When the territory of Ohio emerged from the ancient waters of the carboniferous period, it presented the appearance of an extended
monotonous plain. It has not been materially changed since that period, in a topographical sense, except by the excavating power of the streams. There arc no geological uplifts, or
mountain ranges, or peaks.
     In Ohio no primitive rocks are found in place. Her rocks are all sedimentary and stratified, and as they arc horizontal, the strata that appear at the surface arc few. Her geology is therefore very simple and easily understood, especially when we compare it with that of New York or Pennsylvania, where a much greater variety of formations is seen.
     The lowest visible rock in Ohio, is the blue limestone, of Cincinnati, which is also the lowest in a physical as well as in a geological sense. We have no means of ascertaining the thickness
of the blue limestone, for we have not penetrated through it to the rocks beneath; yet it is estimated at more than 1000 feet, 600 to 700 of which arc visible.
     If we group the rocks of Ohio according to their lithological characters, there are five distinct divisions, that any person will discover on examination. The difference in appearance, hardness, color and composition is so marked that no more natural division could be made.
1st. Limestone, visible thickness in Adams county, according to
     Dr. Locke ..............................       772 feet
2d, Black shale, thickness at same place.. 251 “
3d. Fine grained sandstone, thickness ..343 “
4th. Conglomerate............... “ .............200 “
5th. Coal series, estimated ...“ ..........2,000 “
     Thickness in Ohio .......................3,566 “
     This is dividing the rocks, not according to strict geological rules, but according to external appearances.
     A person traveling from the west line of Adams county eastward, to the Little Scioto, in Scioto county, would pass over the out-cropping edges of all these rocks, and would see all the formations in Ohio.
     They dip eastward at the rate of about 37 4-10 feet per mile; consequently, the cliff limestone, the upper member of the great limestone deposit, which at West Union, is 600 feet above the river at Cincinnati, at Brush creek, six miles cast, is found to be only about 350 feet above the same level.
     And the tine grained sandstone which caps the hills east of Brush creek, and west of the Scioto, as we approach the Little Scioto, sinks to the base of the bills and disappears beneath the conglomerate. This inclines continually to the river surface and plunges the coal.
     This out crop forms a continuous but crooked line from the Ohio river to Lake Erie.

PRIMITIVE RACES OF OHIO.

It is not determined whether we have yet discovered the original or first people who occupied the soil of Ohio. Modern
investigations are continually bringing to light evidences of earlier races. Since the presence of man has been established in Europe as a cotemporary of the fossil elephant, mastodon, rhinoceros, and the horse, of the later drift or glacial period, we may reasonably anticipate the presence of man in America in that era. Such
proofs are already known, but they arc not of that conclusive character that amounts to a demonstration. It is however known that an ancient people inhabited Ohio in advance of the red man, who was found here near four hundred years ago, by the Spanish and French explorers.
     Five or six hundred years before the arrival of Columbus, the Northmen sailed from Norway, Iceland, and Greenland, along the Atlantic coast as far south as Long Island. They then found Indian tribes in New England, closely resembling those who lived upon the coast and the St. Lawrence, when the English and French came to possess those regions.
     These red Indians have no traditions of a prior people, but there are over a large part of the Lake country, and of the valley of the Mississippi, earth works, mounds, pyramids, ditches, and forts, the works of a more ancient race, and a people far in advance of the Indian. If they were not civilized, they were not barbarians. They were not mere hunters, but had fixed habitations, Cultivated the soil, and possessed mechanical skill. We know them as “Mound Builders,” because they erected over the mortal remains of their principal men and women memorial mounds of earth or unhewn stone—of which hundreds remain to our day—many of them so largo and high, that they give rise to an impression of the numbers and energy of their builders such as we receive from the pyramids of Egypt.

TITLE8 OF OHIO.

     The territory that now constitutes Ohio was," first of all, so far as we can judge, in full possession of the race of Mound Builders; afterwards (but still in pre-historic times) its sole occupants and owners, for some centuries, were unquestionably those Indian tribes or nations, found here by the Europeans. They as well as the Mound-Builders, held titles acquired probably by priority of discovery—by conquest—by occupancy, or possession.
     Possessory titles they might be appropriately termed.

OHIO WITHOUT INHABITANTS.

After the destruction of the Eries by the five

nations in 1656, and until 1700, or a little later, what is now the State of Ohio was uninhabited— a silent wilderness. The Miami Confederation,
inhabiting the southern shore of Lake Michigan, extended southeasterly to the Wabash. The Illinois Confederacy extended down the eastern shore of the Mississippi to within about eighty miles of the Ohio. Hunting ‘parties of the Chickasaws roamed up the eastern shore of the Mississippi to about where Memphis now
stands. The Cherokees occupied the slopes and valleys of the mountains about the borders of what is now East Tennessee. North Carolina and Georgia. The great basin, bounded north by Lake
Eric, the Miamis, and the Illinois, west by the Mississippi, cast by the Alleghanies, and south by the head waters of the streams that flow into the gulf of Mexico, 6ecms to have been uninhabited and scarcely visited except by war parties of the Five Nations.
     In the next half century, from 1700 to 1750. various tribes pressed into what is now Ohio, across all its borders. In the early part of the eighteenth century, the Wendats, called by the French Ouendats, and spelled by the English Wyandots, extended their settlements into the northwestern part of Ohio, and became permanently fixed there.
     The Miamis pushed their borders into the western portion Shawnees settled the Scioto valley. The Shawnees were not found, originally in Ohio, but migrated there after 1759. They
were called by the French Chaonanous, by the English, Shawanees, which was afterwards changed to Shawanee and recently to Shawnee. The Delawares settled the valleys of the  Muskingum Detachments of the Five Nations, mostly Senecas, occupied part of the northern and eastern part of the State. The Senecas, who settled the northern part were called by that name. Those who settled in the eastern portion, between the Delawares and the Pennsylvania border, were called Mingoes. The Five Nations were called Iroquios by the French, Maquas by the Dutch, Five Nations by the English, and Mengwe by the Delawares. The Pennsylvanians, changing the appellation “Mengwe,” which they had heard used by the Delawares, called the Five Nations “Mingoes.”
And so the band of Senecas who settled in Ohio, between the Delawares, on the Muskingum, and the Pennsylvania border went by the name of Mingoes.
     These were the Indians that occupied the territory that now forms the State of Ohio, immediately before its settlement by the whites—and these wore the tribes whom our forefathers had to subdue, before they could peacefully possess the land.

THE FRENCH TITLE.

     The claims of the different European monarchs to large portions of the western continent, were based upon the first discoveries made by their subjects, without regard to the rights of the occupants of the country—the Indians.
     Thus France claimed, by light of priority of discovery, all the territory now comprised within the limits of Ohio, which was a part of that region between tile Alleghany and Rockv Mountains, first known by the general name of Louisiana.

THE ENGLISH TITLE

     The principal ground whereon the English claimed dominion beyond the Alleghenies, was, that the Six Nations owned the Ohio valley, and had placed it with their other lands, under the protection of England. Some of the western lands wore also claimed by the British as having been actually purchased, at Lancaster, Penn., in 1744, at a treaty between the colonists and the Six Nations, at that place.
     These conflicting claims of France and England were settled by the arbitrament of the sword, and after long and bloody wars France succumbed to the power of England, and by the treaty of Paris in February, 1763, she formally relinquished to Great Britain all her claims to that portion of her territory between the Ohio and the Mississippi.

THE TITLE OF THE UNITED STATES.

     The colonics having, in 1776, renounced their allegiance to the British king, and assumed rank as free, sovereign and independent States, each Stale claimed the right of soil and jurisdiction over the district of country embraced within its charter from the kings of England.
     The claim of the English to the late northwestern territory was ceded to the United States, by the treaty of peace signed at Paris, September 3, 1783. The provisional articles which formed the basis of that treaty, more especially as related to the boundary, were signed at Paris. November 2, 1782. During the pendency of the negotiation relative to these preliminary articles, Mr. Oswald, the British commissioner, proposed the Ohio river as the western boundary of the United States, and but for the indomitable perseverance of that revolutionary patriot, John Adams, one of the American commissioners, who opposed tin; proposition, and insisted on the Mississippi as the boundary, the probability is, that the proposition of Mr. Oswald would have been acceded to by the United States commissioners.
     Those States which had no charters for western land grants insisted that these unappropriated lands ought to be used for the
benefit of all the States, according to their population, as the titles to them were secured by the blood and treasure of all. Congress
repeatedly urged upon those States owning

western unappropriated lands, to make liberal cessions of them for the common benefit
of all.
     The States claiming rights or titles to these western lands finally ceded their claims to them to the general government, to be held for the benefit of all the States, with certain reservations
made by Virginia and Connecticut, as will be presently stated.
     Thus the United States ostensibly acquired the sole title to the territory that now embraces within its limits the State of Ohio.
     But these were not, however, the only claims that had to be extinguished, prior to the commencement of settlements within its limits. Numerous savage Indian tribes asserted their respective claims, by virtue of prior possession, which bad also to be extinguished.
     A treaty for this purpose was accordingly made at Fort Stanwix, October 27, 1781, with the sachems, and warriors of the Mohawks, Onandagas, Senecas, Cayugas, Oneidas, and Tuscaroras by the third article of which treaty, the said Six Nations ceiled to the United States all claims to the country west of a line extending
along the western boundary of Pennsylvania, from the month of Oyonnayed to the river Ohio.  A treaty was also concluded at Fort McIntosh. January 21, 1785 with the Wyandot.
Delaware, Chippewa and Ottowa nations, by which more accessions of territory were acquired.

THE CLAIMS OF VIRGINIA AND OTHER STATES TO THE TERRITORY NORTHWEST OF THE OHIO RIVER, AND THE CESSION OF THEIR TITLES TO THE GENERAL GOVERNMENT

As just stated, at the close of the Revolutionary War, several of the confederated States claimed titles to more or less of this territory, by virtue of grants made by the Kings of England, previous
to that struggle. Virginia acquired a title by its several charters granted by James I., bearing dates respectively April 10,1603; May 23, 1603: March 12. 1611. The colony of Virginia
first attempted to exercise authority in or jurisdiction over, that portion of its extensive domains, that was organized by the ordinance
of ‘87, in the territory northwest of the River Ohio," when in 1760, the Mouse of Burgesses, of said colony passed an act establishing
the county of Botetourt, with the Mississippi River as its western boundary. The aforesaid act recited, that "Whereas, the people situated on the Mississippi, in the said county of Botetourt,
will be very remote trout the court house, and must necessarily become a separate county, as soon as their numbers are

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sufficient, which will probably happen in a short time, be it therefore enacted by the the authority aforesaid, that the inhabitants of that part of the said county of Botetourt which lies on the said waters of the Mississippi, shall be exempted from the payment of any levies to be .laid by the said county court for the purpose of building a court house and prison for said county.
     Connecticut also held a claim for a portion of this territory extending to the Pacific coast, granted by Charles II, April 23, 1662.  Massachusetts had similar claims, so also had New York.
     From the vague and indefinite ideas of the English government in regard to the geography oft ho “New World," these grants were not clearly defined or described, and sometimes they overlapped. This was likely to lead to disputes and wrangling among the claimants that would he difficult to decide.
     In the Legislature of Connecticut was asserted the undoubted and exclusive right of jurisdiction, and it “Resolved, .that his excellency, the Governor, be desired to issue his proclamation declaring and asserting the right of his Stale to all the lands within the limits aforesaid, and strictly forbidding all- persons to enter or settle thereon, without special license and authority, first obtained from the General Assembly of this State.’'
     In consequence of this state of affairs, Congress, in 1784 addressed a  recommendation to all the. Stales having territorial claims in the West, asking them to cede their lands to the con led confederacy, to aid the payment of the debts incurred during the revolution, and to promote the harmony of the Union.
     In accordance with this recommendation, Virginia, on the first day of March, 1784, by her delegates in Congress, Thomas Jefferson, Samuel Hardy, Autlmr Lee and James Monroe, deeded all her rights in the territory northwest of the Ohio, to the United States.
     On the first day of March, 1781. New York ceded all her claims to the northwest territory to the general government; and on the 18th day of April, 1785, Massachusetts ceded to the United
States all her claims to the western territories.
     On the 14th of September, 178_, the delegates from Connecticut executed a deed of cession, in accordance with the terms proposed
by Congress; thus the title to the whole of the territory northwest of the Ohio, became the property of the government.  This vast domain contained several hundred millions of acres.
     When Ohio was admitted into the Union as an independent State, one of the terms of admission was, that the fee simple to all the hinds within its limits, except those previously granted or sold, should vest in the United States. Different portions of these lands had or have at different periods been granted or sold, to various individuals, companies, or bodies politic.