CHAPTER III.
INDIANS AND FIRST WHITES.

     INDIANS. - There is no history or tradition of any permanent Indian town in what is now Perry county, though Indians often encamped temporarily, especially on Sunday and Monday creek, and near the "Great Swamp," as named by the explorer, Christopher Gist, or Big and Little Lake, now the old part of the Licking Summit Reservoir.  The Indians came to these lakes to fish, and to hunt bears, which were quite numerous in that vicinity.  There was an Indian trail which crossed the Muskingum near where Zanesville now is, and crossed what is now Perry and Fairfield counties, to "Standing Rock," (Mount Pleasant) which was followed the most of the way by ''Zanes Trace'" and is not far from the line of the present Zanesville and Maysville Turnpike.  There was another Indian trail from near where Dresden now is passing through Muskingum, Licking and Perry to the Great Swamp, (Reservoir.)  For fifty years or more previous to the time Perry county was settled, the Shawnees, Delawares and Wyandots, were the principal occupants of the country, along the Muskingum and Scioto rivers, and they all roamed over the great stretch of country that lay between them.  It is probable that these tribes tacitly agreed to occupy the intermediate ground between the Muskingum and the Scioto as a common hunting ground.  The Shawnees originally came from Florida.  The Wyandots came from the north, and, at one time inhabited the Peninsula of Michigan, at another time the north side of the St. Lawrence river.  The Indians, chiefly the Wyandots, it is to be presumed, came into what is now Perry county, after its first settlement by the early pioneers; but they were peaceable, though some of them were unprincipled, and would steal horses, and children, too, if they had an opportunity.  But there is no account of any successful attempt" at child stealing by them, in this part of the country, though the mother, brothers and sisters of a child stolen by the Indians, lived a long time, three or four miles east of Somerset.  About 1790, a boy child of the name of Armstrong was stolen by the Indians east of the Ohio, and carried him from home and friends into captivity.  The child grew to manhood among the Indians, in the Maumee country, became an Indian in appearance and habits, married an Indian girl, and went to battle with the Indian braves.  After Wayne's victory and the treaty of Greenville, and after the war of 1812, and the arts and ways of peace were once more cultivated, young Armstrong longed to know something of his parents, brothers and sisters, of whom he had some recollection, and for whom he cherished an affection, after all the years of his savage life.  His father was dead, but the rest of the family had removed to the neighborhood of Somerset, Ohio.  From Missionaries

[Page 14] -
in the Maumee country, or some other source, Armstrong learned where his relatives lived, and resolved to pay them a visit, and accordingly did so.  He was now married, had an Indian wife and children, but the meeting was affectionate and touching.  Armstrong lingered among his kin-folks as if loth to leave, and was at length prostrated with fever of a dangerous character.  Armstrong in his weakness and sometimes delirium, longed for his Indian wife, who was a sort of a Medicine woman, and pleaded that she be sent for.  Robert Colborn, an old friend of the family, who lived one mile east of Somerset, hearing those appeals, resolved to go for the Indian woman, the sick man's wife.  He had a wearisome ride of over one hundred miles; he safely reached his destination, rode into the Indian village, sought out the sick man's wife.  She immediately mounted a pony and accompanied the messenger on his return trip.  They did not let the grass grow under their horses feet, and in an incredible short time they arrived at the house where the sick man lay.
     The squaw wife "powwowed" over her husband awhile, then went a short distance from the house, up and down a ravine, gathering roots and herbs.  She returned to the house, went into the kitchen, and prepared a decoction of some nature, and administered it occasionally to her sick companion.  In a few days he was better, and in a short time became so much improved that he returned with his wife to their Indian home, and never again visited the homes of his pale faced kinsmen.

     THE FIRST WHITES. - It is not in the power of historian's pen to tell who was the first civilized or white person, to set foot upon, or traverse the soil of what is now Perry county; but as the great Indian trails from the East to the West, passed directly through the territory of which it is now composed, it is in the highest degree probable that scores if not hundreds of captives, young and old, from Western Virginia and Pennsylvania, passed through here the latter part of the last century.  It is also known that Christopher Gist, an acquaintance and companion of Washington, who was one of the members of the land company represented by him, passed by and camped all night near the Big Lake, (Reservoir,) in 1751.  This company had heard wonderful stories of the richness of the country west of the Ohio, but it was then as little known to civilization as the heart of Africa is to-day.  Capt. Gist was a surveyor, as well as explorer.  A man of considerable note and great daring.  In the service of the land company, before mentioned, and accompanied by a few attendants, he set out from the forks of the Ohio, (Pittsburgh) and followed an Indian trail to the forks of the Muskingum, (Coshocton) and thence by way of Wakatomika (Dresden) to the old Indian town on the Scioto and Miami.  This trail led through the old Indian town on the Scioto and Miami.  This trail led through Muskingum and Licking, to the "Great Swamp," (Reservoir).  The original lake was in Perry county, near where Thornport now is.  Captain Gist's Journal, which was subsequently published, shows that his party encamped upon its shore, and "the next day" he continues, "we set out from the Great Swamp."  Gist was joined at the Muskingum, by a white man and a half breed, who accompanied him through the remainder of his journey.
     There is also authority for the statement that chaplain Jones and an

[Page 15] -
Indian trader by the name of David Duncan, passed along this same trail by way of Big Lake in 1773, on a journey from the Indian towns on the Scioto to the Indian towns on the Muskingum.  Rev. David Jones had been a missionary among the Indians on the Scioto, sent out there by the Philadelphia Baptist Association. His diary shows that he followed a trail from the Indian towns on the Scioto to Standing Stone, Lancaster, "where was an Indian town consisting chiefly of Delawares, and which was situated on a creek, called Hock Hockin.  It appears muddy, is not wide, but soon admits of large canoes."  This Rev. Jones was chaplain in Wayne's army of 1795, and preached the first sermon January 13th, 1790, ever preached in the neighborhood of Cincinnati.
     The surveyors came along in the closing decade of the last century.  They simply run the section lines, but their camp fires blazed in many places.  They run the lines and sunk the corner stones; the marks on some of the witness trees blazed by their axes could be seen not very long ago.
     Soon after the surveyors, and in some cases cotemporaneous with them, came the explorers and also the first hunters.  Many of them built their camp fires and erected temporary places of abode.  Several of these men subsequently became permanent settlers.  This part of the country received quite a number of emigrants who had first settled in the level country, a short distance farther west.  Two cases of these are well known.  Robert Colborn, who had emigrated from Somerset county, Pennsylvania, to the neighborhood of Lancaster in 1800, be- came dissatisfied, loaded a few effects on horseback, and started east along Zane's Trace.  One mile east of where Somerset now is, he came upon a good spring, liked the appearance of the country, unloaded his goods and resolved to stay.  He subsequently entered a half section and lived there about twenty years, when he removed to Indiana.  One of his daughters, Mrs. Mary Cole, born near Somerset in 1803, now lives at Noblesville, Hamilton county, Indiana, and is in the eightieth year of her age.  A brother, Jonathan Colborn, but born in Pennsylvania in 1799, lives in the same place.  Robert McClellan, who also lived near Lancaster, started out with a companion or two to hunt and spy out the land.  They came over by where Rushville now is and down where Bremen is, then up Rush Creek to where New Lexington now is.  At this place they left Rush Creek and started up the Oxawoosie.   About a mile south of the present site of New Lexington, they diverged from the stream and soon came upon a big spring. Robert McClellan sat his gun against a tree, stooped and took a drink of water, then rose and said: "Here will I live and here will I die."  He did subsequently enter the land, became the second settler of Pike township, lived and died there, and one of his descendents resides up on the land until this day.   James Comly also fled from the malaria of the Pickaway plains, and became the original proprietor of New Lexington. In ways similar to these the county received many of its earliest pioneers.

     THE PRIMITIVE WILDERNESS. - For the benefit of those who would like a glimpse of the country as it appeared to the Indians and first whites, the following description is reproduced from the Centennial Ad-

[Page 16] -
dress of James Taylor at New Lexington, Ohio, July 4th, 1876.  The pen picture may be a trifle fanciful and colored, but it is near enough reality to be read and studied with interest:
     "One hundred years ago to-day, the sun in his course looked down upon no spot of earth more picturesque and lovely than the territory now known as Perry county.  The entire area from east to west, and from north to south, was covered with the primeval forest, "planted by the Lord at creation's dawn:" - a wild paradise, an untrained and unpruned Eden, to which our first parents, condemned in just retribution for their disobedience, to spend their day and centuries of life amid the arid deserts and on the barren hills of Asia, would have been glad to have gained an entrance.  Here the Arcadians could have tended their flocks on greener pastures, in a happier climate, and in more impenetrable shades than in their native land; here could have been found the realization of the poet's conception of a "boundless contiguity of shade;" and here, if man had remained in his fabled simplicity and purity, Utopia might have found "a local habitation and a name."
     The valleys, slopes and hilltops bore unmistakable evidence that the tenth, and perhaps the fortieth, generation of trees was then standing, each of which had withstood the lightnings and storms of a thousand years.  Upon the summit of the water-shed between the Muskingum and the Hocking, where now stand Somerset, Bristol, Oakfield and Porterville, there then stood white oaks, and perhaps other trees, which may have been in the green before the enunciation of the Sermon on the Mount, and before Paul preached on Mars Hill; which were goodly trees prior to the battle of Hastings; and which were giants among their fellows before Columbus dreamed of or discovered the western world, and before John Cabot set foot on the shores of North America.
     From April till November the ground was covered with wild pea vines, which afforded pastures as green, as luxuriant and as nutritious as our best fields of clover.  At the approach of winter it dried up, retaining its foliage and nutritious properties, so that in summer it afforded pasture, and in winter hay and grain for the herds of buffalo, elk and deer, as well as food for swarms of wild turkeys, pheasants, quails and pigeons, which fed and fattened on the wild pea, and the fruit of the juneberry tree, the black and the red haw, the wild cherry, the dog berry and the gum, the beechnut, the chestnut and the acorn; the birds sharing their fruit with the bear and the beaver, the raccoon, the opossum, the hedgehog and the woodchuck, and gray squirrels, equal in number to the promise of the seed of Abraham.  Nature prepared the food, and the herb eating and graniverous beasts and birds fattened themselves to fatten the panther, the catamount, the fox and the wolf, the eagle, the hawk and the owl; while the feathers and skins of the latter were made to do service in adding to the comfort and adorment of the cabins and persons of the wild men of the woods.
     In summer and winter, at morning, noon and night, the forest was vocal with the chirpings, twitterings, calls, cries and songs of birds, of which there was almost an infinite variety, and in numbers beyond calculation or estimate - eagles, hawks, owls, ravens, crows, robins, blue jays, anteaters, tomtits, woodpeckers, thrushes, sparrows, snipes and swallows.  From May to August the night air seemed to vibrate with

[Page 17] -
the plaintive cry of the whippoorwill; throughout the year, and all the night long, the laughing and talking owls (species now extinct in this region) met in companies to chatter, laugh and scream, imitating the human voice in conversation, in laughter and the Indian war-whoop; orioles of many varieties, with plumage of orange, blue and gold, abounded everywhere; and myriads of flying squirrels, inhabiting the cavities of trees, excited the wonder and admiration of Europeans and inhabitants of the trans-Alleghany States.
     In spring the blossoms of the wild plum, the crabapple and the grape, perfumed the air, and in autumn brought forth their green, golden and amber fruit for the use of the red man and for beasts and fowls."

< Click Here to Return to 1883 Table of Contents >