a bright blue. The fracture of the beds, however, becomes a much more ashen or drab-blue than the sides of the bedding. The dip in W. Strasser's bed is about nine feet deep. About thirty rods east of Strasser's quarry, in the bed of the Sandusky, blue flagging is taken out like that of Mr. Carey's quarry on the Tymochtee Creek, except that here the blue color pervades the white mass. Fragments of this, whenever bituminous and jointed, come out in long tapering pieces. These flags show a fossil which appears like a species of modiolopsis. In Crane Township, southwest quarter, Section 22, in a bed of Rock Run, a finegrained blue stone is quarried and used for foundations. It weathers a drab color to the depth of a half- inch or an inch, all uver the outside. One only of six inches is exposed. In the northwest quarter of Section 27, in the same township, along the bed of Rock Run the water-lime is abundantly exposed, with a general dip southeast, changing to west at the west end of the outcrop. Mr. Peter Weinandy here burns lime and sells stone. This bed has a depth of about tifty-seven feet. Beds which certainly cannot have been fractured more than a few months, were seen to have already acquired a coating of drab one-eighth to one- fourth of an inch thick over the fractured surface. The layers themselves, before quarrying, are sometimes one half to two-thirds drab, with a blue streak through the center. It would seem as if the drab were entirely an acquired color, and that perhaps the whole water-lime was at first a blue rock. The access of air or aerated water seems to cause the change. The fact that the lower, regular beds (as at this quariy), shut off the percolations of water through the rock, may account for the longer preservation of the blue. Whenever the beds are lenticular or irregular, or are so situated that the atmosphere finds free access to them, they are drab. They are seen to be blue only when deep-seated or lying very true.

In Section 28, east side of Tymochtee Township, the Tymochtee slate is seen in the bed of the Sandusky, at Haymau's mill. Handsome flags, about two inches thick, are taken out. In Section 22, Pitt Township, Mr. James Anderson's quarry shows the following section in the bank of the Sandusky : Bituminous drab, ten inches ; very hard, flinty, irregular beds, five feet.

There are sometimes bituminous films visible on the fractured edge ; no fossils. In Pitt Township, on the southwest quarter of Section 10, Mrs. Rebecca Smith owns a quarry in the Sandusky, from which a fine-grained, even bedded blue stone is taken, which weathers an ashen color. Here are some' handsome beds, six to eight inches thick, affording a fine building material. Dip southeast. At various points in Pitt Township, the same features of the water-lime may be seen. No reliable estimate can be made of the thickness exposed, or of their relative places in the formation, the outcrops are so isolated, and show so nearly the same characters. The same stone is quarried in the river at Upper Sandusky by Mr. William Frederick. The same stone is found in Section 17, in Crawford Township, on lands of Mr. George Mullholand, and on Section 24, in the quarries uf Messrs. Mitten and O'Brien, in the water- lime. The stone from these openings is in thick beds, much like the gray, hard beds of the quarries at Tiffin.

The lower corniferous may be seen in interrupted outcrop along the Sycamore Creek, from Benton, in Crawford County, to Section 18, in Sycamore Township, Wyandot County. Through the whole of this distance it is so hid by drift that no reliable section can be obtained. It is of the doarse-grained, thick-bedded, harsh and magnesian type until just within Section 17, Sycamore, the character of the rock c'nanges. It assumes very much the aspect of the drab, thin- bedded water- lime. A little further down the creek the soft, thick beds of the lower corniferous return. Further still, there is another similar change to a fine-grained, compact, light-blue stone, without fossils. This character continues through the most of Section 27, and some in Section 21, evinced not often by rock in situ, but by the angular, bluish, fine-grained pieces in the stream. This member of the lower corniferous was also seen near Melmore, in Seneca County No opportunity has been offered to ascertain its thickness, but, judging from tho superficial expose, it may have a thickness of thirty or even forty feet. In the northwest quarter of Section 21, Sycamore, about eighteen inches of similar compact blue limestone maybe seen in the creek, underlain by a blue shale, which crumbles conchoidally and shows spots of darker blue or purple. It is sometimes quite rocklike, yet when long weathered it crumbles. Its thickness cannot be stated, though there cannot be less than ten feet, judging from the distance it occupies the bed of the creek. On Section 18 of the same township, a thick-bedded, evengrained rock, harsh, like a sandstone, is slightly exposed. It is gray, without visible fossils, and weathers buff. It is impossible to give its dip, thickness, or relation to the shale just mentioned. It is probably below that. Near the same place, land of Andrew Bretz, there are also large fragments of a fragile, bituminous, crinoidal limestone, seen in the bed of the creek. In Pitt Township, southwest quarter of Section 25, on the land of Jacob Brewer, the lower corniferous is slightly exposed in the upper bank of the Sandusky River. The rock consists almost entirely of the coral Coenostronia ynonticulifera vein. On a thickness of about a foot can be in situ, but a mass of two feet thickness is tilted up so as to present the edges of the beds in a perpendicular position.

The Drift. - Wherever sections were observed throughout the county, the drift shows, as in counties further north, the two usual colors. The first is light brown, or ashen, and extends downward about twelve feet. It may be stratified or entirely unstratified, and forms the soil where it has not been covered with alluvial or marshy accumulations. Its color alone distinguishes it from the underlying blue or Erie clay. They both contain bowlders that show glacial action. On Section 24, Crawford Township, the lower member was seen exposed twenty- seven feet four inches in the bank of Tymochtee Creek, embracing beds of gravel and sand. The upper overlaying was twelve feet, and entirely unassorted, yet on Section 18, Tymochtee Township, both are more or less stratified. No two sections of this bank would be the same. The greatest uniformity in the order of alternation is ia the upper part. The blue hard pan sometimes extends upward quite to the brown clays and sands, and in one ease the whole bank consists of hard pan, the upper portion having the brown color. Hence the general character of this bank, and of the drift in Wyandot County, is as follows: Brown clay and sand, stratified; brown hard pan; statified brown clay; stratified blue clay and sand; finer blue clay and blue hard pan; brown clay; blue clay; debris, bowlders and slides. On the opposite side of the creek this bank is entirely wanting. There is a bank of a trifle over twelve feet, composed of agglutinated, rusty sand, without gravel or bowlders, at the base of which, near the water, is a bed of vegetable remains containing some pretty large limbs, and numerous branches of wood. Such deposits are common in the alluvial bottoms bordering the streams. There is a gradual ascent from the Jevel of this bank to the height of the bank on the opposite side of the river, attaintain that elevation in a distance of forty rods.

Material Resources. - The chief source of material wealth in W^yandot County, as with other counties in Northwestern Ohio, lies in its rich and exhaustless soil. The streams are generally too small or too sluggish to be reliable for water-powers. The rocks themselves are not known to possess any deposits of valuable minerals. They will serve for common use in building, and will make an excellent quicklime. There is reason to believe, also, that the water- lime, when having the characters seen in the quarry of Mrs. Smith, Section 10, Pitt Township, will afford a cement of hydraulic properties.

Good bricK, of a red color, are made in different places in the county from the surface of the drift. Such establishments are owned at Upper Sandusky by Jacob Gottfried & Brother, and by Ulrich & McAfee- also on the southeast quarter of Section 11. Salem, and on the Infirmary Farm by Jacob Ulnch. Sand for mortar is easily obtained from the numerous natural sections of the drift along the drainage valleys. A sand bank at Upper Sandusky was observed to underlie a deposit of eighty feet of brown hard pan, and was excavated to the depth of ten feet. The layers of sand lay nearly horizontal.

Chapter Tl Indian Occupancy

Introductory Remarks - Legendary Accounts Concerning the Delaware AND Iroquois Indians - Their Wars - The Iroquois Finally Victorious - The Shawanese - The Eries - The Huron-Iroquois, or Wyandots - Cartier Discovers The Latter on the Shores of Lake Huron in 1535 - Champlain's Operations - The French and Hurons Defeat THE Five Nations - The Latter Bide Their Time, and Finally Totally Defeat and Disperse the Hurons - Under French Protection, the Hurons are Again Assembled Near Detroit - Their Characteristics IN A Savage State - Their Wars - They Occupy the Sandusky Country - As Allies of the British, They Commit Many»Atrocities on the American Frontier Settlements - The Americans Retaliate by Sending Various Expeditions Into the Indian Country.

PROBABLY no county in the State of Ohio is richer in historical data concerning its aboriginal inhabitants than this, and to none were left so many landmarks indicating the life, habits and characteristics of its former occupants - the Indians. Here, within its borders, the brave but unfortunate Colonel Crawford fought his last battle, and suffered a death which will render his name conspicuous for all time in American annals; and here the Wyandots (who owned the land, who roamed at will beneath its forest shades, who chased the wild game through its tangled thickets, and who, under the fostering care of Christian ministers, had made many advances toward civilization) remained until within the memory of many now living - ux^til they were the last of the Ohio tribes to be removed to new homes beyond the Missouri. For these reasons, therefore, no further apology is deemed necessary in explanation of the large amount of space which is here devoted to the Indians, and to their occupancy of this and adjacent regions.

Respecting the early history of the tribes once the claimants and occupants of these regions, the most rational and lucid accounts are obtained from the journals of the Jesuit and Moravian Missionaries, men who, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, penetrated into this territory far in advance of the boldest hunters and trappers. They were informed by the old men of the Delawares (the Lenni Lenape, or original people, as they called themselves) that many centuries previous, their ancestors dwelt far away in the western wilds of the American Continent, but emigrating eastwardly, arrived after many years on the west bank of the "Namoesi Sipu" (the Mississippi), or river of tish, where they fell in with the Mengwes (Iroquois), who had also emigrated from a distant country in the direction of the setting sun, and approached this river somewhat nearer its source. The spies of the Lenape reported the country on the east of the Mississippi to be inhabited by a powerful nation, dwelling in large towns erected upon the shores of their principal streams.

Indian Jail

Allegheny Kiver and Mountains. Their towns were defended by regular fortifications or intrenchments of earth, vestiges of which are yet seen in a greater or less degree of preservation throughout the Mississippi and Ohio valleys and in the regions of the great lakes. The Lenape requested permission to establish themselves in their vicinity, a request which was refused, but leave was given them to pass the river and seek a country farther to the eastward. But while the Lenape were crossing the river, the Allegewi, becoming alarmed at their number, assailed and destroyed many of those who had reached the eastern shore, and threatened a like fate to others should they attempt the passage of the stream. Frenzied at the loss they had sustained, the Lenape eagerly accepted the proposition from the Mengwes, who had hitherto been spectators only of their enterprise, to conquer and divide the country of the AUegewi. A war of many years' duration was waged by the combined nations, marked by great havoc and loss of life on both sides, which Unally resulted in the conquest and expulsion of the Allegewi, who fled by the way of the Mississippi River, never to return. Their country was apportioned among the conquerors - the Mengwes or Iroquois choosing the neighborhood of the great lakes, and the Lennape or Delawares possessing themselves of the lands to the southward.

Many ages after, during which the victors lived together in great harmony, the enterprising hunters of the Lenape tribes crossed the Alleghany Mountains and discovered the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers and the bays into which they flowed. Exploring the Sheyichbi country (New Jersey), they arrived on the Hudson River, to which they subsequently gave the name of the Mohicannittuck. Returning to their nation after a long absence, they reported their discoveries, describing the country they had visited as abounding in game and fruits, fish and fowl, and destitute of inhabitants. Concluding this to be the country destined for them by the Great Spirit, the Lenape proceeded to establish themselves upon the principal rivers of the east, making the Delaware, to which they gave the name of Lenape - Wihittuck (the river of the Lenape) the center of their possessions.

All of the Lenape Nation, however, who crossed to the east side of the Mississippi, did not move toward the Atlantic coast, a part remaining behind to assist that portion of their people who, frightened by the reception which the Allegewi had given to their countrymen, fled far to the west of the Namoesi Sipu. Finally the Lenape became divided into three great bodies. The larger half of all settled on the Atlantic and the great rivers which flow into it. The other half was separated into two parts; the stronger continued beyond the Mississippi, the other remained on the eastern bank.

Ultimately, that part of the Lenape Nation who located on the east side of the Mississippi, became divided into many small tribes, receiving names from their places of residence, or from some circumstance remarkable at the time of its occurrence. Thus originated the Delawares, Shawanese, Nanticokes, Susquehannas, Nishamines,Conoys, Minsis, Abenaquis, Pequots, Narragansetts, Miamis, Illinois, Sauks, Foxes, Menomonees, Chippewas, Ottawas. Pottawatomies, and the Southern Cherokees and Choctaws. According to those who have made a special study of Indian history, all of the tribes above named belonged to the great Algonquin race, and spoke dialects of the Algonquin language, so similar that the members of any tribe could communicate with those of all others without the aid of an intei'preter.

For some years the Mengwes (Iroquois), who, as before stated, constituted a separate race, remained near the Great Lakes with their canoes, in readiness to fly should the Allegewi retui'n. The latter failed to appear again, however, and becoming emboldened and their numbers rapidly increasing, they stretched themselves eastward along the St. Lawrence, and finally locating, for the most part, in the present State of New York, became, on the north, immediate neighbors of the Lenape or Algonquin tribes. In the course of time, the Mengwes and Lenape became enemies, and, dreading the power of the Lenape, the Mengwes resolved to involve them in war - one Lenape tribe with another - to reduce their strength. They committed murders upon the members of one tribe, and induced the injured party to believe they were perpetrated by another. They stole into the country of the Delawares, surprised and killed their hunters, and escaped with the plunder.

The nations or tribes of that period had each a particular mark upon its war clubs, which, left beside a murdered person, denoted the aggressor. The Mengwes committed a murder in the Cherokee country, and left with the dead body a war-club bearing the insignia of the Lenape. The Cherokees in revenge fell upon the lattei", and thus commenced a long and bloody war. The treachery and cunning of the Mengwes were at length discovered, and the Delaware tribe of the Lenape turned upon them with the determination to utterly extirpate them. They were the more strongly induced to take this resolution, as the man-eating propensities of the Mengwes, according to Heckewelder, had reduced them in the estimation of the Delawares below the rank of human beings.

To this time, each tribe of the Mengwes had acted uader the direction of its particular chiefs, and, although the nation could not control the conduct of its members, it was made responsible for their outrages. Pressed by the Lenape, they resolved to form a confederation, which might enable them better to concentrate their forces in war, and to regulate their affairs in peace. Thannawage, an aged Mohawk, was the projector of this alliance. Under his auspices, five^ nations* - the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas - foi'med a species of republic, governed by the united councils of their aged and experienced chiefs. The beneficial effects of this confederation early displayed themselves. The Lenape were checked, and the Mengwes, whose warlike disposition soon familiarized them with firearms procured from the Dutch on the Hudson River, were enabled at the same time to contend with their ancient enemies and to resist the French, who now attempted the settlement of Canada, and the extension of their dominion over a large portion of the country lying between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mississippi River.

However, becoming hard pressed by the Europeans, the Mengwes, or Five Nations, sought reconciliation with their old enemies, the Lenape; and for this purpose, if the traditions of the Delawai'es be accredited, they affected one of the most extraordinary strokes of policy which aboriginal history has recorded.

"When Indian nations are at war, the mediators between them are the women. However weary of the contest, the men hold it cowardly and disgraceful to seek reconciliation. They deem it inconsistent in a warrior to speak of peace with bloody weapons in his hands. He must maintain a determined courage, and appear at all times as ready and willing to fight as at the commencement of hostilities. With such dispositions, Indian wars

*To these a sixth nation, the Tuscaroras, was added in 1712. This last tribe originally dwelt in the western part of the present State of North Carolina, but having become involved in a war with their neighbors, were driven from their country northward, and adopted by the Mengwes or Iroquois confederacy.

would never cease if the women did not interfere and persuade the combatants to bury the hatchet and make peace with each other. On such occasions, the women would plead their cause with much eloquence. " Not a warrior," they would say, " but laments the loss of a father, a son, a brother or a friend. And mothers, who have borne with cheerfulness the pangs of childbirth and the anxieties that wait upon the infancy and adolescence of their sons, behold their promised blessings crushed in the held of battle, or perishing at the stake in lanutterabie torments. In the depths of their grief, they curse their wretched existence, and shudder at the idea of bearing children." They conjured the warriors, therefore, by their suffering wives, their helpless children, their homes and their friends, to interchange forgiveness, to cast away their arms, and, smoking together the pipe of peace, to embrace as friends those whom they had learned to esteem as enemies.

Such prayers thus urged seldom failed of the desired effect. The Mengwes solicited the Lenape to assume the function of peacemakers. " They had reflected," said the Mengwes, "upon the state of the Indian race, and were convinced that no means remained to preserve it unless some magnanimous nation would assume the character of the ivoman. It could not be given to a weak and contemptible tribe; such would not be listened to; but the Lenape and their allies would at once possess influence and command respect. " The facts upon which these arguments were founded were known to the Delawares, and in a moment of blind confidence in the sincerity of the Iroquois they acceded to the proposition and assumed the petticoat. This ceremony was performed at Fort Orange (now Albany, N. Y.) amid great rejoicings in 1617, in the presence of the Dutch, whom the Lenape afterward charged with having conspired with the Mengwes for their destruction.

The Iroquois now assumed the rights of protection and command over the Delawares, but, still di'eading their strength, they cunningly involved them again in a war with the Cherokees, promised to fight their battles, led them into an ambush of their foes and deserted them. The Delawares at length comprehended the treachery of their so-called friends of the North, and resolved to resume their arms, and, being still superior in numbers, to crush them. It was too late, however. The Europeans were now making their way into the country in every direction, and gave ample employment to the astonished Lenape.

On the other hand, the Mengwes denied the story told by the Lenape. They always asserted that they had conquered the Delawares by force of arms, and made them a subject people. And though it was said they were unable to detail the circumstance of this conquest, it is more reasonable to suppose it true than that a numerous and warlike people should have voluntarily suffered themselves to be disarmed and enslaved by a shallow artifice, or that, discovering the fraud practiced upon them, they should unresistingly have submitted to its consequences. This conquest was not an empty acquisition to the Mengwes. They claimed dominion over all the lands occupied by the Delawares - from the head-waters of the Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers on the north, to the Potomac on the south, and from the Atlantic Ocean westward to the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers - and their claims were distinctly acknowledged by the early whites when treating for the cession of lands. It is also recorded in history that from about 1617, until the Indian title to the territory just described was extinguished, parties of the Iroquois or Five Nations (afterward known as the Six Nations) occupied and wandered over the country of the Delawares at pleasure. True, the cow- ardly Delawares and the perfidious Sbawanese always boldly claimed these grounds as their own (except when confronted and rebuked by the chiefs and head men of the Six Nations), yet the proprietaries wisely recognized the claim of the Six Nations, and it was with that great confederation of red men they treated when purchases of territory were made.

The Shawanese came from the South. They were a restless, wandering tribe, and had occupied regions now embraced by the States of Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia and the Carolinas, before locating with their allies, the Delawares, in the province of Pennsylvania. After passing a few decades in that province, they migrated, or rather were driven, westward, and by the middle of the eighteenth century the entire tribe had settled on the Ohio River and its large tributaries.

Meanwhile the Six Nations were ceding to the Penns the lands occupied by the Delawares in Pennsylvania. Hence the latter were gradually yet peaceably pushed back to the westward by the constantly advancing tide of European emigration, until the beginning of the " Old French and Indian war" of 1754-33, when they, together with the Shawanese, Wyandots and other tribes of the great Northwest, became the allies of the French, and for many years thereafter ravaged at frequent intervals the western frontiers of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia. Immediately after their defeat at Kittanning by Col. Armstrong in September, 1756, the Delawares fled into Ohio; they refused to settle again on the east of Fort Du Quesne, and seemed quite willing to have that fortress and its French garrison placed between them and the English. However, while extremelv careful to maintain their old men, wives and children far to the westward of Fort Du Quesne, afterward Fort Pitt, the Delaware and Shawanese warriors (assisted until 1763 by the French) dominated over all of the country (with the exception of small circles surrounding Forts Pitt and Ligonier) lying immediately west of the Allegheuies, until 1764, when Gen. Henry Boquet, with a strong force of Pennsylvania and Virginia provincials marched into the "Muskingum country." He defeated the savages in several encounters, and caused them to sue. for a peace which continued until after the beginning of the war for American independence. The British then rendered their name forever odious by marshaling under their banners the Delawares, Shawanese, Wyandots, Pottawatomies and other Northwestern tribes, besides the Six Nations of New York, whose warriors, after being fully supplied with English munitions of war, were sent forward to massacre, irrespective of age, sex or condition, the unfortunate residents of American border settlements.

Having related thus much of the traditional and authentic history of the Delawares and Shawanese - tribes which many years ago were prominent in the region now embracing Wyandot County - we turn our attention to the "Erigas,"or Eries, and the Huron Iroquois, otherwise known as '" Yendots," or Wyandots.

Of the Eries but little is known, and that little consists mainly of a few meager traditions. Indeed, some writers doubt whether such a tribe ever existed on the southern shores of Lake Erie, as claimed. However that may be, it is fair to presume that if such a race did once occupy the lake shore described, they were at the same time occupants of the territory now within the limits of Wyandot County, The early French priests, or missionaries, are quoted as authority for the statements, that about 230 yeai's ago a powerful tribe of savages, termed variously the Eries or " Cat Nation,'' the Erigas or "Neutral Nation," occupied a wide expanse of country on the southern border of Lake Erie, extending from the Niagara River on the east to the Miami River on the west; that they possessed fortified towns, and could muster four thousand warriors or fighting men, famed for their exploits in archery. Finally, however, they became involved in a war with the Iroquois or Five Nations, which continued until the entire tribe of Fries was either killed, adopted into the powerful confederacy of the Five Nations, or driven to other regions far to the westward. This misfortune, we are told, befell the Fries about the year 1656, and it is supposed that from the date last mentioned until the coming of the Wyandots or Hurou-Iroquoi.s, the territory lying immediately to the southward of Lake Erie remained as abandoned or neutral ground.

The Hurons Or Wyandots

The first European to make mention of the tribe of Indians, since known to history as the Wyandots, was the celebrated French navigator and explorer Jacques Cartier, who in the summer of 1535, sailed up the St. Lawrence River to a place called by him Mont Royal (afterward changed by the English to Montreal), and formally took possession of all the country round about (in the name of King Francis the First), under the title of New France. Soon after, Cartier and his men extended their explorations along the Huron Lake, where, on its southern shores, they suddenly discovered themselves to be intruders upon the territory of a powerful tribe of savages, who called themselves, as did the New York Iroquois, Ontwaonwes, meaning " real men, " but known in French and English history as the Huron -Iroquois, or more commonly the Hurons from their proximity to the lake of that name. The immediate territory occupied by them (lying about 100 miles south of the mouth of the Ottawa or French River), was only about sixty miles in extent, yet. according to French writers, they then had twenty-fiye towns, and were about 30,000 in number.

The Hurons, like all untutored aboriginal tribes, were chiefly employed in pursuits of the chase and warring with their no less savage neighbors. Yet it cannot be said of them, as of the Five Nations, that they were particularly a warlike and vindictive people. However, they could not for a moment tolerate a tribal insult. Though they were, without a doubt, Mengwes or Iroquois Indians, possessing many characteristics in common with their New York brethren, yet they were sworn enemies, and their tribal and personal vindictiveness was proverbial among all Indians. As the New York Iroquois was a confederation of the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas, so the Huron-Iroquois was a league of the Hurons proper, and various tribes of the Algonquin race, and long before Cartier navigated the waters of the St. Lawrence these leagues and confederations of red men had waged wars of extermination against each other. Cartier made some attempts at colonization along the St. Lawrence, but in 1543 the few French settlements had all been abandoned and for more than half a century thereafter, the disturbed condition of France entirely prevented its people from utilizing his discoveries.

In 1603, however, Samuel de Champlain, another distinguished French mariner and explorer, led an expedition to Quebec, made a permanent settlement there, and, in fact, founded the colony of Canada. From Quebec and from Mont Royal, which was soon after established, the adventurous French explorers, fur traders, voyageurs and missionaries, pushed rapidly into the Western wilderness, and as early as 1615, Champlain himself visited the Hurons on the shores of Lake Manitouline. Quite as early, too,

As before indicated, the Hurons had been reared to hate the very name of the Irocj^uois - their Southern brethren - and from the remotest period of their tribal existence, the defiant warwhoop, Bounded by either of the belligerents, was sufficient for the commencement of another bloody chapter in the unwritten history of their career. The Harons, therefore, hailed the arrival of Champlain with delight. They considered the brave bearing, and improved weapons of the French soldiery (added to their numerical strength, and their perfect acquaintance with the nature of the territory of their mortal enemies), would be a force sufficiently effective for the annihilation of the vindictive Iroqvuxis. Terms of alliance with the French were soon proposed by the Hurons to Champlain, who, not willing that his power should be unknown and unfelt in tjie Western wilds, and particularly that his dusky neighbors should be acquainted with the fact that opposition to his policy meant that they had in their own midst an enemy of territic vengeance, whom it was always better to placate than offend, terms of alliance were at once consummated, by which, either in times of war or peace, the \__JHuron8 and French were to act as one people.

Very naturally the Southern Iroquois, or Five Nations, looked upon the French settlements on their Northern border with deep aversion. Already the Dutch had established themselves at New Amsterdam (New York) and along the Hudson River, the Swedes were occupying the Lower Delaware Valley, the English were making settlements at Plymouth Rock, and Salem, and Dorchester in New England, also in Virginia, and now the French encroachments upon the north aroused all their slumbering suspicions as to the final result, if foreign peoples were permitted to invade their territory, curtail their hunting-grounds, and thus trifle with their hitherto unlimited authority. Therefore, the ever alert and fiery Monawks soon found an occasion for taking up the tomahawk against the French and the Hurons. Their example became infectious, anrl soon the whole confederation - the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onundagas, Cayugas and Senecas - took the war-path against their enemies in the North. Advised of the approach of the Iroquois, Champlain made choice of his battle-field on the lake, which still bears his name, and with his own ships, surrounded by a fleet of bark canoes bearing his Huron allies, he met the enemy in mid-lake. Of course the advantages were all with the French, for water is never the selected battle-field of the Indian and bows and arrows were no match for musketry, and after a short, though stubbornly contested fight, the Iroquois gave way, and rowed their light, birch-bark canoes almost with the bounding of the deer to the shore from which they had embarked, hotly pursued by the equally light canoes of the Hurons. By the time they had reached the shore, the panic was complete. The forest offered them no encouragement to make a stand, so on they went, followed by the musketry of the French and the victorious whoop of the Hurons, till further pursuit was useless, and the chase was abandoned.

The defeat sustained by the Five Nations on Lake Champlain, at the hands of the French and Hurons, as well as the constantly spreading out of white settlements in New England and New York, caused the terrible Iroquois confederates first mentioned to confine their attention to matters nearer home, and to remain comparatively (though not wholly) peaceable for many years. Meanwhile, or about 1(325, there had arrived on the shores of the St. Lawrence a few Jesuits, the vanguard of a host of those fiery

/ champions of the cross who were destined; it appears, to crowd aside the more peaceful or more inert Franciscans throughout the whole river and lake region in the North, and substantially to appropriate that missionary ground to themselves. Their course was generally across Canada by land to Lake Manitouline, and thence in canoes through Lakes Huron, Michigan and Superior; for the more convenient route by way of the Niagara River and Lake Erie was guarded by the ferocious Iroquois, whom Champlain, by his ill-advised attack, had made the implacable enemy of the French. During the period referred to, the Jesuit fathers were assiduous in their attention to the Hurons; many of the latter were willingly made converts of the Catholic faith, and also showed a rapid advancement in the ways of civilization, particularly in the cultivation of the soil, and the production of corn, beans, pumpkins, squashes, etc. A number of schools and churches were likewise established at St. Louis, St. Ignatius, and other of their chief towns, and stockades erected to protect them from surprise by the dreaded Iroquois/'

Th^ Iroquois, however, were only biding their time. For about two score years had they smarted under the stigma of the defeat I'eceived at the hands of Champlain. Another generation of warriors had grown up among them, and the sons were eager seekers of an opportunity by which the shame of the past might be obliterated in the glory of the future. This opportunity was afforded them as early as 1648, when, by a treaty with the Dutch, they became well supplied with firearms, which previous to that time had been denied them by the Dutch authorities. The tireless, irreconcilable, unforgetting and unforgiving Iroquois were now ready for the war-path. The terms of the treaty above mentioned prevented the possibility of a conflict with the Dutch along the Hudson River, and as a similar peaceful state of affairs prevailed between them and the New England colonists, the young and restless warriors of the confederation turned to more remote fields in search of an enemy upon whom to test the virtues of their newly acquired implements of war. ^

Such an enemy was soon found (if any credence be given to traditional narration) in the persons of the Eries. who then inhabited the country lying to the southward of Lake Erie, and as a result, the latter were vanquished and destroyed. Our " Romans of America," the confederated Iroquois, then turned upon their ancient enemy, the Hurons. This war between the Hurons and Iroquois raged for several years, or until about 1659, when the latter invaded the country of the former in great forces, defeated them at every point, massacred large numbers, including several French priests, destroyed their crops and towns, and pursued the panicstricken fugitives to remote quarters. Some of the Hurons sought protection under the walls of Quebec; others made their way to the frozen borders of Hudson's Bay; others again reached in safety the upper part of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan; but the greater portion fled to the Ojibway, or as now termed, Chippewa hunting-grounds, on the southern shore of Lake Superior. The implacable Iroquois even followed the fugitives westward to their new haunts, but the latter, by the help of the Chippewas, were enabled to repulse their arrogant enemies, who thenceforth seldom sought a warpath which led so far to the Northwest./

For a number of years the Hurons, the Ottawawas, or Ottawas, and the Dinondadies - tribes which had been driven from Canada by the fierce Iroquois - led a restless, nomadic life in the Lake Superior region. At length they were visited by Fathers Jacques Marquette and Claude Dablon, who began to organize the Hurons. under their various chiefs, as a permanentlyestablished, self-reliant people, and had succeeded in a measure, when a war with the Sioux compelled their removal to Michillimacinac, now known as Mackinaw. The assembling at Mackinaw of the Hurons and other tribes friendly to the French, took place about the year JUxI.l, and there they remained until 1703 ; when La Motte Cadillac, who hadl^een for several years the commandant at Mackinaw, established a pei'manent post on the " detroit," or strait, between Lakes Erie and St. Clair, which was at first known as F(>rt Ponchartrain, but soon after received the appellation of Detroit, which, as post, village and city it has retained to this day. Cadillac immediately made strenuous efforts to induce all the various tribes of the Northwest who were friends of the French to locate around and near Fort Ponchartrain, evidently desirous to have them well in hand, so that the French commanders could more easily lead them on warlike expeditions against the English and Iroquois. The Hurons at Mackinaw (as well as various other tribes) promptly accepted his invitation. At Detroit, they were joined by quite large bands of Hurons and Dinondadies from Charity and Great Manitouline Islands. Subsequently new tribal compacts were perfected, and the reunited and combined tribes of Hurons and Dinondadies then became known as the Wyandots, meaning " Traders of the West."

The warriors of the various tribes assembled at Fort Ponchartrain usually acted together in their numerous warlike expeditions. Of the conflicts which they waged with other savages, however, there is seldom any record unless they fought in connection with the French. Even in that case the accounts are few and meager. It appears that the Indians in Michigan under French control were almost continually at war with the Iroquois, and, notwithstanding the acknowledged valor and sagacity of the Six Nations, the former (having the support and sometimes the active assistance of the French) were able after 1707 to hold their ground, and. to remain in 41flaa^ai£!a.,Qtiliilt4?en insular throughout the centjiry.

Early in May, 1712, when the warriors at Cadillac's settlement at the " detroit " were nearly all absent, hunting, a large body of Outagamie (Fox) and Mascoutin Indians, supposed to be in league with the Iroquois, suddenly appeared before Fort Ponchartrain, erected a breastwork, and made other preparations for an assault. Du Buisson, the commandant, who had only about twenty men with him, sent runners to call in the hunting-parties, and then awaited ihe assault of his foes. It was made on the 18th of May, and, though temporarily repulsed, there was every prospect that it would be successful on account of the comparatively large numbers of the assailants.

While the fight was going on, however, the Wyandots, Ottawa, and Pottawatomie warriors returned, and immediately attacked Du Buisson's assailants. The latter were driven into their own defenses; those defenses were assaulted by the French and their allies, and these in turn were repulsed by the Foxes and Mascoutins. Thus the conflict continued with varying fortunes for no less than nineteen days, when the invaders fled. Sevei'al miles north of Detroit they halted, and built a rude fortification, but the French and their allies attacked them with two small pieces of artillery, and routed them after three days more of fighting, when the Wyandots, Pottawatomies and Ottawas massacred eight hundred men, ivomen and children.

In fact, the Fox nation was reported completely destroyed, but this was not the case. Some of its warriors joined the Iroquois, while the main body fled to the west side of Lake Michigan, where they were long distinguished for their especial hatred of the French. On the other hand, the friendship then cemented between the French and the 'W3'andots, Pottawatomies and Ottawas, endured through more than half a century of varied fortunes, and was scarcely severed when, throughout Canada and the West, the Gallic flag went down in hopeless defeat before the conqtiering Britons.

From Detroit the Wyandots gradually extended their hunting-grounds to the southward (the strength of the Iroquois, after a thirty years' war with the French, having been much reduced, and their hostile incursions into the Lake Erie region successfully repelled), and as early as 1725 were in quiet possessioQ of the country about Saadusky Bay, and also claimed ownership to all the lands lying between Lake Erie and the Ohio River. In 1740, they consented to the proposition that a considerable body of Delawares, who had been driven out of Pennsylvania by the Iroquois, should occupy the Mu.skingum country. Finally, the entire Delaware nation, as well as the major portion of the Shawanese, became established in the present State of Ohio, and in conjunction with the Wya)idots (all allies of the French), desolated and laid waste the border settlements of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia for many years.

Our researches have not led us to believe that the Wyandots were any worse or any better than the average North American savage. They had the usual characteristics of the Indians, both of the Algonquin and Iroquois races, of which races, indeed, during the later years, they were a mixture. Less terrible in battle, less sagacious in council, than the men of the Six Nations, they were, nevertheless, like the rest of their red brethren, brave, hardy and skillful warriors, astute managers so far as their knowledge extended, generally faithful friends, and invariably most implacable enemies. Their own time they devoted to war, the chase or idleness, abandoning to the women all the labors which could be imposed upon their weary shoulders.

They lived in the utmost freedom which it is possible to imagine, consistent with any civil or military organization whatever. Their sachems exercised little authority, save to declare war or make peace, to determine on the migrations of the tribes, and to give wise counsels allaying any ill feelings which might exist among the people. There was no positive law compelling obedience.

Even in war there was no way by which the braves could be forced to take the war-path. Any chieftain could drive a stake into the ground, dance the war dance around it, strike the tomahawk into it with a yell of defiance, and call for warriors to go forth against the foe. If his courage or capacity was doubted, he obtained but few followers. If he was of approved valor and skill, a larger number would grasp their weapons in response to his appeal; while if he was a chieftain distinguished far and wide for deeds of blood and craft, the whole nation would spring to arms, and all its villages would resovind with the terrific notes of the war song, chanted by hundreds of frenzied braves. Even after they had taken the field (or more properly speaking, the woods) against their enemies, they could not be compelled to fight, except by the fear of being called a " squaw," which, however, to the Indian mi ad was a very terrible punishment.

With the Indian method of warfare, the American mind is pretty well acquainted, so that we need not give a detailed description of it here. Few have not read how. the warriors went forth against their foes, clad chiefly in hideous paint, but aimed with tomahawk and scalping-knives, and those who have been suflScieutly successful in fur-catching, carrying also the coveted muskets of the white man; how they made their way with the utmost secrecy through the forest until they reached the vicinity of their enemies, whether red or white; how, when their unsuspecting victims were wrapped in slumber, the whole crowd of painted demons would burst in among them, using musket, knife and tomahawk with the most furious zeal; and how, when the torch had been applied, men, women and children were stricken down in indiscriminate slaughter by the luried light of their blazing homes.

It is well known, too, that those who escaped immediate death were often reiserved for a still more horrible doom; that the fearful sport of running the gauntlet when a hundred weapons were flung by malignant foes at the naked fugitive, was but the preliminary amusement before the awful burning at the stake, accompanied by all the refinements of torment which a baleful ingenuity could invent, yet supported with unsurpassable fortitude by the victim, who often shrieked his defiant death song amid the last convulsions of his tortured frame. Their religion was what might have been expected from their practices - a mass of senseless and brutal superstition - and Pere Marquette, the most zealous of missionaries, after several years of labor among the Northwestern Indians, could only say that the Hurons " retained a little Christianity."

It would be foreign to the design of this work to attempt to give an extended account of all the wars, movements, etc., of the Wyandot Indians, subsequent to their occupation of the Sandusky River country, even if such were possible. They were simply in common with all other tribes in the neighborhood of the great lakes, the friends and allies of the French, the foes of the English and Iroquois, and until the termination of the French power in America, had assisted the troops of that nation to fight many battles. Thus in 1744, when war broke out between France and England, numerous bands of savages from all the Northwestern tribes sought the service of the French. Some of them assailed the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia, while others made their way to Montreal, where they were furnished with arms and ammunition, and were sent forth against the settlers of New York and New England. In 1745, one of the numerous records made by the Canadian ofiicials states that fifty "Poutewatamies," fifteen "Puans" and ten "Illinois" came to go to war. Another mentions the arrival of thirty-eight "Outawois, " seventeen "Sauternes," twenty-four Hurons, and fourteen "Poutewatamies." Similar official memoranda show the sending out of not less than twenty marauding expeditions against the English colonists in one year, frequent mention being made of the part taken by the Hurons or Wyandots in these bloody raids.

After the close of that war by the treaty of Aix-la Chapelle in 1748. there was comparative quiet among the red men of the Northwest until the opening of the great conflict known in Europe as the seven -years' war, but in America called the " Old French and Indian War." This contest was commenced in the spring of 1754, by a fight between a body of Virginia rangers, under Lieut. Col. George Washington, and a company of French sent out from Fort DuQuesne, and continued until toward the close of 1762, when, by a treaty of peace between France and England, the former power gave up all claims to the Northwest Territory, and from that date their authority here ceased forevermore.

Meanwhile, true to their promises and their friendships, the Hurons or Wyandots had participated side by side with the French in numerous conflicts. They assisted to defeat Braddock in front of Fort Du Quesne. Sub- sequently, nearly every Wyaudot who could lift a tooiahawk, went forth upon the war path against the hapless inhabitants of the Pennsylvania and Virginia frontiers. They served under Montcalm in Canada. Again were they summoned to the defense of Fort Da Qaesne when it was threatened by Gen. Forbes' army, and the following year, under D'Aubry, they proceeded to the relief of Fort Niagara. That fortress soon surrendered to the English, however, and a little later the fall of Quebec (at which a large body of the Northwestern Indians was present) virtually decided the fate of Canada and the Northwest. The Indians then began to lose faith in the omnipotence of their French friends, and our Wyandots, together with other tribes, returned to their homes on the shores of the Great Lakes and rivers of the West, and gloomily awaited the results referred to at the close of the preceding paragraph.

When, in 17(33, Pontiac, the renowned Ottawa chieftain, marshaled under his leadership the Northwestern tribes for the purpose of overthrowing British supremacy in that region, the Wyandots joined him. After the siege of Detroit had continued for several weeks, the Wyandots and Pottawatomies made a treaty of peace with Maj. Gladwyn, the besieged English commander, but when Maj.Tlogers and Capt. Dalzell led a party from the fort to attack Pontiac in his camp, the treacherous Wyandots and Pottawatomies fiercely assaulted the flank of the British column. Dalzell was killed, and it was only by the most desperate exertions that his successor, Capt. Grant, with the aid of Maj. Rogers and his American rangers, was able to make good his retreat to the fort, after a fourth of his men were killed or wounded.

The next summer, 1864, Gen. Bradstreet* occupied Detroit with a considerable force of English, Americans and Iroquois, the appearance of whom, together with Gen. Boquet's successful campaign into the Muskingum Country, doubtless tended to strongly impress the power of England on the hitherto hostile tribes. In 1765, George Croghan, Deputy Superintendent of Indian A£fairs, under the celebrated Sir William Johnson, baronet, his Majesty's sole agent and Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Northern Department of North America, etc., etc., etc., held a grand council meeting at Fort Pitt, and also at Detroit, with the Northwestern tribes. They had by that time become thoroughly humbled, and were sincerely desirous of peace and the re-opening of the fur trade. After the treaties then made, all these tribes remained steady friends of the British, so long as that nation had any need of their services.

Pontiac himself gave in his submission at another council held in August of the same year. This celebrated chieftain was murdered by an Illinois Indian near St. Louis, in 1769. The Wyandotts, the Ottawas, and other tribes which had followed his lead, sprang to arms to avenge the murder, and almost exterminated the Illinois. Except this and similar conflicts with neighboring savages, also a slight participation in Dunmore's war, the Wyandotts remained at peace until the out-break of the Revolutionary war.

The British then made strong and, as we shall see, successful efforts to obtain their assistance, and in the summer of 1777, several hundred Wyandots, Ottawas, Pottawatomies, Chippewas, Wiunebagoes and others from the region of the Great Lakes, all under Charles de Langdale, a French and

* During the same season, Gen. Bradstreet, with his forces, ascended the Sandusky River as far as it was navigable tor boats, where a treaty of peace was signed by the chiefs and head men of the Wyandot nation. It is probable that he penetrated as far inland as the old Indian town of Upper Sandusky, which stood on the right bank of the river, about three miles above the present town of Upper Sandusky. Gen. Israel Putnam, then a Major in command of a battalion of American provincials, was with Bradstreet.

Indian half-breed, and another French officer, joined the English Army of Gen. Bargoyne. They accompanied him in his invasion of New York, but accomplished little, except to burn some houses and slaughter a few families. Burgoyne made some efforts to restrain their ferocity, which so disgusted them that they nearly or quite all returned home before his surrender to Gen. Gates. They also complained that Burgoyne did not take good care of them, and that over a hundred of their number were needlessly sacrificed at Bennington, Vt.

Although the Wyandots and their neighbors - the Ottawas, Chippewas, and Pottawattomies on the north, and the Delawares and Shawanese on the south - were opposed to taking any further part in the war under the direct command of British officers, and as part of a British Army, yet as it appears, they were not at all avei'se to making war upon the Americans in their own way, and under the lead of their own chiefs. Hence, late in the fall of 1777, the Wyandot, Delaware and Shawanese warriors appeared in Westmoreland County, Penn., where (many of the arms-bearing population being absent as members of Washington's army) they gathered many scalps. Elated with their success, they crossed the Alleghanies and slaughtered many of the inhabitants of the region now embraced by the counties of Bedford, Blair, Huntingdon and Somerset. Neither age, sex nor condition were spared by the savages. Immediately after the French Government had relinquished control of Canada and the Northwest Territory, the Jesuit missionaries retired tu the Canadian side of the Great Lakes and the river St. Lawrence, hence the Wyandots, thus left without the Christianizing influences of their former teachers, soon relapsed to a degree of barbarity and ferociousness which placed them upon an even footing with their no less savage allies, the Delawares, Shawanese, Mingoes and Miamis. The Six Nations also took the war-path in the interests of the British, and under the lead of the villains Brant, Butler and various tories, committed many murders in the frontier settlements of New York and Pennsylvania, the massacre of the Wyoming settlers and the destruction of Hannastown being among their chief exploits.

These forays and murdering expeditions on the part of the savages under British pay continued until the close of the struggle for American independence. Meanwhile, the Americans were using all the means at hand in the endeavor to defend their border settlements in the interior, while at the same time engaged in lighting the British armies, then desolating their seaport towns. To this end, in 1778, Gen. Lachlin Mcintosh, commander of the Western Military Department, with headquarters at Fort Pitt (Pittsburgh), marched forth with about 1,000 men. He was vested with discretionary powers, but it was purposed that he should march his army to Detroit, or at least as far as the Indian towns on the Sandusky River, which seemed to be the general places of rendezvous for the hostile tribes of the Northwest. Gen. Mcintosh, however, lacked the qualifications necessary to conduct an Indian warfare successfully, and only proceeded as far as thy immediate vicinity of the present town of Bolivar, in Tuscarawas County, Ohio. He there halted, erected Fort Laurens, garrisoned it with 150 men, under the command of Col. John Gibson, returned to Fort Pitt, and soon after resigned his command of the department.

Fort Laurens - named in honor of the then President of the Continental Congress, Henry Laurens - was the first substantially built work erected within the present limits of Ohio. Yet disasters attended it from the beginning. The Indians stole the horses, and drew the garrison into several ambuscades, killing fourteen men at one time and eleven at another, besides capturing a number of others. Eight hundred warriors, among them many Wyandots, invested it and kept up the siege for six weeks! The provisions grew short, and when supplies from Fort Pitt had arrived within a hundred yards of the fort, the gai'rison, in their joyousness. tired a general salute with musketry, which so frightened the loaded packhorses as to produce a general stampede through the woods, scattering the provisions in every direction, so that most of the much-needed supplies were lost. Although it was regarded very desirable, for various military reasons, to have a garrisoned fort and depot of supplies at a point about equidistant from the forts on the Ohio River and the hostile Indians on the Sandusky Plains, yet so disastrous had been the experiences at Fort Laurens that it was abandoned in August, 1779.

During subsequent years, other expeditions were organized in Pennsylvania and Kentucky for the purpose of chastizing with powder and ball the hostile Indians of Ohio. Thus Col. John Bowman took the field with 160 Kentuckians in July, 1779; Col. George Rogers Clark, with about 1,000 Kentuckians, in July, 1780; Gen. Daniel Brodhead, with 300 men from Fort Pitt, in April, 1781; and Col. Archibald Lochry, with about 100 men from Westmoreland County, Penn. , in July, 1781. These expeditions were attended with varying success, but as they had in view the punishment of the savages occupying the southern half of the present State, no special significance, as regards the history of Wyandot County, can be attached to their movements.

However, notwithstanding the efforts put forth by the Americans, the savages remained masters of the field in Ohio, the neighborhood of the Great Lakes, and along the River St. Lawrence. The Wyandots of the Sandusky Plains (together with large numbers of the Delawares and Shawanese, who, driven from haunts farther South by the expeditions already mentioned, had established themselves near the Wyandots), fully supplied with war material from the British post at Detroit, still continued their massacres of the inhabitants of the frontier settlements of Pennsylvania. The fiendishness displayed by these savages in their attacks upon isolated white settlements was unbounded, and frequently every member of a family was found slain, scalped, their bodies otherwise horribly mutilated, and their dwelling burned to ashes. The prattling babe, as well as the tottering decrepit grandparents, all, all fell victims to a ferocity of disposition and studied cruelty of purpose that is harrowing to contemplate, even after the lapse of more than one hundred years. At last, stung to desperation by the loss of parents, brothers, sisters, wives and children, at the hands of the savages, the sturdy Scotch-Irish residents of W^estmoreland and Washington Counties, Penn., determined upon the organization of a force, under the authority of the military commander of that department, which should proceed to the Sandusky Plains (the rendezvous of all the hostile savages of the Northwest), and give battle to the Indians upon their own ground. This determination resulted in the formation and sending forward of a body of men under Col. William Crawford, whose movements, battles, etc., will be noted in the succeeding chapter.