MEMOIR OF THE PUTNAM FAMILY
Part II, Chapter I - FIRST SETTLEMENT IN OHIO
Whether or not old Father Time moved with any greater swiftness in these latter days than he did in the centuries that are gone, events seem to thicken and more is accomplished.This great state of Ohio, which ranks as third in the grand Republic, a little than a century ago was a wilderness, teeming, to be sure, with riches, but had for inhabitants only the wild Indians, who did not know how to develop the vast resources wrapped up in a rich soil, wonderful forests hidden treasures of coal and iron, and oil to create light in dwellings and cause the busy wheels of machinery to run smoothly.
In the middle of the eighteenth century the Delaware Indians occupied nearly all of the eastern half of what is now the state of Ohio. The Chippewas were gathered around the southern shore of Lake Erie. The Ottawas occupied the valleys of the Maumee and Sandusky. The Shawanees were in the Scioto valley. The Miamis dwelt by the side of the rivers that bear their name. A part of the Wyandots, who the French called Mingoes, with the half-king had settled at the mouth of the Sandusky and the remainder at Detroit.
The Piquas were a branch of the Shawanees.These tribes were not, however, strictly confined to the territories mentioned. The Shawanees had a village called Logstown, seventeen miles below Pittsburgh, in the district of the Delawares. This last mentioned tribe had been driven from the Delaware to the Susquehanna, and from thence to the Allegheny, and again from there still further west until at last they settled down on the generous gift of the Wyandots.The boundary of this tract began at the Beaver river and extended to the Cuyahoga, and along Lake Erie to the Sandusky, up the Sandusky to the Hocking, down the Hocking to the Ohio.
The name, Delaware, is not Indian but came from the name of an early governor of Virginia, Lord De la War.Their own name for their tribe was Lenni Lenape, Indian for the Genesis term—man. By all the tribes mentioned, the Delawares seem to have been the most susceptible of civilization and the readiest to accept the Christian religion. It was among them that the self-sacrificing Moravians labored so successfully, and the victims who were the subjects of that saddest of sad stories, the massacre of the Christian Indians in Ohio, belonged to this tribe.
When the Revolutionary War began, it had been computed that the Indians of New York, Ohio and the lakes, would muster not less than ten thousand warriors. During the struggle between the northern country and the colonies, there were but few Indians that took sides with the colonies. The Iroquois, who had their principal seat in New York, were divided. The majority adhered to the British, while the Oneidas and Tuscarawas were induced to remain neutral, mainly through the influence of the missionary, Samuel Kirkland. In like manner the heroic and indefatigable Zeisberger for some time kept the Delawares from joining the ranks of the enemy. Thus on the western continent a zealous missionary held in check the Red men and kept them from the pillage and murder of the inhabitants, while the same important service was done in a similar way farther to the eastward.
This two-fold influence prevented a general rising of the Indians in the early part of the war, when the condition of things was most critical. It is true that later nearly all the Delawares went over to the British, but it was after the defeat of Burgoyne and the alliance made with France, when the Americans were better able to manage them. The capital of the Delawares and seat of their grand council was at the place where Newcomers-town is now situated. It was a large and flourishing Indian town containing one hundred houses, mostly built of logs.
The Iroquois in six nations held nominal sway over all these tribes, as well as many others still further west, claiming to own the country and the allegiance of the inhabitants by right of conquest.
When preparations were made for the company of the “Ohio country,” there were but few settlements of the Indians found along the Ohio river. It was too easy for the powerful Iroquois to glide down its smooth current and attack their victims when unaware. There were no signs to announce their coming, and no tracks by which it could be ascertained whither they were going. The Delawares and other tribes had, therefore, retreated from the river and only came into the neighborhood thereof when in quest of game.