HISTORY OF OHIO.

CHAPTER I.

THE FATE OF THE ANCIENT ERIES.

A PERIOD of two centuries prior to 1850, comprises our knowledge of that region of the American Continent, which is bounded by Lake Erie on the north, and the Ohio River on the south; and even within that brief segment of time, many statements rest upon vague tradition.

An attempt to ascend beyond 1650, would involve a profitless discussion of the probable origin of the Indian race. We shall decline the inquiry, whether the lost tribes of Israel yet linger in the aborigines of the American woods; or whether the latter are an off-shoot from the Tartars of Asia; or, abandoning the unitary theory of the race, whether the Creator has not given to the continent of America its peculiar inhabitants. These are ethnological problems, which are aside from the purpose of the present volume.

The Ohio of 1650 we assume to have been a forest wilderness, principally occupied by a tribe of Indians, called the ERIES, whose villages skirted the shores of the lake so designated.

There is some conflict of opinion, whether the Eries were not confined to the eastern shore of the lake, but the prepon

derance of authority is in favor of their occupation of the

southern shore. Dewitt Clinton, in his celebrated Historical Discourse upon the Indians of North America, speaks of "the nation of the Eries or Erigas on the south side of Lake Erie." Louis Hennepin, a Franciscan friar, whose travels in New France were published in 1698, mentions the return of the Iroquois to their villages, bringing Erie Indians as captives "from beyond the lake." Brant, the distinguished Mohawk chief, in a letter to Timothy Pickering, dated Nov. 20, 1794, alludes to the Eries as "a powerful nation formerly living southward of Buffalo creek." Charlevoix, the historian of New France, may be cited as an authority that the nation of Eries lived where the State of Ohio now is. The recent discovery of ancient earthworks, and two inscriptions in the pictographic character, on Cunningham's Island (now Kelley's Island, a township of Erie county, Ohio), are supposed by Schoolcraft to indicate that the archipelago of islands in the western part of Lake Erie, was one of the strongholds of the tribe.1

1) Kelley's Island has an area of about 3000 acres, and is situated ten miles north of the mouth of Sandusky Bay. It consists of a basis of horizontal limestone, of the species common to Lake Erie, rising about fifteen feet above the water level. The surface, where it is exposed, discloses the polish created by former diluvial or glacial action- -a trait which is so remarkable on the rocks of the adjoining shores of Sandusky. This is covered with a fertile limestone soil, and at the earliest period, all, except the old fields, bore a heavy growth of hard wood timber.

On the south shore of the Island are two crescent-shaped embankments, apparently intended to inclose and defend villages; (a third circumvallation is situated inland.) One has a front of 400 feet, and the other of 614 feet, on the rocky and precipitous margin of the lake. Within these enclosures have been found stone axes, pipes, perforators, bone fish hooks, net sinkers, and fragments of human bones. In the vicinity is a rock, 32 by 21 feet on the surface, in which a great variety of figures and devices are deeply sunk. The summit of the rock is elevated eleven feet above the water. "It is by far the most extensive and well-sculptured, and well preserved inscription of the antiquarian period, ever found in America. Being on an islet sepa

It is generally admitted that the Eries were a member of the Iroquois family, as distinguished from the Algonquin tribes. In 1650, the Iroquois, as the confederated Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas were called by the French, occupied what is now New York and Northern Pennsylvania; the Hurons or Wyandots, and a kindred Neutral Nation, held the peninsula between Lakes Huron, Erie and Ontario; the Eries were seated on the southern shore of Lake Erie; while the Andastes possessed the valleys of the Alleghany or Upper Ohio River,- but all were generically Iroquois, speaking dialects of the same lingual stock. The Western tribes were singly more powerful than either of the New York tribes, except perhaps the Senecas; but the Five Nations (afterwards increased to Six by the accession of the Tuscaroras) had formed their celebrated alliance at least as early as 1605, and, by the strength of union, become the terror of their less sagacious neighbors.

Before proceeding with our immediate topic-the fortunes of the Eries, Hurons and Andastes-we will briefly classify the other Indian tribes, as they were found by the first discoverers of the continent.

rated from the shore, with precipitous sides, it has remained undiscovered till within late years. It is in the pictographic character of the natives. Its leading symbols are readily interpreted. The human figures, the pipes, smoking groups, the presents and other figures, denote tribes, negotiations, crimes, turmoils, which tell a story of thrilling interest, in which the white man or European plays a part. There are many subordinate figures which require study. There are some in which the effects of atmospheric and lake action have destroyed the connection, and others of an anomalous character. The whole inscription is manifestly connected with the occupation of the basin of the lake by the Eries of the coming of the Wyandots of the final triumph of the Iroquois, and the flight of the people who have left their name to the lake."-History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian tribes of the United States: by H. R. Schoolcraft, LL.D. Illustrated by S. Eastman, U. S. A. Part second, 86-7.

Except the Iroquois, antiquarians describe all other northern tribes as Algonquin, which term, though generic, was the special designation of a nation living on the St. Lawrence River, where also was the seat of the Utawawas or Ottowas. The leading tribe of the Algonquins, however, were the Lenno Lenapees or Delawares, who were found by the first colonists about the waters of the Delaware and its tributary streams, within the present limits of New Jersey and Eastern Pennsylvania. Their traditions declare them to be the parent stem whence other Algonquin tribes have sprung-a claim recognized by the latter, who accord to the ancient Lenapees the title of Grandfather. The Lenapees, on their part, call the other Algonquin tribes Children, Grandchildren, Nephews, or Younger Brothers; but they confess the superiority of the Wyandots and the Five Nations by yielding them the title of Uncles, while they, in return, call the Lenapees Nephews, or more frequently Cousins.2

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Except the detached nation of the Tuscaroras, and a few smaller tribes adhering to them," to quote from the accomplished historian of Pontiac's Conspiracy, "the Iroquois family were confined to the region south of the Lakes Erie and Ontario, and the peninsula east of Lake Huron. They formed, as it were, an island in the vast expanse of Algonquin population, extending from Hudson's Bay on the north to the Carolinas on the south; from the Atlantic on the east to the Mississippi and Lake Winnipeg on the west. They were Algonquins who greeted Jacques Cartier as his ships ascended the St. Lawrence. The first British colonists found savages of the same race hunting and fishing along the coasts and inlets of Virginia; and it was the daughter of an Algonquin chief who interceded with her father for the life of the

2) Parkman's Conspiracy of Pontiac, 26.

adventurous Englishman. They were Algonquins who, under Sassacus the Pequot and Phillip of Mount Hope, waged deadly war against the Puritans of New England; who dwelt at Penacook under the rule of the great magician Passaconaway, and trembled before the evil spirits of the Crystal Hills; and who sang Aves and told their beads in the forest chapel of Father Rasles by the banks of the Kennebec. They were Algonquins who, under the great tree at Kensington, made the covenant of peace with William Penn; and when the French Jesuits and fur traders explored the Wabash and the Ohio, they found their valleys tenanted by the same farextended race. At the present day, the traveler, perchance, may find them pitching their bark lodges along the beach at Mackinaw, spearing fish among the boiling rapids of St. Marys, or skimming the waves of Lake Superior in their birch canoes."

Bancroft, in a map of aboriginal America, concurs with Parkman, but limits the Algonquins to the thirty-sixth degree of north latitude, and gives four-fifths of the country south of that parallel to the Mobilian race. The other southern races were the Cherokees, who were mountaineers, and occupied the upper valley of the Tennessee River, as far west as Muscle Shoals, and the highlands of Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, the Switzerland of the south; the Uchees and Catawbas, who occupied small areas adjacent to the Cherokee country on the south and east; and the Natchez, residing in scarcely more than four or five villages, of which the largest was near the site of the city thus called. Bancroft has a general classification of Dacotah for the numerous tribes west of the Mississippi, and within the valleys of the Arkansas and the Missouri. These distinctions have little other foundation than language, of which eight radically different