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Chapter VI: Ohio
The earliest European
exploration of what was to become the Great Northwest Territory of
the United States was done by the French in the 17th century, and this
land, called New France, was claimed for the Sun King, Louis XIV of
France. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century, English settlers
moving west began to encroach upon the land that the French claimed.
Each country took action to enhance its positions and to attempt to
end up with as much territory as they could. The English attempted
to further their claim by making treaties with the Indians and by establishing
commercial enterprises, which would allow new settlements on Indian
land, and new trading ventures with the Indians. A treaty reached with
the Indians at a conference in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1744, was
apparently widely misunderstood by both sides. The English understood
that they were allowed to start settlements west of the Alleghenies.
The Indians would later vehemently deny that they had made any such
concession.79
In 1749 the French tried to bolster their claim
by sending an exploratory party down the Ohio River. At the mouth of each main
tributary, they deposited lead plates engraved with a claim on all of the territory
that that tributary drained. The plate at the mouth of the Great Kanawha River
across the Ohio River from Gallia County is still in place and can be seen at
the Point Pleasant State Park. In 1753 the French began to erect a chain of forts
from Lake Erie to the Ohio River. This would start a series of events that was
to culminate in the French and Indian War (1754-1760).80
The
French were able to convince their Indian allies to fight with them to prevent
encroachment on Indian lands by the English settlers. Although the Indians had
become uneasy because of the lead plates the French had deposited, their main
contact with each other was mostly that between friendly trading partners, and
the Indians did not perceive them to be a threat to take their land. The early
battles in the war were won by the French, but the English side eventually was
able to field an army of nearly 30,000 troops from England to fight alongside
about 20,000 Colonists, and in 1763 the French were decisively defeated.81
The French surrender and subsequent departure left
the Indians angry and bitter. They had become accustomed to receiving regular
gifts from the French and had become dependent on them for clothing, arms, and
other European goods which they obtained through trading. But they had grown to hate the British. In their commercial
contacts with the British they felt they were treated with condescension and
they were also afraid of losing their land to British settlers. In 1763, the
year the war ended, the great Ottawa chief, Pontiac, organized an uprising that
involved simultaneous assaults against a number of forts. It was successful against
all but three (Fort Pitt, Niagara, and Detroit). Eight forts fell and their occupants
were for the most part massacred or taken prisoners. Col. Henry Bouquet was sent
west with an army to quell the rebellion, and on his way to relieve Fort Pitt,
he met the Indians in the two-day Battle of Bushy Run, and thoroughly defeated
them. He followed up by invading the territory that is now Ohio and forced the
Indians to accept a truce and return all of their prisoners. Following this there
was a period of relative peace that lasted several years and settlers began to
pour over the Allegheny Mountains. Prior to the French and Indian War the Allegheny
Mountains had been the dividing line between the European settlers and the Indians.
After the war the new dividing line was to become the Ohio River.82
In 1770, George Washington and his friend, Captain Valentine
Crawford, embarked on a journey down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh for the purpose
of viewing lands to be apportioned among soldiers who had served in the French
and Indian War. This was a time of relative peace between the settlers and the
Indians, and he remarks in his journal about several peaceful encounters with
Indians he met along the way. The journey takes him as far as the mouth of the
Great Kanawha River, where it empties into the Ohio just across from Gallipolis.
He had encamped on the Virginia side on November 1, and he had proceeded up the
Great Kanawha about 10 miles, when his journal reads: “Proceeded up the
river with the canoe about four miles farther, and then encamped, and went a
hunting; killed 5 buffaloes, and wounded some others, and three deer. This country
abounds in buffalo and wild game of all kinds, as also in all kinds of wild fowl,
there being in the bottom a great many small grassy ponds, or lakes, which are
full of swans, geese, and ducks of different kinds.” 83
On descending towards the Ohio River again, he describes
finding a sycamore tree about sixty yards from the river that measures forty-four
feet and ten inches in circumference three feet above the ground. This corresponds
to a diameter of close to seven and one-half feet. Fifty feet away is another
sycamore measuring thirty-one feet around. Then at the mouth of the Great Kanawha
he is marking favorable tracts of land for the soldiers, and he makes this observation: “I
also marked at the mouth of another run lower down on the west side, at the lower
end of the long bottom, an ash and hoopwood (tree) for the beginning of another
of the soldiers surveys, to extend up so as to include all the bottom in a body
of the west side.” The “run” referred to may have been the
Chicamauga Creek that runs through the town site of Gallipolis, or possibly Raccoon
Creek further south in present day Clay Township, although the latter is probably
too big to be considered a run. Washington is impressed by much of the land along
the river bottoms because of its potential for growing crops, but dismisses much
of the hilly landscape further away from the river, as being mostly suitable
for grazing.84
This is as far as Washington went. From there his party
paddled their way back upstream to Pittsburgh, up the Monongahela, and then overland
back to Mount Vernon. When Washington made these observations, the land was,
as yet, completely untouched by Western civilization. The breaking out of hostilities
with Indians again, a few years later, would forestall any attempt at early settlement.
The Indians would claim that they had never agreed to any settlements to the
west of the Appalachian Mountains, and over the course of the next few years
relations between the Indians and the settlers would again deteriorate. Random
Indian raids on isolated settlements became more and more common, and many settlers
were massacred or carried off as prisoners.
By 1774, the situation had become serious. The adventurous
settlers who had come over the mountains to build their homes suddenly perceived
themselves to be vulnerable, and many sent their families back over to the eastern
side of the mountains. Others gathered for protection at the settlement at Wheeling,
which is on the Ohio River in what is now West Virginia. On April 30, about thirty
miles north of Wheeling, a group of Virginia militia lured close family members
of the beloved and peaceful Mingo chief, Logan, into what amounted to an ambush,
and slaughtered them. This precipitated the outbreak of a full-fledged conflict
that came to be known as Lord Dunmore’s War. (This is the same Lord Dunmore,
whose fleet carried Stephen Chappell to New York the following year).85
When news of these conditions on the frontier reached
the Virginia capital at Williamsburg, the Colonial governor, Lord Dunmore, began
preparations to send relief. However, it would take time before an army could
be raised and supplied, and over the next few months, there was widespread panic
among the settlers, as more and more Indian raids took place. Local militia would
set out numerous times to attack the roving bands of Indian warriors and during
the summer months Fort Fincastle was constructed at Wheeling, directly across
the Ohio River from Pultney Township in Belmont County. The town of West Wheeling,
Ohio, where John Wise would later settle was directly across the Ohio River from
the fort.
Lord Dunmore’s plan of attack involved bringing
two separate armies to the area. One army, under General Lewis, was to come from
the Greenbriar area of Virginia, overland to the Ohio River, and Lord Dunmore
would command a second army that would descend down the Ohio River. After a difficult
nineteen day march Lewis’ army arrived opposite Gallipolis at Point Pleasant,
Virginia (now West Virginia), on September 30. He had expected Lord Dunmore to
meet him there, but without telling Lewis, Dunmore had changed his plans. Nine
days later Lewis learned that instead of the rendezvous at Point Pleasant, he
was to march for Chillicothe to meet up with the second army. However, the following
day, with Dunmore’s army still in Wheeling, the Indians attacked. The Battle
of Point Pleasant was a fierce and closely fought battle. The Indians, under
their leader Cornstalk, were a formidable force. The Virginians fought with their
backs up against the two rivers, but held their ground and in the end it was
the Indians who had to withdraw. Lewis’ army suffered well over 200 casualties,
but won the battle.86 Peter Kinder,
who would later fight at Guilford Courthouse, was one of the participants in
this day’s action.
While this was happening on the frontier, things were
heating up in Massachusetts. In July the port of Boston had been closed, and
by late fall the colony had essentially divided into two armed camps, and it
was becoming obvious that war was approaching. It was strongly suspected by the
Americans that Dunmore had been advised by the British government while en route
to meet General Lewis, not to be too vigorous against the Indians, whom they
may need to count on as allies when war broke out. It is also maintained by some
of General Lewis’ officers that Dunmore was aware of the situation at Point
Pleasant and deliberately changed his plans to allow the Indians to attack Lewis’ troops.
A chance remark made by one of Dunmore’s officers to Captain John Stuart,
one of General Lewis’ officers, was later recounted to the General, and
General Lewis firmly believed that Dunmore was well aware of the impending danger
at Point Pleasant and he had delayed marching to his aid because the British
were already planning an alliance with the Indians against the colonists. Because
of this, local tradition and many historians point to Point Pleasant as the first
battle of the Revolutionary War.87
Dunmore subsequently met the Indian chiefs near Chillicothe
and negotiated a settlement. Prior to this treaty, he had already sent General
Lewis and his troops home. According to the terms of the treaty, the Ohio River
would again be designated as the border between the colonists and the Indians.
In spite of the treaty, however, the area west of the mountains would continue
to be dangerous territory for settlers. The Indians would this time ally themselves
with the British in the coming war, and settling this land would have to wait.
This region would be a war zone, not only throughout the Revolutionary War, but
even for some time after.
A garrison was built and maintained at Point Pleasant
until 1777, when it was abandoned because of its remote location away from the
main theater of the war. Before it’s abandonment it was the scene of one
more drama. Cornstalk, along with another Indian, Red Hawk, came to the fort
and discussed the disposition of the Indian tribes in the war. Cornstalk indicated
that he was opposed to joining the British in the war, but that the general feeling
among all of the Indians was to oppose the settlers, and that he would have to
go along with them. The commander of the garrison detained the Indians as hostages.
While there as a prisoner, Cornstalk’s son came to visit him. The next
day, two men from the fort were out hunting deer, when one of them was killed
by some Indians. Although they were not in any way connected with these Indians,
Cornstalk, his son and Red Hawk were then killed in reprisal.88
The Wheeling area would remain a hotbed of activity
during the Revolution. Three times during the course of the war, the fort would
come under siege, and each time would survive. In 1776, the fort, first named
Fort Fincastle, had its name changed to Fort Henry when Patrick Henry became
governor. It had been constructed hastily during the Dunmore War. George Rogers
Clark had made the original plans, but it was completed under the direction of
William Crawford, the brother of Valentine Crawford, who had accompanied Washington
on his trip down the Ohio. It wasn’t going to be long before the fort was
needed.
Indian raids and massacres increased after the Cornstalk
murder. There were only four reasonably secure forts in this area that were held
by the Revolutionaries; these were the forts at Pittsburgh, Point Pleasant, Redstone
(on the Mononganhela River in Pennsylvania) and Fort Henry in Wheeling. The settlers
had gathered around these areas. At Wheeling a small village had grown up around
the fort. On September 1, 1777, Fort Henry was attacked at dawn by an Indian
army. They lured twenty-seven men out of the fort by staging a small skirmish,
and then ambushed them. The remaining thirty-three men, along with all the women
and children staged a spirited defense of the fort against three hundred and
eighty Indian warriors. After a twenty-three hour battle they suffered only one
wounded, while killing an estimated one hundred Indians. The Indians then slaughtered
the farm animals, burned the village, destroyed the crops, and left.
For the next several years the frontier remained a very
unstable place. The British governor, Hamilton, at Detroit had put a bounty on
all white settlers who did not espouse the Tory cause. The Indians were paid
on a per scalp, or per prisoner basis. Women and children were not excluded.
The military requirements of the eastern seaboard were such that little could
be spared to protect the frontier. Further west, Gen. George Rogers Clark had
considerable success against both the Indians and British, and actually managed
to capture the infamous Governor Hamilton, but the immediate area of the upper
Ohio Valley was never secure during the entire war.
In September 1781, there was another raid on Fort Henry.
Again men from the fort were lured out into the open by two Indians, who were
making derisive gestures towards the fort. When the men from the fort pursued,
they were ambushed, and most were killed. As in 1777, those who remained inside
the fort were unharmed. It was in 1782 though, that the most serious threat to
the fort was repelled.
Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown had taken place
in October of 1781, but no peace treaty with Britain had been signed, and in
the west the war continued on. In the summer of 1782, with Indian raids continuing
around them, a force of men from Westmoreland and Washington Counties in Pennsylvania
was assembled to begin an offensive campaign against the Indians. William Crawford,
brother of Valentine Crawford, led this force to the region of the Sandusky River
in what is now north central Ohio. Their attempt to catch the Indians by surprise
failed, and they were met by a strong Indian force, that was reinforced on the
second day of battle by British regulars from Detroit. A nighttime retreat allowed
the main force to escape, but during the night Col. Crawford became separated
from the main body, and became lost. He was captured by a group of Delawares,
and brought to a nearby Indian village where he was tortured. He was tethered
to a stake, shot in his flesh and set afire. His ears were cut off, and he was
scalped while still alive. Squaws then placed hot coals on his head. A companion,
who witnessed the spectacle, later escaped, and told the story.
The Indians, emboldened by their success, now sought
to bring pressure against some of the strongholds, and so it was that in September
1782, they brought 260 warriors along with 40 British soldiers to again attempt
to capture Fort Henry. Col. Ebenezer Zane, who had been the first settler in
Wheeling in 1770, had rebuilt his house, as a blockhouse, because his first two
houses had been destroyed in the previous two battles. This was to play an important
part in protecting the fort. On September 11, the siege began. This would prove
to be the most serious attempt on the fort. The invading army had been detected
and a surprise attack was thwarted, and so a full frontal assault against the
fort was undertaken. There were only twenty men in the fort and a few others
in the Zane blockhouse, at the time of the attack. In the two-day battle no defenders
were killed. Repeated attempts to storm the stockade were repelled by furious
gunfire from the fort and blockhouse. In the end the invaders were forced to
retreat back across the Ohio. This was essentially the last battle of the Revolutionary
War. The last shots fired by the British army were fired here. It is ironic that
in a war so well known for the battles up and down the eastern seaboard, the
first and last battles would be fought on the distant Ohio River, only about
150 miles apart.89
Although the British were now officially out of the
war, they continued to encourage the Indians to resist the white settlers and
the upper Ohio Valley still was not safe. They had refused to abandon the fort
at Detroit because of a dispute with the Americans over monetary matters, and
they perceived it to be still in their interest to keep the Indians hostile.
The new American government did not want to allow settlement west of the Ohio
until title to the land had been obtained from the Indians, and until the land
had been surveyed and offered up for sale. To this end they evicted squatters
all along the banks of the Ohio until surveying had been completed in 1787. In
1788 the first permanent white settlement was allowed at Marietta. Settlers attempting
to move up the Muskingham Valley from there, however, still were being subject
to Indian raids. It was felt that military subjugation of the Indians would be
required.
In 1790 the Indians had also begun to attack boats carrying
settlers down the Ohio River. An army of 1000 men was sent into the interior
of Ohio under Col. Harmar, and the Indians soundly defeated them. In Sept. 1791,
an army of 2300 men under the governor of the territory, Gen. St. Claire, met
another disastrous defeat. Some military historians maintain that this was the
single worst defeat ever suffered by an American army. It was then that General ‘Mad’ Anthony’ Wayne
was sent out from the East, and in 1793, he routed a large Indian army in northwest
Ohio. This victory resulted in a peace treaty in 1795 that opened a large part
of Ohio to settlement, with the Indians being restricted to the northwestern
sector.90
As can be ascertained from the above, the earliest settlements
northwest of the Ohio were still vulnerable to Indian attacks until General Wayne’s
victory. Gallipolis, established by French settlers in 1790, was thus still vulnerable,
as were the initial settlements in Belmont County. The Wise, Bickel and MacMillan
families that came to these two counties did so only after danger from Indian
attacks was past. With the required population of 5000 adult males in 1798, Ohio
was made a territory, and just five years later was admitted to the union as
the seventeenth state.