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AFTER the Mound Builder came the red man. For untold centuries his history is a blank. Whence he came, how he spread over the continent, what his earlier numbers, supplies material for the philosophic historian. The literature of past ages is silent concerning these things; the voice of tradition is almost equally reticent. It seems quite certain, however, notwithstanding some speculations to the contrary, that no other race intervened between the mysterious people of the mounds and the savages whom COLUMBUS and other discoverers found upon our soil. By the red men - fewer in numbers, doubtless, but fiercer, braver, and more persistent than their antagonists - the Builders were driven out and pushed to the southwest, hosts of warriors on both sides perishing in the protracted struggle. As HALLECK says:

The new race was vastly inferior to the older. It was more a nomadic people. Villages and other permanent habitations seldom contained, through the course of many generations, the same tribes. They were not given, except to a very limited extent, to the tillage of the soil. War and the chase were their chief occupations, and the products of the latter, with spontaneous yields form the forest and stream; furnished the simple necessaries of their lives. Change for the worse as it was, apparently, in the population of this part of North America, it was doubtless in the order of Divine Providence, that the land might, by and by, be the more easily and advantageously occupied by the white man, who

The light of history begins of dawn upon the Indians of Ohio during the latter part of the seventeenth century. As early as 1609 the explorer, CHAMPLAIN, made mention of the Iroguois, who then dwelt about the eastern end of Lake Ontario. In 1683 LA HONTAN names them again and says they are "in five cantons, not unlike those of the Swisses. Though these cantons are all one nation, and united in one joint interest, yet they go by different names, viz.: The Sonontouans [Senecas], the Goyagoans [Cauyagas], the Onnatagues [Onondagas], the Ononyonts [Oneidas], and the Aguies [Mohawks]." The Five afterwards became the famous "Six Nations," and are sometimes mentioned as seven. These formed one of the three great divisions of the Indian tribes east of the Mississippi - the Huron-Iroquois, the Lgonquins, and Mobilians, dwelling respectively, it may be stated in a general way, on the great lakes, the Ohio river, and the Gulf of Mexico. The second of these families, though perhaps not the most powerful in war, the first seemingly holding the supremacy, was by far the most numerous and widespread. Their habitat is described as "originally reaching from Lake Superior to the mouth of the St. Lawrence," and from the west of Maine to Pamilco sound along the Atlantic coast, and from the Roanoke river to the headwaters of the Ohio and westward to the mouth of the river, and from that point, including all south and west of Lake Erie, to Lake Superior again, leaving the Iroquois on Lake Ontario like and island in the midst of a great sea."¹ To this stock belonged most of the Ohio tribes; but to their neighbors, east and west, the Iroquois and the Hurons, were allied in blood the ill-fated Filians, or Eries, the first of all western tribes to be observed and mentioned by the French explorers. They are first designated by the former name on CHAMPLAIN's map, published in 1680; are again so named on the map of Richard BLOME three years later; and so generally on the old maps until 1735. Long before this, however, they are supposed to have been driven out, exterminated, or amalgamated with other tribes. BLOME, in 1683, places the "Senneks," or Senecas, one of the Five Nations of the Iroquois, among the Eries on the south of the lake to which the latter gave the name; and that probably is the tribe into which the Eries ultimately merged. CHARLEVOIX, in 1744, puts their later tribal designation upon his map near the east end of Lake Erie (they had been located upon a map of 1703 near the west end), but adds the remark: "The Eries were destroyed by the Iroquois about one hundred years ago." Also, upon a map prepared by John HUTCHINS and published in 1755, where the tribe is assigned a former territory stretching along the whole south shore of Lake Erie, this note appears: "The ancient Eries were extirpated upwards of one hundred years ago by the Iroquois, ever since which time they [the Iroquois] have been in possession of Lake Erie." MITCHELL's map of the same year supplies an interesting note: "The Six Nations have extended their territories to the river Illinois ever since the year 1672, when they were subdued and incorporated with the ancient Chaouanons, the native proprietors of these countries and the river Ohio. The Ohio Indians are a mixt tribe of the several Indians of our colonies, settled here under the Six Nations, who have allwaies been in Alliance and subjection to the English." The territory of these renowned conquerors appears upon the maps as early as 1722 as a geographical district or political division named "Iroquois." It extended form Montreal to the Susquehanna, thence to the west end of Lake Erie, north to Lake Huron, and east to Montreal again - thus including about half of the present territory of Ohio. In the maps of 1755 the Iroquois' tract is extended to the Mississippi, and includes everything between that river and Lake Ontario, the Ohio, and the great lakes. One map divides "the country of the confederate Indians," now enlarged from five to seven nations, into their "place of residence," New York; their "deer-hunting country" (Tunasonruntic), which was Ohio; and their "beaver-hunting countries," or Canada.

Nearly, then, to the period of exploration in the Ohio country, the Eries dwelt here; and fragments of their tribe probably remained when the first white men came, dwelling amid their conquerors, but not to be identified as separate form them. The indications, from traditions and the maps, which furnish the only data we have concerning them, are that the Eries only occupied the lands east of the Cuyahoga and south of the lake; while that west of the river was held by a kindred tribe, the Wyandots or Hurons. The later of the two classes of earthworks found in northern Ohio are assigned by some inquirers to the ERIES, to whom many of the burial places and skeletons found in this region undoubtedly belong. The Indian names of streams, as well as that of the great lake to the northward, are supposed to have been given by them.
 

THE WYANDOTS, OR HURONS.

After the middle of the last century, knowledge concerning the Indians of Ohio was rapidly multiplied. Traders and explorers began, a little before that time, to contribute information about the tribes among whom they journeyed or traded; and Colonel BOUQUET's expedition in 1764, to the Indian valleys on the Tuscarawas and Muskingum rivers, offered more definite, detailed and authentic knowledge than had been accessible to that time. Among the tribes thus early reported, one of the most important was the Wyandots, or Hurons, as they were called by the French. This was branch of the great Iroquois family, but had been warred upon by their red kindred, driven from their homes on the lake whose name perpetuates their memory, pushed to the northwest, into Michigan and Wisconsin, among the Ottawas and other tribes. Here, however, they encountered an unfriendly wing of the Dakota family, from the west of the Mississippi, and were by them hunted again south eastward. They finally appear upon the maps as located in northern

These claimed to be the elder branch of the Lenni-Lenape tribes, and called themselves the "grandfathers" of the kindred nations, while recognizing the superiority of the Wyandots. This claim has been admitted by most writers upon the Indians. Like the Eries, they were of Algonquin stock, and had removed form the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers to the Alleghany and the Ohio. This territory they were allowed b the grace of the all-conquering Iroquois, who had early subjugated them. Their first removal form their original seat upon or near the Atlantic coast did not occur, however, until after the advent of William PENN. They then occupied lands in Virginia, but sold them by the treaty of Lancaster in 1744, and moved westward. In 1752, with other tribes, by the treaty of Logstown, they formally assented to the settlement of whites in the region south of the Ohio. About that time they were found numerously in villages on the Muskingum and the Beaver, but, according to GIST's journal of 1754, not anywhere west of the Hock-hocking. One unimportant Delaware tribe, the Munsees (some call these the Mingses), are found on the maps as far up the Ohio as the Venango river. Between this and the Scioto the Delaware territories were presumably located. In 1779, however, the delegates of the tribes gave to Congress, then at Princeton, New Jersey, the definition of a boundary which included the Miami and Wyandot tracts, and very likely others, as well as their own. It was as follows:

From the mouth of the Alleghany at Fort Pitt to Venango, and from thence up French creek and by LeBoeuf along the old road to Presque Isle, on the west: the Ohio river, including all the island in it, from Fort Pitt to the Oubache (Wabash) on the south; thence up the Oubache to the broad Opecomecah, and up the same to the head thereof; and from thence to the headwaters and springs of the northwestern branches of the Great Miami or Rocky river; thence across to the headwaters and springs of the most northwestern branches of the Scioto river; thence to the head westernmost springs of the Sandusky river; thence down the same river, including the island in it and the little lake, to Lake Erie on the west and northwest, and Lake Erie on the north.

There is no probability that the Delawares ever occupied , at least within the period of white exploration or occupancy, any large part o f this vast tract. What they did own north of the Ohio or east of the Cuyahoga they ceded to the whites by the treaty of 1785. The tribe, however, was represented among the Ohio Indians so late as 1813, when Delawares joined with others in a contract of amity and peace with the whites at Franklinton, on the present site of the western part of Columbus.
 

THE SHAWNEES.

The first that is known of this important and warlike tribe, they lived to the south of the Cumberland and Ohio rivers, as all the early French and English maps of the western country show. One writer says they formerly lived on the Mississippi, whence they removed to the sources of a river in South Carolina, and there coming in contact with the Cherokees and the Catawbas they moved onto the Savannah. This seems to be confirmed, in part, by the tradition of the Sauks and Foxes, of the Upper Mississippi region, who say the Shawnees were of the same stock with themselves, but migrated to the south. As early as 1632 they were mentioned by DE LAET as residing on the Delaware river, whither they are supposed to have emigrated form Ohio. Forty years after the above date they joined themselves in an alliance for the defense of the Andastes against the Iroquois. The Andastes were themselves and Iroquois tribe, now long extinct, which had its home on the Alleghany and the Upper Ohio, and are said at this time to have been located on the Susquehanna. Soon after, however, they are again found among the Delawares of the Delaware, where they staid till a backward emigration to Ohio began about 1744. They, apportion of the tribe which had not gone south, had been previously on the Miamis being the first tribe of which we hear in this region; and were there attacked and scattered by the terrible Iroquois. They now, upon their return, were located, by express permission of the Wyandots and the Iroquois, on and near the Scioto and Mad rivers. Here they were divided into four bands --- the Chillicothe, Piqua, Kiskapocke, and Mequachuke; and in the Scioto valley their chief town was situated, called by the English "Lower Shawneetown." There is also a Shawneetown in southern Illinois; and the wide wanderings of this people are else where shown by the names they have left, as the Suwanee river of the popular song, in South Carolina, the Piqua of Pennsylvania and the town of the same name in the Miami country, and the Chouanon (now Cumberland) river of the old maps. They were the only tribe among the northern Indians who had a tradition of foreign origin; and for some time after the whites began to know them, they held a yearly festival to commemorate the safe arrival of their ancestors in the Western world. After their arrival in the Scioto valley, they were rejoined by the portion of the tribe which had settled in the south. From this branch, son of a Shawnee father who had married a Creek woman during the southern residence, the celebrated TECUMSEH and his brother, ELSQUATAWAY, or "the Prophet," are said to have sprung. Under the leadership of the former a part of the tribe

"This truly great man, who was himself for peace, but who found all his neighbors and the warriors of his own tribe stirred up to war by the agents of England, went over to the American fort at Point Pleasant, at the mouth of the Great Kenawha, to talk the matter over with Captain ARBUCKLE, who was in command there and with whom he was acquainted. This was in the early summer of 1777; and the American, knowing that the Shawnees were inclining to the enemy, thought it would be a good plan to detain CORNSTALK and a young chief, RED HAWK, who was with him, and make them hostages. The old chief, finding himself entrapped, calmly awaited the result. ELLINIPSCO, the son of CORNSTALK, who came the next morning to see his father, was also detained. Toward night, one of the white hunters having been shot by an unknown Indian, the soldiers raised a cry, 'kill the red dogs in the fort,' and immediately carried their bloody thought into execution, the commander endeavoring, though almost unheeded to dissuade them from their purpose. CORNSTALK fell pierced by seven musket balls, and his son and RED HAWK met the same fate. CORNSTALK saw his assassinators coming, and met them at the door of the hut in which he was confined, his arms folded upon his massive chest and his whole mien expressing a magnificent stoicism. This was by no means the only shameful act of treachery on the part of the whites. The murder very naturally aroused an intense feeling of hatred for the whites throughout the Shawnee division, and was the cause of much future bloodshed."

For more than forty years after the return and reunion of the tribe, 1750, it was engaged in almost constant warfare with the whites. They were among the most active allies of the French and sometimes of the British. After the conquest of Canada by the latter, they continued hostilities against the settlements, in alliance with the Delawares, until after the successful campaign of Colonel BOUQUET. He, in 1764 estimated their bands upon the Scioto to number five hundred warriors. They took an active part against the patriots in the war of the Revolution and in the Indian war that followed, continuing it among the early settlers in this State until hostilities were terminated by the peace of Greenville in 1795. These Indians are specifically distinguished in our national history. They have been variously called the "Bedouins of the American wilderness" and "the Spartans of the race," from their constancy in braving danger and enduring the consequences of defeat. They were undoubtedly among the ablest and bravest of the red men of the Ohio wilderness.
 

THE OTTAWAS, CHIPPEWAS, AND MINGOS.

Of these there is not much to say, as they make no great figure in early Ohio history. The former had their headquarters in this State, near or with the Wyandots, in the valleys of the Maumee and the Sandusky. They lived originally, so far as is known, upon the banks of the Canadian river which retains their name (the name also of the capital of the Dominion), whence they were driven by the confederated Iroquois and scattered westward and southward along both shores of Lake Erie. Their chief seats were far away on the south shore of Lake Superior, where they became a powerful tribe, and, though remote, were exceedingly troublesome to the whites. PONTIAC, hero of the famous conspiracy of 1763, was an Ottawa chief, and his tribe was foremost in the meditated mischief. They were the last of the greater tribes to succumb to the power of the whites.

The Chippewas were also an important and numerous people, having their tribal center in the far north, even beyond the Ottawas, in the Lake Superior region. There they were principally known as Ojibways or Ojibbeways, and were the first Indians met in that country by the French missionaries and explorers about 1640. They are an Algonquin tribe, and were formerly all well developed, fine looking fellows, expert hunters, brave warriors, and fond of adventure. They are still but little given to agriculture; yet some members of the tribe have proved susceptible of considerable education. "George COPWAY," "Peter JONES," Edward COWLES," and perhaps others of the tribe; have been reputable writers and speakers upon matters concerning their people. In Ohio occupied lands on the south shore of Lake Erie, most of which they surrendered in 1805, and the remainder in 1817. they were much engaged in hostilities against the settlers, but joined in the peace of Greenville, and gave no serious trouble afterwards until the second war with Great Britain, when they were again hostile, but joined in the general pacification of the tribes the year after it closed.

Not much is recorded in Ohio history of the Mingos, who are by some supposed to be identified with the Shawnees. They are known separately, however, as residing in considerable number about "Mingo Bottom," on the Ohio, below Steubenville, and to some extent in the Scioto valley. Here their most famous leader, TAH-GAH-JUTE or LOGAN, though himself the son of a Cayuga chief, chose his home, as before noted, among a cluster of the Shawnee towns on the Pickaway plains, his own residence being at "Old Chillicothe," now Westfall. It was in this neighborhood that LOGAN gave Colonel GIBSON the substance of his famous address to Lord DUNMORE, and at Charlotee, on the other side of the river, that Dunmore's campaign of 1774 came to a peaceful end. They are believed, unlike the Shawnees, to have been an offshoot of the Iroquois family. It may here be noted

The people of southwestern Ohio are chiefly interested in the story of the Miami Indians, although they occupied but a comparatively small tract in this State, their habitat being mainly between the Miami country and the Wabash.

The famous Miami chief, LITTLE TURTLE, however, thus outlined the former boundaries of this tribe, in the great council at Greenville, in 1795: "My forefather kindled the first fire at Detroit; from thence he extended his lines to the headwaters of the Scioto; from thence to its mouth; from thence down the Ohio to the mouth of the Wabash; and from thence to Chicago, on Lake Michigan. These are the boundaries within which the prints of my ancestors' houses are everywhere to be seen." The narratives of the early French explorers singularly confirm the statements of the Indian orator. They found the Miamis here and there upon the territory thus defined, and not anywhere else.

They were of the Algonquin stock, and CHARLEVOIX, in 1721, wrote that there was no doubt they were not long before identified with the Illinois, the hereditary and most formidable enemies of the Iroquois, and the first Indians encountered by Father MARQUETTE in his voyage down the Mississippi. They included the Ouiatenon or Wea tribe of Indiana, the Peanguichia or Piankeshaw, the Pepikokia, Kilatak, and other tribes or bands. In Ohio, however, they were known in but three separate tribes - the Miamis proper, occupying the territory drained by the Maumee; the Piankeshaws, south of the former, and mainly between the Wabash and the Miami rivers; and the Twigtwees (by which name all the Miamis have sometimes been designated), still south of them, and likewise on the Wabash and Miami rivers, where they had invited the Shawnees to settle among them and aid in resisting the incursions of the Iroquois. The Hon. Albert GALLATIN wrote in his Indian Tribes: "In the year 1684, in answer to the complaint of the French that they had attacked the Twigtwees or Miamis, the Five Nations assigned as one of the causes of the war that the Twigtwees had invited into their country the 'Satanas' [the Shawnees] in order to make war against them." There was another and probably related tribe toward the headwaters of the Miamis, called Pickawillanies or Picts, who had a well known village called Pickawillany, where was also an English fort established in 1748, and marked on maps of that period as "the extent of the English settlements."

The Miamis were found by the French in 1658 as far to the northwest as Green bay, and Alloues fell in with a large village of them in 1670, at the head of Fox river. Ten years afterward LA SALLE found them in considerable number upon the St. Joseph's river, in southwestern Michigan, which was called from them the River of the Miamis. They also frequented the region about Chicago, but had retired from both these districts when CADILLAC, commandant at Detroit, marched against them in 1707. By 1721 they had returned to the St. Joseph's and were also on the Miamis, and were subsequently found, in their various bands, scattered through the Ohio and Indiana country before mentioned a their home. They joined in the conspiracy of PONTIAC, and captured the British forts Miami and St. Joseph's; but during the Revolution sided with England, and made peace only after the successful expedition of George Rogers CLARK, in which some of their towns were devastated. They continued hostilities against the settlers at intervals, however, and were the main instruments of the disastrous defeats sustained by Generals HARMAR and ST. CLAIR, in 1790-91. They were led in these actions by their most renowned chief, MECHE CUNNAQUA, or "LITTLE TURTLE," who is remembered by persons still living as a noble looking specimen of the sons of the forest, and otherwise a superior Indian. He was present, but no commanding, at the defeat of the savages by "MAD ANTHONY WAYNE" in 1794, and advised strongly against going into action. He is reported to have said on this occasion: "We have beaten the enemy twice; we cannot expect always the same good fortune. The Americans are now led by a chief who never sleeps. The day and the night are alike to him. I advise peace." He was one of the chiefs who signed the treaty of Greenville, and was faithful to it, never taking the warpath thereafter. He died thirty years afterwards, at Fort Wayne, of gout, induced by too generous living among his white friends. Mr. E. D. MANSFIELD, who saw LITTLE TURTLE at his father's house early in the century, mentions him in his Personal Memories as "this most acute and sagacious of Indian statesmen, and a polished gentleman. He had wit, humor, and intelligence. He was an extensive traveler, and had visited all parts of the country, and became acquainted with many distinguished men. He had seen and admired General WASHINGTON." Colonel John JOHNSTON, long Indian agent in Ohio, has also put on record his high appreciation of LITTLE TURTLE's qualities of mind and character. For many years after the peace of Greenville, in which they bore full part, they gave the whites little trouble and rapidly declined as a tribe. By sundry treaties between this time (1795( and 1809 they ceded their lands between the Wabash and the Ohio State line, beyond which they do not seem to have claimed the territory, or, if claimed, the claim was not allowed them. They refused to join in the hostile alliance proposed by TECUMSEH, but their sympathies were finally enlisted against the Americans in the War of 1812, and they attacked a detachment of General HARRISON's army sent among them under Lieutenant colonel CAMPBELL. Defeated in this action, they sued for peace, and a final treaty was concluded with them September 8, 1815.

The first settlers of Hamilton county confronted principally the Twigtwees or Miamis. We shall presently consider the character of their intercourse, and rehearse some of the thrilling stories of Indian massacre in this region.
 

INDIANS REMAINING IN 1811

In the year 1811 the following fragments of tribes were enumerated or estimated as still remaining, with the numbers stated, in the northwest corner of the State – that part as yet unpurchased from the Indians: Shawnees, seven hundred; Ottawas, five hundred and fifty; Wyandots, three hundred; Senecas, two hundred; Delawares and Miamis, two hundred. An aggregate was thus made up of but one thousand nine hundred and seventy; and the number continually decreased until their ultimate removal. The Shawnees were then residing about the headwaters of the Auglaize, and the Great Miami rivers, the Ottawas principally on Lake Erie, the Wyandots on the Sandusky, and the little bands of the Senecas, Delawares, and Miamis on the same river and its tributary streams.