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The adventurous LaSalle, there is
every reason to believe, was the first white man who trod
the soil of the destined State of Ohio, and the first, whose
eves beheld "the Beautiful river." With a few
followers and led by Indian guides he penetrated the vast
country of the powerful Iroquois until, as Parkman
says, he reached "at a point six or seven leagues from Lake
Erie, a branch of the Ohio, which he descended to the main
stream," and so went onward as far as the "falls," or the
site of Louisville. His men abandoning him there, he
retraced his way alone. This, according to the best
authorities, was in the winter of 1669-70, over two hundred
years ago. And it is not improbable that one hundred
and eighteen years before Marietta was settled, this
intrepid French explorer had encamped at the mouth of the
Muskingum. Indeed, there is some reason to believe
that he made his way from Lake Erie to the Ohio by the
Cuyahoga, the Tuscarawas, and Muskingum, through the
preponderance of evidence points to the Alleghany as the
route followed. Ten years later LaSalle
unfurled the first sail ever set to the breeze upon Lake
Erie, and upon the Giffin, a schooner of forty-five tons
burden, made the voyage to Lake Huron. In 1682 he
reached the Mississippi, descended to its mouth, and there
solemnly proclaimed possession of the vast valley in the
name of his king.
The French had a trading station on the Maumee near the
site of Toledo, as early as 1680, and according to Bancroft
they had a route through the western wilderness from Canada
to the Mississippi, by the way of the Maumee, Wabash, and
Ohio rivers in 1716; and another only a little later from
Presque Isle (Erie) by the Alleghany and Ohio. About
1740, however, the French traders were superseded by the
English.
Governor Alexander Spotswood, of Virginia,
became interested in the western country early in the
eighteenth century; discovered a passage through them in
1714, and entered with great ardor upon the scheme of taking
practical possession of the Ohio valley. He founded
the Transmontane order, whose knights were decorated with a
golden horseshoe bearing the legend "Sic jurat
transcendere montes, and urged upon the British
sovereign the importance of gaining a foothold in the West
before the French had gained too powerful an ascendency.
His suggestions were not regarded, and many years later the
British government had cause to remember with regret the
wise policy they had neglected to act upon. Although
no systematic plan of exploration or settlement was
followed, individuals from time to time passed the great
barrier and visited the valley of la belle riviere.
There have been handed down certain vague traditions that
the English had trading posts on the Ohio as early as 1730,
and it is known positively that they had soon after that
time. In 1744 the governor of Pennsylvania issued
licenses for trading with the Indians as far west as the
Father of Waters. John Howard had descended the
Ohio in 1742 and been captured on the Mississippi by the
French; and six years later Conrad Weiser, acting in
behalf of the English, visited the Shawnees at Logstown
(below the site of Pittsburgh) bearing gifts with which to
win their favor. About the same time George Croghan
and Andrew Montour, the half breed of a Seneca chief,
bore liberal presents to the Miamis, in return for which the
Indians allowed the whites to establish a trading post and
build a stockade at the mouth of Loramie's creek on the
Great Miami (within the present county of Shelby). The
fort, built in 1751, which was called Pickawillamy, has been
sited by some writers as the first English settlement in
Ohio. The building
[Pg. 416]
which was undoubtedly the first erected by the British on
the soil of the State, was destroyed in June, 1752, by a
force of French and Indians.
Prior to the middle of the century the French
strenuously reasserted their ownership of the northwest, and
did actually take possession of what is now the northern
part of Ohio, building a fort and establishing a trading
station at Sandusky. Celeron de Bienville made
a systematic exploration of the Ohio valley and formally
declared by process verbal the ownership of the soil.
On the 16th of August, 1749, he was at the mouth of the
Muskingum. This fact was revealed in 1798 by the
discovery of a leaden plate, which had buried by him, and
which set forth that the explorer sent out by the Marquis de
la Gallissoniere, captain general of New France, agreeably
to the wishes of His Majesty Louis XV, had deposited the
plate as a monument of the renewal of possession of la
riviere Oyo,otherwise la belle riviere, and all
those which empty into it, and of all the lands of both
sides even to the sources of the said rivers, and which had
been obtained by force of arms and by treaties, especially
those of Ryswick, Utrecht, and Aix-la-Chapelle. The
plate was found protruding from the bank after a freshet, by
some have who, ignorant of its antiquarian value, cut away a
considerable portion of it to melt into bullets, lead then
being very scarce. The plate was finally secured by
Paul Fearing, one of the Marietta pioneers, and the
inscription was translated by William Woodbridge
(afterwards Governor of Michigan), then a young man, who had
been studying French at Gallipolis. Considerable
difficulty was experience in making the translation had been
cut away by the finders of the plate, but the larger part
remaining enabled the student to supply the missing words.
The plate was nearly twelve inches from top to bottom and
about sevens and a half in breadth.* A similar plate
was found in 1846 at the mouth of the Kanawha. They
were doubtless deposited at the mouths of all the principal
tributaries of the Ohio.
The French had a very just claim to the Ohio valley,
but it was destined that they should not hold it and already
events were shaping which eventually led to the overthrow of
their authority and the vesture of title and possession in
the English crown.
The Colonial Ohio Land company was organized in
Virginia in 1748 by twelve associates among whom were
Thomas Lee, and Lawrence and Augustine brothers
of George Washington. Under their auspices
Christopher Gist explored the Ohio as far as the falls,
traveling a portion of the time with Croghan and
Montour. The company secured a royal grant of half
a million acres of land in the Ohio valley. In 1753
preparations were made to establish a colony. The
French exhibited an intention of resistance, and the royal
Governor of Virginia sent George Washington, then a
young man, to the commander of the French forces to demand
their reason for invasion of British territory.
Washington received an answer that was both haughty and
defiant. Returning to Virginia he made known the
failure of his mission. The project of making a
settlement was abandoned, and preparations were immediately
made for the maintenance of the British claim to the western
valley by force of arms. The result ws the union of
the colonies, the ultimate involvement of England in the war
that ensued, the defeat of the French, and the vesture in
the British crown of the right and title to Canada, and of
all the territory east of the Mississippi and south to the
Spanish possessions, excepting New Orleans and a small body
of land surrounding it. Benjamin Franklin had
previously tried to effect a union of the colonies and had
been unsuccessful. He had proposed a plan of
settlement in 1754, and suggested that two colonies should
be located in the West - one upon the Cuyahoga and the other
upon the Scioto, "on which," he said, "for forty miles each
said of it and quite up to its head is a body of all rich
land, the finest spot of its bigness in all North America,
and has the peculiar advantage of sea coal in plenty (even
above ground in two places) for fuel when the wood shall
have been destroyed."
But little advantage was taken by the English of the
Ascendency they had gained. About the only men who
visited the country northwest of the Ohio were traders.
The frontiers of Pennsylvania .................................MORE
TO COME...
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* This interesting relic passed into the possession of the
learned and eccentric Caleb Atwater, of Circleville,
Ohio, in 1821, was by him given to Governor Clinton,
of New York, and by him transmitted to the Massachusetts
Antiquarian society.
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