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Source:
REMINISCENCES of
PIONEER DAYS in WOOD COUNTY
and the
MAUMEE VALLEY
Gathered from the papers and manuscripts of the late C. W. Evers
A PIONEER SCRAP BOOK
1909
[Pg. 16]
CATHOLIC MISSIONS
-----
First Established in Ohio - Interesting Sketch by D. W.
Manchester, of Cleveland
-----
THE following interesting
sketch of the first Catholic explorers and missionaries, was
furnished Mr. Evers some years ago by D. W. Manchester,
Secretary and Librarian of the Western Reserve Historical Society,
with headquarters at Cleveland:
There has been much published relating to early
explorations in North America and the West, but a great portion from
the different sources does not seem to assimilate, or there seems,
rather, to be a disagreement with the whole. There has been
less published, because of less general interest, perhaps,
respecting the first priests and their missions; but what has been
published appears to be more definite and reliable. I suppose
there is no doubt that LaSalle was the first white man who "looked
into the Maumee Valley," although Jolliet undoubtedly was the
first Frenchman who navigated Lake Erie; and while the latter may
have coasted along the southerly shore of that Lake, there is no
probability that he penetrated at all the interior. There is
scarcely any ground for question that LaSalle did make explorations
within the present state, and he is believed to have been at
Cleveland and in the vicinity of Canfield, Mahoning county. On
this expedition LaSalle set out from Montreal, July, 1667,
"with five Canoes and three Canoes of Sulpitians guided by some
Senecas who had wintered in Canada." Col. Chas. Whittlesey
until his death president of the Western Reserve Historical Society
from its organization, speaking of this expedition, the only record
of which, so far as I am aware, being that of Galinee, "still in
deacon's orders," who accompanied LaSalle, says: "LaSalle's
plan might have been to cross Lake Ontario to Grand river, down it
to the lake, thence along the north alone of Erie to the mouth of
the Maumee river on the route referred to by him in 1662." The
Colonel also says, "He (LaSalle) may have spent the winter
(1669-70) in Ohio, where game was abundant and beaver numerous.
We have no reliable evidence that he was at Montreal between July
1669 and August 1672."
There is much mystery about the movements of LaSalle,
and an unfortunate lack or reliable data, arising largely from the
fact that the Catholics make as little mention of him as possible
after what they term his "apostasy." Gen. Garfield, in
a valuable address, published as Tract 20, publications of the
Historical Society, entitled "Discovery and Ownership of the
Northwestern Territory and Settlement of the Western Reserve,"
follows much the same line of thought as Col. Whittlesey,
and speaking of LaSalle's expedition says, "We find him with
a small party near the western extremity of Lake Ontario boldly
entering the domain of the dreaded Iroquois, traveling southward and
westward through the wintry wilderness until he reached a branch of
the Ohio, probably the Alleghany."
Before the death of Col. Whittlesey,
Pierre Margry communicated to him an extract from an
unpublished letter (without date) of La Salle's, in
which the latter mentions "the river which you see marked on my map
of the southern coast of this lake (Erie), etc." The original of
this letter was sent to Francis Parkman, who says, "On
the map described 'Discovery of Great West' the Maumee river is
clearly laid down, with a portage direct to the Ohio, which is
brought close to Lake Erie." This map is clearly anterior to 1680.
I might add that an additional reason why there is so
little account of LaSalle's travels and explorations, is found in
the fact that a part of the papers were
[Pg. 17]
lost in the attack of the Iroquois on the post in 1681, and that on
his assassination in 1687, his brother, the Abbe Cavalier,
burned the most of the papers that were found with him.
Mr. Gillmany Shea is
of the opinion that we may conclude that "unauthorized trappers,
traders and Coureurs debois, both French and English, were among the
Indians in advance of the explorers."
It is a fact, I believe, that the early explorers and
priests (and they were inseparable) came direct from Canada to the
Northwest Territory, and Mr. Shea says that Father
Joseph Le Caron was the first Catholic priest from Canada who
penetrated into the present territory of the United States. He was
one of four Fransiscans whom Champlain obtained from France
in 1614. A year later, Le Caron was laboring among the
Indians at Lake Huron; but I think there is no evidence that he was
in the limits of Ohio.
Mr. Shea is unquestioned authority on
Catholic missions in America, and in an article contributed by him
to the Catholic Universe of Cleveland in 1881, and which paper the
Rev. G. F. Houck, Chancellor of the Cleveland Diocese, which
embraces thirty-three counties in Northern and Northwestern Ohio,
has embodied in his book entitled "The Church in Northern Ohio,"
says, "The first trace of Catholic missionaries having visited the
territory now within the limits of Ohio, is found as early as 1749.
It was then that the Jesuit Fathers, Potier and
Bonnecamp, came to evangelize the Huron Indians living along the
Vermillion and Sandusky rivers, in Northern Ohio. He also states
that the first permanent chapel within the confines of the present
state of Ohio, was erected near Sandusky in 1751, by the Jesuit
Father de la Richardie, who, with his companions, had
come from Detroit and Canada to the southern shore of Lake Erie.
A part of the Huron tribe was brought by Father de la Richardie,
in 1751, to Sandusky, where, under the name of Wyandots, they soon
took an active part in the affairs of the West. They were also
conspicuous in the last French War, and at its close were implicated
in the conspiracy of Pontiac, though long" checked by the influence
of Father Peter Potier, S. J. During the
exciting times of the war these missionaries were driven from
Sandusky, Father Potier being the last Jesuit
missionary among the western Hurons. He died in July, 1781.
The Indian missions in and near Sandusky thence depended entirely on
the priests attached to the French posts in Canada and Michigan.
When the Society of Jesus was suppressed, and Canada
lost to the French, the above mentioned Indian missions were
abandoned. From 1751 to 1795 no record is found of any further
effort made in Northern Ohio to continue the missionary work begun
by the Jesuits. In the early part of 1796 the Rev.
Edmund Burke was sent by Bishop Hubert, of Quebec,
from Detroit, to the northwestern part of Ohio, near Fort Miami,
just built by the British government on the Maumee river, opposite
the present site of Perrysburg, Wood county.
Here he resided about one year, ministering to the few
Catholic soldiers in the fort, and endeavoring with little success,
to christianize the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians in the
neighborhood—the latter work having been for long one of his aims as
a missionary priest. Father Burke left this unpromising
charge about February, 1797. From that time, and until 1817, no
priest was stationed in Northern Ohio, and in fact none in the
entire territory of the present state of Ohio."
— F. W. Manchester.
[Pg. 18]
DISASTROUS CAMPAIGNS
Under Gens. Harmar and St. Clair - Terror of Settlers - Grief of
Washington
The Man Chosen for the Emergency - Washington and Wayne Contrasted
EARLY in the year 1799, a
short distance north of Marietta, twelve white settlers were
inhumanly butchered and their bodies burned by the Indians.
This was the beginning of what is sometimes known in history as
Wayne's War.
The Government still entertained hopes of avoiding a
general war, but it was thought best at the same time to chastise
the Indians severely for this outrage and make them feel the power
of the "thirteen fires" as the Indians termed the United States.
Accordingly Gen. Harmar, an old continental officer, with a
battalion of regular troops and twelve hundred Kentucky and
Pennsylvania volunteers, marched against the hostile warriors.
These latter fell back to the Maumee at the junction of the St.
Joseph and St. Mary's rivers, now Fort Wayne.
Gen Harmar's Defeat
There, after some bad
generalship by Harmar, a part of his army was ambushed by the
Indians under command of a Miami chief named Little Turtle and many
of the regulars with their officers killed. The volunteers
saved themselves by inglorious fight.
Thus, disastrously ended the first attempt to punish
the Indians. Emboldened by this victory and stimulated by the
plunder it secured them the savages became more defiant and
bloodthirsty than ever. The situation of the settlers at this
time was one of great peril. Several desultory war expeditions
by Kentucky and Virginia volunteers were made, which resulted
chiefly in destroying some Indian villages and their cornfields, but
this only exasperated the revengeful savages to additional
atrocities.
Gen. St. Clair's Disaster.
A second expedition by the
Government was commanded by Gen. Arthur St. Clair, at that time
Governor of the Northwest territory. On the approach of this
army the Indians, this time fell back on a more direct rout to the
Maumee. St. Clair, who had seen service in the war of the
Revolution, was a gouty old man, lacking not only in vital energy,
but in the qualities of an Indian fighter. He pursued the
retreating foe until they had reached a point (since called Fort
Recovery near the head of the Wabash, on the line of the present
counties of Darke and Mercer), where, one morning at daylight the
Americans were suddenly and unexpectedly attacked by an overwhelming
force of Indians, again led by the wily chieftain Little Turtle.
St. Clair's army was utterly defeated and routed with a loss in
slain of over nine hundred men, nearly half of his fighting force,
together with his cannon, ammunition, baggage and other equipment.
An Appalling "Calamith
No such appalling, ghastly
disaster had ever before befel the whites in Indian warfare; not
even Braddock's defeat equaled it in loss of life.
The prisoners and wounded were put to death with the
most diabolical tortures known in savage warfare, while the dead
were mutilated in the most horrible manner. The eyes of these
were gouged out and the sockets as well as the mouth and ears filled
with earth - as if in a grim, hideous satisfaction of the white
man's demand for more land. The brutality and demoniacal
vengeance of the savages was never more atrociously exhibited than
in this defeat and pursuit of the whites. The direful news
spread rapidly from the frontier to the Atlantic and the
helpless border settlers spoke of the
[Pg. 19]
Hero of the Battle of Fallen Timber, Born in Chester Co., Pa., Jan.
1, 1745
Died at Presque Isle, Erie, Pa., Dec. 15, 1796
[Pg. 20] - BLANK PAGE
[Pg. 21]
calamity with bated breath and terror. The
situation was not deplorable in the extreme.
Washington's Great Grief
President Washington, it
is related, wrung his hands and shed tears of anguish when the news
reached him and both swore and prayed in the conflict of frenzied
emotions which almost distracted his mind. He was
inconsolable, doubtless in part, for his share of the
responsibility, in appointing a man who had proved as incompetent as
St. Clair.
The whole country clamored loudly now for active and
strong measures by the Government. A leader was in demand to
go to the frontier, organize an army and punish and subdue the
savages, an undertaking of no small magnitude as the case then
stood. The President, after much serious deliberation, sent
for
Gen. Anthony Wayne
A former military associate, living at Chester,
Pennsylvania, a small farmer and surveyor by occupation.
Wayne mounted his horse and rode to the capital city to see what
his old commander wanted. He was then in the prime of life, a
fighter by nature, of audacious courage and had the greatest degree
of confidence in the wisdom and judgment of the President, in all
things.
He promptly consented to go and fight the Indians if
the President would allow him time to recruit, equip and drill his
army before he was required to march against the enemy, which
reasonable precaution, of course, was assented to.
Wayne and Washington
Anthony Wayne, whom
President Washington had called to his aid in this
grave emergency, was a rugged, picturesque character of the
Revolutionary period. It seems even at this distant day, an
anomaly in the character of the great President that he had always
placed such implicit trust and confidence in one so much unlike
himself in nearly every characteristic.
Wayne, while not dissipated, loved grog and
jovial companions. Washington, was sedate, dignified
and sober. Wayne was subject to startling ebullitions
of profanity when angry or excited and it mattered little either who
his auditors were. Washington was self-poised and
devoutly religious in character.
As soldiers, too, they were unlike. Wayne
in battle struck with the furry of a tempest, regardless of
consequences. He was by some called reckless and had even then
won the soubriquet of "Mad Anthony," which followed him to his
grave. Washington was slow and deliberate,
calculating carefully the effect of every movement.
Wayne had a dash and impetuosity of Murat,
forming his conclusions on the impulse of the moment.
Washington had the crafty strategy, foresight and inflexibility
of purpose of Frederick the Great.
Wayne sought victory over his enemies by the short,
sharp method of bloody annihilation. Washington
compassed the destruction of his foe by adroit and far-reaching
combinations and steady, hard fighting to a finish.
Each was great in his sphere. Each devoutly loved
his country, and this devotion harmonized all differences or
prejudices in habits and character. Such were the men of the
Revolution.
A council of war had been held at Washington's
headquarters, and Wayne, who commanded a Pennsylvania brigade
some distance away, had been decided on as a suitable leader of a
storming party to assault and carry the high, rocky fortress of
Stony Point on the Hudson. The fortress was not only strong by
nature,
[Pg. 22]
but was defended by six hundred trained British soldiers,
and the mere thought of carrying it by a night attack was suggestive
of desperate work.
Storming Stony Point
Washington sent for
Wayne, with whom at that time he had but little personal
acquaintance. Watching closely the effects his question would
have, he said: Gen. Wayne, I have sent for you to ask you a
question; can you take your brigade and storm Stony Point?"
Quick as a flash the general was on his feet and with a wicked light
in his eye, staring straight into the face of the commander, he
said: "General, I can storm hell, if you will lay the plan
for me."
This bluff, warlike answer, in the contemplation of so
hazardous an enterprise, almost startled the sedate commander, but
he saw in the resolute rough and ready soldier before him a very man
he had been looking for to lead the assault on Stormy Point.
Wayne did not disappoint his commander's
expectations. He led his men up the rocky precipice over the
British parapets in the face of a deadly fire with the sweep of a
rising tornado. When near the top a bullet struck Wayne
on the head and knocked him down, but with a blasphemous oath on all
the British he commanded his men, who thought him fatally hurt, to
carry him into the fortress, where he met the English commandant,
paralyzed and dumfounded at the audacity and suddenness of the
attack and who surrendered without conditions. This daring and
successful expedition led by Wayne, was pronounced by Gen.
Charles Lee to be the most brilliant achievement of the war.
A Soldier and Leader
Wayne fought in
nearly all the principal battles of the Revolution and always with
distinction. If there was any desperate work to be done his
was the first name mentioned. His savage attack on
Cornwallis in Virginia, in which he inflicted heavy loss on the
British, doubtless saved Lafayette from serious disaster in that
campaign. Wayne was sent to Georgia and routed and drove from
that state a large force of Indians on their way to join the
British. The Georgia Legislature voted him their thanks, and
also gave him a large tract of land for his service. In this
campaign Wayne acquired some useful experience in Indian diplomacy
and warfare, which afterwards came in good play in dealing with his
Indian foes.
It should not, from these jottings of Wayne's early
career, be inferred that he was a reckless or unsafe commander.
There was neither lack of method nor of tactics in his mode of
warfare. He was a leader and shared all the dangers and
hardships of his men. He had good executive ability, unerring
judgment and an acuteness of perception amounting almost to
intuition. Shrewd and quick expedient, watchful, cautious and
energetic. Anthony Wayne was
A Dangerous Antagonist
Either in savage or civilized warfare. Such
was the man chosen to carry the stars and stripes - the banner of
Civilization to the Maumee wilderness and whose career we have
deemed worthy of more than a passing notice.
In his memory, there should be here, a bronze statue
the base of which should be the famous Turkey Foot Rock, which yet
marks the place of his last battle.
The President was delayed in getting the necessary
appropriations by Congress, but Wayne in the meantime went west to
Pittsburg, preferring to recruit his army from the border men, who
made better soldiers for an Indian campaign.
It will not be difficult to understand why there was at
first a reluctance on the part of men to enlist to fight the savages
after the disastrous termination of the
[Pg. 23]
two previous campaigns.
It seemed, like signing one's own death warrant to enroll to fight
Indians, the way things had been going. But Wayne's prestige
as a soldier, with his other characteristics so well suited to
western men of that time, soon won the day, and his army, which was
to be called The Legion, divided into four sub-divisions, soon begun
to assume fighting proportions.
Terms of Peace Rejected
In the meantime all
emigration north of the Ohio had ceased. The settlers already
there lived in, or close to block houses and even in this way were
in peril of their lives. The Government all this time had been
putting forth every effort to bring the tribes together in a grand
council and, if it were possible, to yet avert a general war.
Five different messengers had been sent among them on peace missions
and all save one had been murdered, and this one was unable to
effect any arrangement satisfactory to both sides. "The Ohio
river must be the Indian ultimatum.
Wayne, while awaiting the result of the
Government's peace efforts, was drilling and practicing his troops.
In the early part of October, 1793, he advanced northward from the
Ohio to a strong position in the enemy's country, where he
established Fort Greenville, now the county seat of Darke county.
It was already too late in the season to hope to bring
the campaign to a successful issue before winter, but the position
of his army was such that he could afford protection to the
settlements and at the same time keep his line of communications
open for supplies. Gen. Wayne, therefore, decided to
remain here until spring. About one thousand mounted men from
Kentucky who had joined him went home for the winter, but had formed
so good an opinion of his army and of Wayne's generalship,
that they promised to come back in the spring, which they did with
their numbers increased to 1,6000 troops.
Burying St. Clair's Dead
After establishing his men
securely in winter quarters Wayne sent a detachment of troops to the
place of St. Clair's defeat, twenty-three miles in advance of his
army, where he established another strong outpost called Fort
Recovery. These troops had first to perform the melancholy
duty of gathering up the bleaching skeletons of St. Clair's illfated
men. No less than six hundred skulls were picked up and buried.
It was the wish of the President that Wayne
should establish and garrison a chain of military posts from the
Ohio to the stronghold of the Indians at the Maumee, so as to more
effectually check all hostile expeditions and to make the Indians
understand that the Government had power at hand and could summarily
punish its enemies and also protect its friends.
The Indians had by this time become pretty well
satisfied that the Government meant to deal vigorously with them and
exerted themselves correspondingly.
Indian Tribes Uniting
Under the advice of Brandt, Blue Jacket,
Roundhead, Little Turtle and other leading
chieftains, influenced by British and Canadian emissaries, who
promised them aid to drive back the hated Americans, the tribes were
to all unite and make common cause against the advancing enemy.
Runners were sent to distant tribes to urge them
to hurry forward their warriors for the impending struggle.
The medicine men were invoked to aid by all the infernal arts of
which superstition was master, to stir up the embers of hatred
against the people of the thirteen (now increased to fifteen) tires,
by addition of Vermont and Kentucky.
Wayne, with his knowledge of Indian
[Pg. 24]
character, from the start had serious doubts of the Government's
ability to effect any satisfactory treaty.
For this reason he had been restive at the restraint
placed upon his movements, which practically delayed him almost a
year. Still it is to the credit of the Government and humanity that
nothing was left undone that could tend to avert the bloody argument
of the sword.
Wayne's theory of handling savages was a good deal like
the famous Methodist preacher, Peter Cartright, said
about his methods of converting the rough sinners in the west at an
early day. "Shake them over hell until they can smell brimstone, and
then they are willing to accept salvation."—C. W. E.
EARLY HISTORY
-----
Pertaining to Wood County - Wayne's Victory and Its Results -
The Several Treaties That Followed Securing This Wide Domain
-----
IN giving the story of Wood
county the reader is asked at the outset, to kindly bear in mind,
that for a period of nearly one hundred and fifty years after the
coming of the first whites, Wood county had neither name nor place
on the Atlas of America. To make the story reasonably intelligible
to the student of her history, some account of the events of that
antecedent period becomes necessary. This will be given with due
regard to avoiding too many tedious details.
The county as since constituted was, for more than one
hundred years, a very insignificant part of a vast extent of
territory under the nominal ownership of France. That ownership
ceased in the year 1763 and passed to the English, who, after
retaining possession twenty years, surrendered in 1783, all their
lands south of Canada to the United States. That part of our
history, like the unknown ages before the coming of the whites, is a
blank. There are no written lines on its pages. There was nothing to
write. The French and English left behind scarcely a visible trace
of civilization in the Maumee country.
Adventurous explorers and fur traders had visited it,
occasionally, or passed through on their journeys to distant points
: that was all. The county remained in its primeval condition just
as the forces of nature had left it since the dawn of creation. It
was but a vast game preserve for vagrant bands of Indian hunters.
Indeed this condition of things continued during the first decade of
ownership by the United States, when occurrences remote from here
brought about a gradual change.
The Indian tribes occupying the stretch of unbroken
wilderness between the Maumee and Ohio rivers began a relentless,
murderous warfare on the infant American settlements then springing
up on the north side of the Ohio. This warfare, in which the tribes
had the counsel and advice of mercenary British agents and traders
at Detroit, was waged for the purpose of exterminating the whites or
driving them to the south side of the Ohio. That was the boundary
line the Indians had set, for the Americans. Treaties had been
made for the purchase of the territory, but the claims of the tribes
were so conflicting that one tribe would refuse to sanction or
respect the agreements of another and the deadly strife continued.
So numerous and warlike were the Indians that defeat or disaster had
attended nearly every war
[Pg. 25]
expedition the Americans had sent against them. In the
language of one of the Peace Commissioners sent to them by the
Government, "The savages had become insolent with triumph."
The settlers had fled to the forts and blockhouses for safety and it
was evident that the country would have to be abandoned or the
Government would have to adopt vigorous measures to break the power
of the tribes, by inflicting severe chastisement upon them.
In this emergency President Washington,
then at the head of the Government, sent out to the Ohio an old
military associate of his in the Revolution, Gen. Anthony
Wayne a man of known fighting qualifications and by his
habits, well suited to the rough and ready men on the frontier.
Wayne made a success of the work he was chosen for. From the moment
lie organized his army and led it into the wilderness the
panic-stricken settlers felt hope and confidence.
The Indians fell back slowly in the direction of the
Maumee, watching for an opportunity to ambush or surprise the
Americans as they had successfully done in two previous campaigns.
Several savage assaults were made during the advance, but the
warriors, who fought like Spartans, were so roughly handled by
Wayne's soldiers that they became more cautious. All devices
and stratagems of savage warfare failed them. In the language of
their ablest chieftain, Little Turtle, they had met a white
chief whose eyes were never closed : to whom the night and the day
were alike. The more sagacious of the chiefs saw plainly that they
were over-matched at last. With a sort of crude
statesmanship that one cannot but admire in them, they at once cast
aside all old tribal differences for the time being, sent runners to
distant tribes and bands for help and put forth every effort to
rally a force powerful enough to destroy the new invader.
At that time the Maumee was the head of Lake Erie, in fact the whole
country to Detroit was the seat of a dense Indian population.
A good descriptive writer of that time says:
"The Maumee River was a delightful home and a secure retreat for our
savage enemies. Its banks were studded with their villages, its rich
bottom lands were covered with their corn, while their light canoes
glided over a beautiful current, which was at once a convenient
highway and an exhaustless reservoir of food. Forest, stream and
prairie produced, spontaneously and in superabundance, game, fish,
fruits, nuts —all things necessary to supply their simple wants.
Here their wise men, without fear of molestation, gravely convened
about their council fires, and deliberated on the means of checking
and rolling back the tide of white immigration— a tide which they
dimly foresaw would ultimately sweep their race from the face of the
earth. From here their young warriors crept forth, and stealthily
approaching the homes of their natural enemies, the palefaces,
spread ruin and desolation far and wide. Here their booty and savage
trophies were exhibited with the exultations and boasts of the
returned 'braves.' Behind an impenetrable swamp, their women,
children and property were safe during the absence of their men.
Exempt from attack or pursuit, the savage here enjoyed perfect
freedom, and lived in accordance with his rude instincts and the
habits and customs of his tribe. Amid the scenes of his
childhood, in the presence of his ancestors' graves, the red
warrior, with his squaw and pappoose, surrounded by all the
essentials to the enjoyment of his simple wants, here lived out the
character which nature had given him. In war, this
valley was his base line of attack, his source of supplies, and his
secure refuge: in peace, his home."
When Wayne in the progress of his march arrived at the
Maumee where De
[Pg. 26]
fiance is now, to his surprise he found the country had been
abandoned by the enemy, but in his farther advance down the river on
the northwesterly bank and when about two miles below the present
town of Waterville, he found himself in the immediate presence of
the confederated tribes of the northwest who had assembled their
warriors in a well chosen position to dispute his further advance.
The place chosen, some time previously, had been visited by a
tornado that had prostrated nearly every tree in that forest and
these trees lay as they fell in indescribable confusion. That battle
ground has thus taken the name of "Fallen Timber/' although some
historians designate it. as "The Battle of the Maumee," and others
refer to it as "Wayne's Battle."
In the language of the missionary, Rev. James B.
Finley, "It was the last united effort of Barbarism to check the
swelling overflow of Civilization." This was on the '20th of
August, 1794. It should be stated here also as showing the
humane spirit of Washington toward these tribes, that while Gen.
Wayne came with the sword of an Ajax in one hand, be carried
the olive branch of peace in the other. Four days before the battle
Wayne sent a peace message to the tribes, hut it was treated
with contempt. Wayne, after making the necessary
disposition of his force, promptly assailed them, lie swept
everything before him. Such of the warriors as escaped the deadly
bullets of the Americans sought safety in flight. Some fled to the
British fort "Miami" below where Maumee now stands.
Right here occurred a thing which had much to do in
subsequent negotiations between the Americans and Indians. The
latter had no doubt been furnished before the battle with arms and
ammunition by the English. They had also been encouraged by the
English, whether from official sources or not is not so clear, that
in ease they met with defeat they would receive shelter at the fort.
The English commandant knew that the fort was there in violation of
treaty rights with the Americans. It was on American soil. He knew
too. that should he give shelter to Wayne's armed enemies it would
be a justifiable cause for the Americans to storm the fort. At all
events he prudently kept his gates closed and left the Indians to
their fate. For this act of perfidy on the part of their friends,
the English, the Indians justly made loud complaint and in their
treaty diplomacy with the tribes that followed the Americans made
good use of if.
Gen. Wayne destroyed all the cornfields and Indian
villages on both sides of the river, and everything else that could
shelter or subsist an Indian that he could lay hands on far and near
from the Maumee Bay to Fort Wayne and beyond, built and garrisoned
Forts Wayne and Defiance and then marched back to Fort Greenville
(now the site of the county seat of Darke county) and went into
winter quarters, thus giving the tribes until spring to decide as to
their future course; whether it should be for peace or for more war.
So horrible a visitation and such condign chastisement
had never befell them before. They had met a white chieftain who
defied all their arts of warfare and whipped them on their own
chosen field and whose genius for destruction surpassed the Evil
Spirit itself. The swampy fastnesses and the forest depths of
the Maumee country proved no safe retreat for the red man. That ark
of safety had been broken. Their pretended friends, the king's
soldiers, had crept into their fort like cowards and left the
Indians to escape the best way they could. There was a logic
in all these things which the savage warriors could easily
comprehend. They saw the hopelessness of further contest.
In the following spring the leading chiefs of the
twelve principal tribes came
[Pg. 27]
in and declared for peace and during all the early part of summer
these chiefs waged a diplomatic war with Gen. Wayne in
defense of, and to secure all their rights which would have done
credit to the statesmanship of enlightened people. They held
to every vital point affecting their interests with the same
desperate tenacity with which they had fought the last battle of
Fallen Timber. The treaty known ever since as the Greenville
treaty, when signed, gave to the United States about three-fourths
of the land included within the present boundaries of Ohio in the
south and eastern part.
The Greenville treaty line, which became important in
subsequent surveys, and which is indicated on most Ohio maps, will
be pretty correctly indicated by drawing a line from Cleveland
southward to the northeast corner of Holmes county, thence west to
the northwest corner of Darke county, thence south to the Ohio, at
the mouth of the Kentucky river.
For this they were to receive annuities and other
considerations. On the part of the United States, it relinquished
all lands north and west of the Greenville treaty line, except
sixteen blocks located in various places and roads thereto, known as
United States Reserve lands. The Government also held a protectorate
right over the relinquished territory, that is, it agreed to protect
the Indians and they agreed not to sell their territory to anyone
else. Among these reservations were the. present sites of Fremont,
Fort Wayne, Chicago, Detroit, Mackinaw, etc.
One among the largest of these blocks, or Reserves, and
the one in which we are more particularly interested, in this
narration, was one of twelve miles square at the foot of the rapids
of the Miami of the Lake (Maumee). This Reserve includes both sides
of the Maumee from the heart of the present city of Toledo to a
point nearly three miles above where Waterville now is. Its
southeast corner is the southeast corner of Perrysburg township,
thence north, passing through the city of Toledo, twelve miles, west
twelve miles, thence south twelve miles (the southwest corner is
near the canal opposite the middle of Station island), thence east
to place of beginning. The south line passes a little north of
Hull Prairie, and crosses Station island east of the center.
As Wood and Lucas counties have since been constructed,
making the Maumee the boundary, to the east limits of the Reserve,
Wood county has about two-fifths of this 92,160 acres and Lucas
three-fifths. This was the first land in what is now Wood county to
which the United States had a clear title and here began her
settlements and civilization.
Why should we not award Mad Anthony and
his hardy soldiers first honors as pioneers with the sword and
cannon preceding the plow and ax? At least they may have the honor
of being first here in "proceedings to quiet title." How those
beleaguered people, penned up in forts, rejoiced when they heard of
Wayne's decisive victory on the Maumee, and when, a year later, news
of his treaty of peace reached them and they knew they could come
forth in safety, how their shouts went up in gladness. An
enthusiastic chronicler of that period says:
"Peace opened the garrisons, and the valleys of every
river resounded with the woodman's ax. Never since the golden age of
the poet did the siren song of peace reach so many ears or gladden
so many hearts."
In the following year, 1796, a treaty was ratified
between England and the United States under which all English troops
were withdrawn to the Canada side of the boundary, thus removing
another cause of dissension and distrust and giving Americans
possession of Detroit. In the same year a county of colossal
dimensions was organized, em
[Pg. 28]
bracing what is since Northeastern Indiana, Northwestern Ohio and
the lower Peninsula of Michigan, and named Wayne, in donor of
Mad Anthony, with Detroit as the county seat. If
any white man had lived where Wood county is now and beer in need of
a marriage license, or tax receipt or wished to attend court, his
county seal would have boon Detroit. The latter place had been
the great focus point in the lucrative fur trade, which the French,
and later on the English, had enjoyed for many years.
The Maumee Rapids, which was considered at the bend of
navigation, was, next to Detroit at that time, regarded as the most
advantageous place on the lakes. Bright visions of the great city
yet to spring up bore bad. oven then, flitted across the brain of
many an enthusiastic prophet. Wayne's men bad spread marvelous
stories of the beauty and fertility of the Maumee country and of the
enormous catfish and muscalunge in the rivers, but always concluded
their encomiums with an "if" it was not for the ague. But so
lone; as the country remained so largely in possession of the
Indians it was evident that its advancement would be retarded.
In the meantime a large per cent of the immigration was
locating north of the Ohio. The west was making history.
Kentucky had been admitted into the Union and in 1803 Ohio, with a
population of upwards of 72,000, was admitted, with substantially
her present boundary line is. This now relation at once
inspired the people of Ohio with a desire to get the Indian title
extinguished in their northwestern border.
In 1805 Michigan territory was organized and William
Hull appointed Governor, and in the same year a treaty was
held at Fort Industry (now Toledo), at which the United States
purchased a strip of country along the south shore of Lake Erie
about fifty miles wide, extending from the Cuyahoga river west to a
point on the Lake between Sandusky Bay and the mouth of the Portage
river, corresponding with the present west line of Huron and Erie
counties, and south to the list parallel and corresponding with the
present south line of Medina, Portage, Summit and Huron counties.
This purchase formed the western part of what has since been known
as the Western or Connecticut Reserve.
This important treaty, freeing as it did. that fine
body of land covering nearly the entire Ohio front on Lake Erie,
gave a new impetus to immigration from New England and New York to
which the new territory was easy of access up the Lake.
In 1807 another treaty was made at Detroit by which the
United States acquired that block of land lying between the Maumee
river and the Canada border bounded east by the Lake and west by a
line running due north from Fort Defiance.
In the year following, 1808. another treaty was made
which was the beginning of what has since been one of the most
important highways in the state, the Maumee and Western Reserve
Road. The tribes ceded rights of way for a road 120 feet wide
from the foot of the rapids to the western line of the Connecticut
Reserve (east line of Sandusky county) together with a strip of land
one mile wide on each side of the road grant given to aid in its
construction. Thus gradually the agencies of advancing civilization
are opening the way ahead.
By this time Peter Navarre and a number of other French
families from Detroit, had located on the Bay and later John
Anderson, a Scotch fur trader, well known among the Indians,
had located a trading post at Fort Miami. Peter Manor, an
adopted son of the Indian Chief Tondoganie, also
located at the foot of the Rapids in 1808.
There was at this time a growing interest in this part
of the Maumee coun
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