The Ohio Mingoes and the Wendats

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war, the mart of trade, and chief hunting grounds of the Six Nations on the Lake and the Ohio." Vaugondy locates the Iroquois village of "Gwahago" on the Cuyahoga River a short distance above the mouth of a tributary which seems to be the stream now known as Tinker's Creek.

Broadly speaking, the White River country was really that between Lake Erie, the Forks of the Beaver, and the Upper Muskingum. The term, "White River," apparently, was applied to include not only the Cuyahoga, but also, at times, the Mahoning, the White Woman (or Walhonding) and Tuscarawas branches of the Muskingum, the Sandusky, and the Huron. The Cuyahoga connected almost directly with the Upper Tuscarawas by means of a portage (in what are now Portage and Coventry townships, Summit County),1 and with the Mahoning Branch of the Beaver; while the Sandusky, the Huron, and the White Woman rivers were connected by similar portages in what are now Plymouth and Sharon townships, Richland County,|phio.

The 1755 map of Lewis Evans was the first approximately correct map of the Ohio country ever made. It shows a "French House" twenty-five miles below (north of) the portage, on the left bank of the Cuyahoga River. There was no house standing there at the time Evans made his map; because James Smith, the Indian captive, travelled up and down the Cuyahoga in the winter of 1756-57; and makes no mention of any French post or Indian village on the river at that time. Lewis Evans says the information in his map concerning "the routes across the country, as well as the situation of Indian villages, trading places, the creeks that fall into Lake Erie, and other affairs relating to Ohio and its branches, are from a great number of informations of Traders and others, and especially, of a very intelligent Indian called The Eagle, who had a good notion of distances, bearings, and delineating." The "French House" on Evans's map could have been none other than the approximate site of Saguin's trading post, referred to in the report of Navarre, in 1743. A short distance south of this post, on the same side of the Cuyahoga, Evans shows a Mingo, or Seneca, Town; while, on the opposite bank of the river from the "French House," he locates a town of the Tawas (Ottawas). Mr. Charles Whittlesey, in his Early History of Cleveland, identifies the latter point with the "site of the old Ottawa Town," on which site, on Sunday, June 18, 1786, David Zeis-

1 The Portage Path between the Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas in 1797, as surveyed by Moses Warren in that year, left the Cuyahoga at the point where it crosses the line between Northampton and Portage townships, proceeding thence southwards to a point on the Tuscarawas nearly opposite the mouth of the outlet of Long Lake, in Coventry Township. In 1797, this trail measured 8 miles, 4 chains, 55 links, in length. See map in Hulbert's "Indian Thoroughfares of Ohio," Ohio Arch, and Hist. Soc. Publications, vii., 291.