xt7djh3czm1k https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7djh3czm1k/data/mets.xml Dodge, Jacob Richards. 1860  books b92e78o3d62009 English Ruralist Publishing Company : Springfield, Ohio Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Indians of North America --Ohio River Valley. Red men of the Ohio Valley : an aboriginal history of the period commencing A.D. 1650, and ending at the treaty of Greenville, A.D. 1795 ; embracing notable facts and thrilling incidents in the settlement by the whites of the states of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois text Red men of the Ohio Valley : an aboriginal history of the period commencing A.D. 1650, and ending at the treaty of Greenville, A.D. 1795 ; embracing notable facts and thrilling incidents in the settlement by the whites of the states of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois 1860 2009 true xt7djh3czm1k section xt7djh3czm1k 
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
   COL. JAMES SMITH'S AQUATIC ADVENTURE.   See Pega 78 
    
   KED MEN OF THE OHIO VALLEY:

AN

ABORIGINAL HISTORY

Of THE

PERIOD COMMENCING A. D. 1650, AND ENDING AT THE TREATY OP GREENVILLE, A. D. 1795; EMBRACING NOTABLE FACTS AND THRILLING INCIDENTS IN THE SETTLEMENT BY THE "WHITES 05 THE STATES OP KENTUCKY, OHIO, INDIANA AND ILLINOIS.

BY  J. R. DODGE.

Editor of tho American Kuralist.

SPRINGFIELD, O.: RUKALIST PUBLISHING COMPANY.

1860. 
    
   PREFACE.

Virginia has her Pocahontas, Rhode Island her King Philip, Massachusetts her Massasoit, New York her representatives of Indian valor and Indian romance. The aboriginal records of the Atlantic States have a witching interest to dwellers in cot or hall, to old or young, to grave or gay. But the Indian history of the West, a mine hitherto almost unwrought, is rich with bolder adventures, more reckless daring, and clearer revelations of the philosophy of Indian life, than have ever before been exhibited in popular history.

In such a belief this work had its inception. It is now thrown before the world in a spirit utterly oblivious of unfriendly criticism, as a preliminary venture, small and incomplete, which, if successful, may be followed by a full and thorough examination of the whole field of Western Indian history. Within the limits of the present volume only the salient points of border life and pioneer conflicts, are given. In its compilation there has been no effort at smoothness of diction or unity of style, obtainable at the expense of graphic and original modes of pioneer narra- 
   VI PREFACE.

tion. Hence, in the relation of individual adventures, free scope has been allowed to the "scissors;" and in many instances the substance of the narrative has been given in the exact words of the original manuscript. Among other sources of information, acknowledgments should be made to Burnet's " Northwestern Territory," Jefferson's " Notes on Virginia," Bradford's "Kentucky," Boone's "Life," Taylor's and Howe's "Ohio," McDonald's "Sketches," etc.

Such as it is, hastily prepared, amid the "herculean la-bors"incident to the publishing and editing of a new and important periodical enterprise, it is freely and confidently left to the generosity of the Sons of the Pioneers.

J. E. D.

Ebxaiist OraicK, Springfield, O., July, 1859. 
   CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

The Red Men of the Ohio Valley   Their Origin   Direction of Migration   Occupants in 1650   The Iroquois   The Wyandots   The Otto-was   The Delawares   The ShawneeB   The Miamis   The Illinois    Their- hatred of the White Man.......13

CHAPTER II.

Their Character and Customs     Marriage     Domestic Relations   Ball Playing     Commercial Integrity     Government   Their Fortitude    Their Religion   Witchcraft     Dreams   Their Ideas of Death   Lan-

guage   Specimens of the Shawnee and Wyandot Dialects.      - 29

CHAPTER 1H.

Intercourse with the French   Colonial Intercourse.     - 61

CHAPTER IV.

Narrative of Colonel James Smith.               -     -     -     -     - 75

CHAPTER V.

The West surrendered by the French     Expedition of Major Rogers    

Pontiac's Conspiracy.........100

(vii; 
   vi11

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VI.

Bindstrect's Expedition     Bouquet's Muskingum Expedition     Pontiac Subdued   Dissatisfaction Increasing     Washington's Tour.  - 112

CHAPTER VII.

Logan   Murder of his family   His Revenge   "Logan's Speech." - 132

CHAPTER VIII.

Daniel Boone   His Boyhood   Hears of the West   His Pioneer Adven-

tures   Captain Bullit at Old Chillicothe. 148

CHAPTER IX.

Expedition against Wapatomica.     ------ 161

CHAPTER X.

Capture of Boone and Calloway's Children   Colonel Robert Patterson's Narrative.      -     -     -     -     -     -     -     -     - 169

CHAPTER XI.

Siege of Fort Henry   Mrs. Tackett   The Major Rogers Massacre   Story of Captain Benham.........184

CHAPTER XII.

Attacks upon Boonesborough   Skirmishes   Boone's Capture.     - 196

CHAPTER XIII.

Auother Attack upon Boonesborough   The Murder of Cornstalk.

206 
   contents ix

CHAPTER XIV.

Simon Kenton's Captivity   The Johnson Boys   Murder of Kelly. - 215

CHAPTER XV.

Bowman's Expedition   Invasion of British and Indians   John Hink-ston's Escape   Clark's Expedition. ------ 235

CHAPTER XVI.

The Moravian Missions. 248

CHAPTER XVII.

Crawford's Company   Bout by the Indians   His Capture   Burning of Captain Crawford   Knight's Escape......271

CHAPTER XVIII.

Hard Times in Kentucky   Another Adventure of Boone   Massacre of the Lower Blue Licks. 286

CHAPTER XIX.

Thrilling Narrative of James Morgan     Eight of Adam and Andrew Poe.   -     -  ' -   ' -  ' -     -     -     -     -     -     - 298

CHAPTER XX.

Treaty of Fort Stanwix   Eort M'Intosh and Fort Finney.     -     - 309

CHAPTER XXI.

Settlement of Marietta   Campus Martius   Ancient Works   Olive Green Garrison   Big Bottom Massacre   Settlement of Manchester.   - 320 
   X

contents.

CHAPTER XXII.

Donalson's Narrative     Ellison's Adventures     Edgington's Race     The

Battle of Captina   Lewis Wetzel. 339

CHAPTER XXIII.

Hewit's Captivity   Neil Washburn.     - 356

CHAPTER XXIV.

The Miami Settlements........367

CHAPTER XXV.

Oliver M. Spencer's Narrative   Legend of Jacob Wetzel   Passing tho Scioto   Adventures of Governor M'Arthur. ...     - 385

CHAPTER XXVI.

Nathaniel Massie   Brady's Leap   Jonathan Alder's Captivity.    - 402

CHAPTER XXVII.

St. Clair's Defeat..........418

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Battle of Fort Becovery   Battle of Fort St. Clair   "Mad Anthony Wayne"   Close of Hostilities   Treaty of Greenville.        - 427 
   RED MEN OF THE OHIO VALLEY.

CHAPTER I.

The Hed Men of the Ohio Valley   Their Origin   Direction of Migration   Occupants in 1650   The Iroquois   The Wyandots   The Otto-was   The Delawares   The Shawnees   The Miamia   The Illinois    Their hatred of the White Man.

The world's history can scarcely duplicate a scene so wonderful in all its aspects, as that furnished by the precipitation clown the western slope of the Allegha-nies, during the last half century, of a continuous human avalanche upon the beautiful and fruitful Valley of the Ohio. Yielding to the resistless torrent, the tawny occupants of this fair domain reluctantly receded. Their history, their physical and moral condition, their fierce struggles for the conservation of hunting ground and ancestral burying-place, are themes of unfading interest to the remorseless usurpers of their soil.     While very complacently, and perhaps very properly, we regard their fate as a necessary result of advancing civilization, we find in these simple children of nature more to surprise, to instruct, and even to fascinate, than exists in any other race of barbarians belonging to the family of man.

In common with the other North American tribes, the Indiaus of the Ohio, in their origin, are enveloped

(131 
   14

bed men of the ohio valley.

in a mystery too deep to be easily dissipated. Not that it involves at all the necessity of a dual creation, or furnishes a single valid argument against the unity of the race. Neither continent nor island can be named on the whole wide waste of terrestrial waters, so isolated as to escape the advent of savage feet, borne thither by a spirit of barbarian adventure, or driven unwillingly by impelling winds.

The peopling of America may have been the result of many migrations. At the south, either by the prevailing winds from the nearest African coast, or by way of the Polynesian Islands of the Pacific, human beings may have been more than once thrown upon the continent. But the north presents comparatively easy facilities for the approach of wild wanderers. The distance across Behring's Straits is less than forty-four miles, in latitude sixty-five north; in latitude fifty-five, the Aleutian Isles, stretching westwardly from the promontory of Alaska, constitute a series of easy steps, the last of which is but three hundred and sixty miles from Kamschatka in Asia, and even that distance is so divided by the group of Behring and Mednoi Islands, as to reduce the longest line of open sea navigation to less than two hundred miles. Nor is it impossible that northern Europeans may have reached North America by way of Iceland and Greenland.   Water has ever been the highway of barbarians.

Indications that the flow of population was eastward are numerous. The movement of civilization has generally been westward, savage men receding into new solitudes, until, in 1492, upon the shores of the 
   OCCUPANTS IN' "1 (">  jr>.

15

new world, the extremes meet again, and a conflict of extermination ensues. The California Indians looked northward for their ancestry ; the Aztecs selected high table-lands in confirmation of a similar origin. Primitive languages are numerous upon the western coast, and few upon the Atlantic. The western slope of the Kocky Mountains, nearly uniform in temperature almost up to the Aleutian Isles, has evidently been the highway of nations. In confirmation of this idea, a very strong resemblance, in physical structure and in language, may be traced between the North American and the Mongolian of Northern Asia. The American traveler, Ledyard, declares that in Siberia and in New England he saw but one race.

Who were the original proprietors of the valley of La Belle Riviere ? Our positive knowledge, beyond the date of 1650, loses itself in vague conjectures. There was a tradition among the Delawares that the ancient tenants of the Ohio basin were expelled by tribes of the Wyandot and Algonquin families, and that the vanquished descended the Mississippi to light their council fires in more genial climes, secure from the incursions of their more vigorous northern foes. There is abundant evidence in the mounds everywhere abounding, and in the very bones found therein, as well as in articles buried beneath alluvial deposits, to indicate a former occupancy by a people differing socially and physically from the tribes so recently occupying the soil.

In the middle of the seventeenth century, the region immediately south of Lake Erie was occupied by the 
   16

red men of the ohio valley.

Eries, or Nation of the Cat. Schoolcraft supposes the archipelago of islands in the western part of Lake Erie to be one of the strongholds of the tribe. Kel-ley's Island, near Sandusky, abounds in many Indian relics, ancient fortifications, and pictographic characters, evidently symbols of strifes, crimes, negotiations, and treaties. Here is said to be the best preserved inscription of the antiquarian period ever found in America. This tribe is placed in the Iroquois family, which included the famous confederacy of the Five Nations (afterward, by the admission of the Tuscaro-ras, in 1714, the Six Nations), occupying the territory between the St. Lawrence and Lake Ontario on the north, the Green Mountains on the east, and the Pennsylvania Highlands on the south; the Hurons, or Wyandots, consisting of five confederated tribes, located on the western side of the peninsula formed by Lakes Huron, Erie, and Ontario; the Neutrals, between the Huron and the Iroquois ; the Andastes, about the head waters of the Alleghany; and the Eries, or Erigas. The Iroquois proper are an admirable illustration of the truth, " in union there is strength." Surrounded on all sides, by a numerous family, the Algonquin, whose branches held possession of by far the largest portion of the territory from the Mississippi to the Atlantic, they had formed their famous alliance as early as the beginning of the seventeenth century, by means of which they had conquered and placed under tribute the tribes of New England, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Not content with vanquishing their rivals, and therefore enemies, they 
   the iroquois.

17

turned upon their kinsmen, tlie Ilurons, orWyandots, and, after harassing them for several years, in 1649, gathered all their forces for a grand attack, drove a portion of the Wyandots down the Ottawa River, pursuing them inexorably as far as Quebec, and finally incorporating fragmentary bands into their own proud confederacy. The remainder were forced to seek an asylum among the Chippewas, beyond Lake Superior, with whose aid, after a severe conflict at Point Iroquois, the conquerors were driven back. The Neutral Nation next felt the force of their power, and soon became extinct.

Flushed with repeated victories, they turned against their brethren of the Erie coast; and, in the year 1655, stormed and took their strongholds, massacred their braves, sparing but a remnant of the nation, which were incorporated with themselves, or with other tribes with which they had sought refuge.

The dispersion of the Andastes, by the Iroquois, was not accomplished till 1672. Assisted by a tribe called, by the French, Chaouanons, who were doubtless a detachment of the Shawnees, they resisted bravely, till overborne by superior numbers.

There is every reason to believe that it was the intention of the Five Nations to subdue, disperse, or assimilate all the tribes of the Ohio Valley. There is no evidence that they were successful in carrying their conquests beyond the lake shore. That occasional incursions toward the country of the Miamis and Illinois were made, is true; and equally true, by French authority, that reprisals were made upon them by the 
   18

bed men of the ohio valley.

Miamis and Illinois ; that, in 1G80, repulsed, on the banks of the Maumee, by the Iroquois, with a loss of thirty killed, and three hundred prisoners, they rallied, intercepted them in their retreat, retook their prisoners, and killed a considerable number; that, in 1770, the Miami nation was very numerous, and the Illinois, within the memory of many of the first white settlers, numbered four thousand warriors; that these tribes have no traditions of subjugation, or reference to its records of negotiations and treaties. In citations of authority, Gen. Harrison, as Governor of Indiana Territory, and Indian Commissioner, living among the Miamis, may safely be placed against Governor Clinton.

Bancroft estimates the Iroquois warriors, in 1660, at two thousand two hundred. The Wyandots, by a partial census of the French missionaries, in 1839, were estimated at two thousand families, and more than ten thousand persons. The Western tribes were more numerous than any one of the confederates, with the exception of the Senecas.

Coming down to the period when white immigration upon the hunting-grounds of the Ohio, began to be formidable, we find the occupants to be principally Wyandots, Ottawas, Delawarcs, Shawnees, Miamis, and Illinois.

The Wyandots have already been mentioned as a branch of the Iroquois family. They now occupied the country north of the lake, opposite Detroit, as headquarters, with outposts or colonies along the south shore, the old domain of the Eries, extending their 
   the wyandots.

villages up the Sandusky River to the summit level, and occupying the territory which is now Wyandot county. They possessed a mysterious influence over the Algonquins, and were recognized even by the Delawares, who were the acknowledged " grandfathers" of the Algonquin family, as " uncles." More warlike, more intelligent, more advanced in the arts of agriculture and civilized life, than the other tribes, they were ever treated with respectful deference, assigned the place of honor in the council-house, and allowed precedence in the signature of treaties. Gen. Harrison yields the palm of superior bravery, among all the Western Indians, to the Wyandots. Flight is usually regarded by Indians as no disgrace, but rather as a matter of policy, if not of duty, when sorely pressed by superior numbers, or surprised by unwonted obstacles. Not so with the Wyandots. In the battle of the Miami Rapids, fought by " Mad Anthony Wayne," of thirteen chiefs engaged, twelve were killed.   The following anecdote is in point:

" When Gen. Wayne assumed the position of Greenville, in 1793, he sent for Captain Wells, who commanded a company of scouts, and told him that he wished him to go to Sandusky, and take a prisoner, for the purpose of obtaining information. Wells (who, having been taken from Kentucky when a boy, and brought up among the Indians, was perfectly acquainted with their character), said he could take a prisoner, but not from Sandusky. 'And why not from Sandusky?' said the general. 'Because,' said the captain, 'they are only Wyandots there.' 'Well, 
   20

red men of the ohio valley.

why will not Wyandots do?' 'For the best of reasons,' said Wells; ' because Wyandots will not be taken alive.'"

The Ottowas, fleeing from the basin of the river bearing their name, had taken possession of the derelict country upon the western shore of Lake Huron, the northern portion of the Michigan peninsular. They subsequently settled, in detached bands, near the waters of the Maumee and Sandusky, along the Lake shore, and upon the Cuyahoga. Their settlements were neither very numerous, nor influential    the Ottowas occupying a secondary position among the Ohio Indians at this period. Upon his ancient seat in Canada, the Ottowa held the position of ferryman, presiding over its difficult portages, and exacting a toll which was freely paid by the more powerful tribes around. Proving habit to be a second nature, in savage life as well as civilized, he was still a waterman upon the great Huron, the Bay of Saganaw, the Bay of Sandusky, and the Rapids of Cuyahoga   an amphibious animal, living in the bay and in the bush, part fisher, and part trapper. The name of this tribe, though it might not sink into oblivion, would glow with but a faint luster upon the scroll of Indian fame, were it not immortalized by that of the proud and sagacious chieftain, Pontiac, whose notable conspiracy against the whites of 1763 was a masterpiece of Indian statesmanship and diplomacy, showing him the peer even of a Philip, or a Tecumseh. His mother, it is supposed, was an Ojibway. Other tribes have claimed him, but he was doubtless born and reared among 
   tiie otto was-the del awakes.

   21

the Ottowas. The word Ottowa, as defined by Bancroft, signifies "trader." The mythology of this tribe is peculiar. The sun is their Supreme Deity, and the stars held a secondary place as objects of religious veneration. Festivals were statedly observed in honor of the sun, when that heavenly luminary was informed, in a spirit equally reverent and politic, that all this service was in consideration of the good hunting and successful fishing he had procured for them, and in expectation of a continuance of his generous favors. An idol was set up in some of their towns, and public homage paid to it as a divinity.

The Delawares, one of the most interesting of aboriginal tribes, were found, upon the settlement of the Middle States, upon the Delaware and Schuylkill Eivers, and in the adjacent territory. They now occupied the Valley of the Muskingum, and the country east of the Scioto River   one of their prominent seats being within the present Delaware county, on the Whetstone or Olentangy River. Celebrated in the glowing fiction of Cooper, dignified in the annals of Heckewelder and Loskiel, and the philological labors of Zeisberger, Moravian missionaries, they have held a high rank among the red tribes of the American wilderness. They were peculiarly susceptible to the influences of civilization and religion, if it be allowable to speak thus of human beings of whom Brainerd rather harshly declares, that, "They are unspeakably indolent and slothful; they discover little gratitude ; they seem to have no sentiments of benevolence, generosity, or goodness."   They were certainly less war- 
   22

RED men of the ohio valley.

like than some other tribes. In consequence of their disposition for peace, they became, to a degree, tributary to the Five Nations, in 1650; were borne westward by the surging tide of white emigration; tarried awhile in Pennsylvania ; joined a remnant of Shawnee neighbors in fighting in the French war against English colonists; obtaining from their uncles, the "Wyandots, the grant of a derelict territory on the Muskingum, they settled upon their Ohio domain, where they became again a powerful tribe.

Their original name was Lenni Lenape, and their tribe embraced three divisions or distinct tribes, designated by the names Turtle, Turkey, and Wolf   or, TJnamis, Unalachtgo, and Minsi, the latter being also called Monseys, or Mnncies, the most active and warlike division of the tribe. A tradition is preserved of the Lenni Lenapes, to the effect that, many hundred years ago, they lived in the western part of the continent; that, by a slow emigration, in company with the Iroquois, they came to the Alleghany River, so named from a nation of giants, the Allegewi; that, after carrying on successful war against them, they continued eastward to the Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna, and Potomac, thus establishing themselves upon the choicest portions of the Atlantic coast.

Next come those American Arabs, the Shawnees, Shawanese, or Shawanoes. At the period when West-em Virginia began to see the light of dawning civilization, they were possessors of that wilderness garden, the Scioto Valley, occupying the territory as far west 
   the shawnees.

23

as the Little Miami and Mad Rivers, having been invited thither by the Wyandots, at the instigation of the French. Wanderers as are all savages, this tribe, of all their family or race, bears off the palm for restlessness, as well as undying hostility to the whites. From the waters of the Northern Lakes, to the sandy beach washed by the temperate tide of the Mexican Gulf   from the Valley of the Susquehanna, to the gloomy cotton-wood forests of the Mississippi   in forests grand and gloomy with the stately growth of ages   in the prairie, blossoming in beauty, and fragrant with the breath of a thousand sweets   by mountain torrent, or shaded spring, or wide-spread plain    the Shawnee sought the turkey, the deer, and the bison; and, almost from the landing of the whites at Jamestown, his favorite game was the cunning and avaricious Pale Face.

At the period of the settlement of Virginia, they were doubtless the occupants of what is now the State of Kentucky, from the Ohio River up to the Cumberland basin, to the country of the Cherokees. Driven from this delightful land, probably by the Cherokees and Chiekasaws, a portion of them sought refuge with the Susquehannocks, in Pennsylvania; the main body, by invitation of the Andastes and Miamis, crossing the Ohio, to assist in conflicts with the aggressing Five Nations. Upon the extermination of their allies, the Andastes, in 1672, they again scattered in a southerly direction ; a remnant making a forcible settlement on the head waters of the Carolina rivers, from which they were expelled by the Catawbas.   Hundreds of 
   24

red men of the ohio valley.

them, in straggling bands, hovered about the borders of territory occupied by the Creeks and other southern Indians. In 1698, they began to find their way to their old haunts in Pennsylvania, where the larger portion of the tribe seem to have gathered, and from which they emigrated to the Scioto about the middlo of the eighteenth century. It is possible that many of them remained here since the defeat of the Andastes. Col. John Johnson, the Indian agent, long familiar with this tribe, says the southern remnant returned about the year 1755, from the Shawnee River, to the vicinity of Sandusky, under the conduct of a chief named Black Hoof, who afterward frequently alluded to his southern life, and in particular, to having bathed in the salt water of the Mexican Gulf. It is claimed, that during the Black Hoof migration, the father of Tecumseh and the Prophet, a Shawnee, was married to a Creek woman. From this mingling of northern and southern blood, sprang the moving spirits of the Ohio and Kentucky border wars, terminating at the treaty of Greenville, in 1795. Col. John Johnson h firm in the belief that this people are descendants of the "lost tribes of Israel;" at all events, they may fairly claim to be the lineal descendants of " the wandering Jew."

There exists a tradition of the Shawnees, widen gives some ground for this opinion. Unlike most other tribes, they claim an origin in a foreign land. Having determined to leave it, they marched to the sea-shore, whose waters parted, and they passed sai'ely over the bottom of the ocean, under the leadership of 
   THE MIAMIS.

2S

one of their twelve tribes." Benjamin Drake, author of the life of Tecumseh, claims for them a residence in Pennsylvania when John Smith first arrived in America. And Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, says they were waging war, at that time, with the Mohicans of Long Island. In the scattered historiographs of amateur historians, their residence, either at the same or different periods, is assigned to Pennsylvania, the St. Lawrence Valley, the south shore of Lake Erie, the Scioto, the mouth of the "Wabash, Kentucky, the waters of the Carolinas, Tennessee, and Georgia.

The cause which led to their removal from the Wyoming Valley, proves the universality of one element of humanity. Some Delaware "ladies" (their lords being absent) went out, with their children, to gather wild fruits. On the river's margin, they met some Shawnee mothers, with their children, on the same errand. A Shawnee child cauarht a fine, lar  -e grasshopper, and soon the juvenile Shawnees and Delawares were quarreling over it. Of course, the mothers engaged in the fray, and equally of course, their husbands, on their return, took up the quarrel. The result was war and migration.

The Miamis were a powerful tribe. Their habitat was the country drained by the Rivers Miami and Manmee, or Miami of the North. The Maumee Valley is the natural highway from the Mississippi Valley to the lower lakes, the St. Lawrence, and the Atlantic. Thither the confederated Iroquois essayed a 3 
   26

bed men of the ohio valley.

war-path to the West; and hero the proud waves of that inundation were stayed. They were divided into tlifee tribes, known as Twigtwees or Miamis, Piaivke-sliaws, and Weas. Their limits are well defined, and are doubtless correctly given by Little Turtle, the orator: "My forefather kindled the first fire at Detroit; from thence he extended his lines to the head waters of the Scioto ; from thence to its mouth ; from thence, down the Ohio, to the month of the Wabash; and from thence to Chicago, over Lake Michigan. These are the boundaries within which the prints of my ancestors' houses are everywhere to be seen."

The Illinois, situated on the Illinois River, were a numerous tribe, consisting of five divisions when discovered by the French. Weakened by feuds and divisions, they dwindled to a handful before their savage neighbors. On such a basis is Mr. Bancroft's estimate formed. His Yankee census, or guess-work, by which he makes but eighteen thousand in the Ohio Valley, Michigan included, is no doubt strangely erroneous.

The Indians of the Ohio were noble specimens of their race. Guardians of a region of unsurpassed natural beauty, a country of fruits and flowers, alive with the deer, the bison, and all manner of edible birds, it is no mystery that they fought long and desperately for its occupancy; and when the white man came, with the ominous and invincible bearing of manifest superiority, that their strong right arms were nerved, and their iron wills roused to deeds of 
   THEIR HATKED OF THE WHITE MAN.

27

blood, such as the vindictive fury of savage hate has rarely realized. It is no marvel that the fierce Tecumseh, seeing his Spartan Shawnees crowded by the ever-increasing white settlements   their favorite hunting-ground and ancient seat in "the dark and bloody ground " of Kentucky, occupied by thousands of Pale Paces, should declare that it made the flesh creep upon his bones to see a white man. Such was his hate, and similar was the feeling of many a son of the forest. Sore indeed was the despoiling of the famous game preserves of the Kentucky and Cumberland basins, the seizure of the cornfields, from which their squaws had plucked the golden grain under the genial influence of an Indian-summer sun, and the blocking up of their pathway to the pleasant winter ranges in the distant South. To a people whose pleasures were few and simple, and regarded alike as the perfection of present good, and the greatest glory of the long hereafter, their abridgment was to be resisted with all the energies of death-defying bravery and undegenerate manhood.

"It was we," say the Delawares, as recorded by Ileckewelder, "who so kindly received the Europeans jn their first arrival into our country. We took them by the hand, and bid them welcome to sit down by our sides, and live with us as brothers. But how did they requite our kindness ? They at first asked only for a little land, on which to raise bread for their families and pasture for their cattle, which we freely gave them.   They saw the game in our woods, which 
   28

RED MEN OK THE OHIO VALLEY.

the Great Spirit had given us for our subsistence, and wanted it too. They penetrated into the woods, in quest of game; they discovered spots of land they also wanted; and because we were loth to part with it, as we say that they had already more than they had need of, they took it from us by force, and drove us a great distance from our homes." 
   CHAPTER II.

Their Character and Customs    Marriage    Domestic Relations   Ball Playing    Commercial Integrity     Government   Their Fortitude    Their Religion    Witchcraft     Dreams   Their Ideas of Death   Language   Specimens of the Shawnee aud Wyandot Dialects.

The Red Man is a cliild of nature. His own imperious will is the only master he acknowledges. With the selfishness common to human nature, he unites the noble qualities of gratitude and generosity, and even magnanimity. Though often charged with treachery, the terrible retribution, often so stealthily dealt, was usually prompted by the remembrance of burning wrongs inflicted upon him by the whites. His patient endurance of suffering is proverbial. As a prisoner, the most excruciating tortures are endured with the most stoical indifference, or a sardonic grin. The Ohio Indians are not singular in these characteristics.

They are a living proof of the poetic declaration, " Man wants but little here below." Like all other Indians, their wants were few and easily supplied. Very naturally, then, they were supremely lazy. Whether their laziness resulted from their rigid simplicity of life, or their paucity of desires was the natural offspring of their laziness, it is difficult to say. Unless when aroused for warlike enterprises, their chief delight was to sit in their wigwams of bark,

(29) 
   30

RED MEN OF THE OHIO VAIXEYi

with folded arms, to smoke, play games of chance, palaver in council, eat, or sleep. And here was seen their highest shame. The woman was made a drudge and slave, as she ever is in barbarous communities ; upon her devolved the heaviest burdens of building and repairing, planting, harvesting, cooking, and all the nameless little labors and cares and drudgeries of life. He cared to employ himself, when not engaged in war or in the chase, only in the semi-scientific requirements of fort building, laying the keel of a canoe, or making the weapons of war.

Improvidence was one of their glaring peculiarities, the result in part, perhaps, of their laziness and hospitality. Impelled by hunger, a supply of wild fowl, fat raccoons, deer and bears, was secured ; at the proper season, a quantity of maple sugar made ; the