952

INDIAN TRAGEDIES AND ROMANCES.

prairies, waving their golden bloom in the silent beauty of nature. One of the most luxuriant of these prairies of the Hockhocking valley was where the town of Lancaster now stands. Its beauty, fertility of the soil, and picturesqueness of scenery attracted even the savages, who built here one of their principal villages. Its location in the south-eastern center of what is now the State of Ohio, well advanced both towards the settlements at Marietta and Cincinnati, made it a'suitable place for the concentration of the Indian warriors in an attempt upon either of these colonies. The tribes north and west would meet here to consult, and from here the war-paths led forth in different directions.

It was but natural, during the exciting period of 1789-90, when the aggressions upon their soil were advancing onward slowly, but firmly, from the mouths of the Muskingum and the Miamis, threatening the eventual complete inundation of all the territory south of the Lake Erie, that this place, lying almost equi-distant from both threatening localities, should be selected as the place of rendezvous of the Indians, whose war-spirit was up and whose tomahawks had been unburied for active hostility. Information was soon received at the garrison of Eort Harmar that the Indians were gathering for the purpose of striking a blow at some one of the frontier settlements; and to meet this crisis, the commandant dispatched two of the most trustworthy and best skilled spies to watch their movements, and report the same. These two men were Robert McClellan and John White, "two spirits that never quailed at danger, and as unconquerable as the Libyan lion/' In the early autumn of 1790 they left their comrades at Marietta and moved on through the thick plum and hazel bushes with the noiseless tread of the panther, armed with 'their unerring and trusty rifles. Having arrived in the vicinity of the Indian village, they climbed the prominence now known as Mount Pleasant, whose western termination is a perpendicular cliff of rocks, several hundred feet in height, and from which a beautiful view is had