CHAPTER III.

INDIAN OCCUPATION OF OHIO IN 1750.

THIS chapter will be devoted to a brief sketch of the Indian tribes, who, during the interval between the inroads of the Iroquois (vacating forcibly the region between the Ohio and Lake Erie) and the earliest settlement by Europeans in 1750, gradually occupied the country. The reader may expect some unavoidable repetition, especially in a sketch of the Wyandots, for the materials of which we are greatly indebted to the ethnological and historical labors of Albert Gallatin.1

Four tribes were prominent within the limits of Ohio a century since the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawanese and

Ottawas.

1. THE WYANDOTS OR HURONS.-When Champlain arrived in Canada, the Wyandots were the head and principal support of the Algonquin tribes against the Five Nations. In our first chapter we have given their geographical position, and their relations with the Neutral Nation, or Attiouandarons, north, and the Eries and Andastes or Guandastogues (Guyandots,) south of Lake Erie. The extent of their influence and of the consideration in which they were held, may be found in the fact, that even the Delawares, who claimed to be the elder branch of the Lenape Nation, and

1) Gallatin's Synopsis of the Indian Tribes within the United States, east of the Rocky Mountains, and in the British and Russian Possessions of North America; in Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society, II, 68, 72.

called themselves the grandfathers of their kindred tribes, recognized the superiority of the Wyandots, whom to this day they call their uncles. And though reduced to a very small number, the right of the Wyandots, derived either from ancient sovereignty, or from the incorporation of the remnants of the three extinct tribes, to the country between Lake Erie and the Ohio, from the Alleghany to the Great Miami, has never been disputed by any other than the Five Nations.

Their real name Yendots, was well known to the French, who gave them the nickname of Hurons. They were called Quatoghee by the Five Nations, and one of their tribes Dionondadies or Tuinontatek. They were visited in 1615 by Champlain, and in 1624 by Father Sigard; and the Jesuits, who subsequently established missions among them, have given, in the "Relations of New France," some account of their language, and ample information of their means of subsistence, manners and religious superstitions. They had, probably on account of their wars with the Five Nations, concentrated their settlements in thirty-one villages, not extending more altogether than twenty leagues either way, and situated along or in the vicinity of Lake Huron, about one hundred miles southwardly of the mouth of the French River. They consisted of five confederated tribes, viz: the Ataronch-ronons, four villages; the Attiquenongnahai, three villages; the Attignaouentan or "Nation de l'Ours," twelve villages; the Ahrendah-ronons, the most northeastern tribe, and with which Champlain resided, three villages; and the Tionontate, or "Nation of the Petun," the most southwesterly, which formerly had been at war with the other tribes, and had entered the confederation recently, nine villages.

2) Father Lallemand, 1640; Relations, &c.

The small-pox carried off about twelve hundred souls in the year 1639. 1639. The Missionaries, principally with a view of baptizing dying children, visited at that time every village, and, with few exceptions, every cabin; and embraced the opportunity of making a complete enumeration of the whole nation. They give the general result in round numbers, seven hundred cabins, and two thousand families, which they estimate at twelve, but which could not have exceeded ten thousand souls. They were not only more warlike, but, in every respect, more advanced in civilization than the Northern Algonquins, particularly in agriculture, to which they appear, probably from their concentrated situation, to have been obliged to attend more extensively than any other Northern Indian nation. The Missionaries had at first great hardships to encounter, and found them less tractable than the Algonquins. But, whether owing to the superior talents of Father Brebeuf and his associates, or to the national character, they made ultimately more progress in converting the Hurons, and have left a more permanent impression of their labors in the remnant of that tribe, than appears to have been done by them, in any other nation without the boundaries of the French settlements.

The only communication of the Hurons, with the infant colony of Canada, was by the river Ottawa, of a difficult navigation, interrupted by portages. The Five Nations directed their attacks to that quarter, cut off the several trading parties, which were in the habit of descending and ascending the river once a year, and intercepted the communication so effectually, that, about the year 1646, the Missionaries on Lake Huron were three years without receiving any supplies from Quebec. The Hurons, who had lost several hundred warriors in those engagements, became dispirited

and careless. They indeed abandoned the smaller villages and fortified the larger. This only accelerated their ruin. In the year 1649, the Five Nations invaded the country with all their forces, attacked and carried the most considerable of those places of refuge, and massacred all the inhabitants. The destruction was completed in the course of the ensuing year. A part of the Hurons fled down the Ottawa River and sought an asylum in Canada, where they were pursued by their implacable enemies even under the walls of Quebec. The greater part of the Ahrendas and several detached bands surrendered, and were incorporated into the Five Nations. The remnant of the Tionontates took refuge among the Chippewas of Lake Superior. Others were dispersed towards Michillimacinac, or in some more remote quarters. This event was immediately followed by the dispersion of the Algonquin nations of the Ottawa River.

In 1671, the Tionontates, after an unsuccessful war with the Sioux, left Lake Superior for Michillimacinac, where they rallied around them the dispersed remnants of the other tribes of their nation, and probably of the Andastes and other kindred tribes, which had been likewise nearly exterminated by the Five Nations. Some years later they removed to Detroit, in the vicinity of their ancient seats. And, though reduced to two villages, they resumed their ascendancy over the Algonquin tribes, and acted a conspicuous part with great sagacity in the ensuing conflicts between the French and the Five Nations. Charlevoix, in 1721, writes, that they were still the soul of the councils of all the Western Indians. They claimed the sovereignty over the country between Lake Erie and the Ohio River, which was exercised by frequent grants and cessions hereafter to be mentioned. Col. John Johnston, of Piqua, the well known Indian

agent, says that their actual settlements extended from Detroit along the south shore of Lake Erie, as far east as Sandusky Bay.

2. THE DELAWARES.-This interesting tribe has been awarded a higher rank in the page of Cooper, the American novelist, and in the Memoirs of the Moravian Missionaries, than Indian tradition seems to warrant. John Heckewelder, as their annalist, and David Zeisberger, as their philologist, have contributed largely to this favorable impression. The former has preserved a Delaware tradition, that many hundred years ago, the Lenni Lenape resided in the western. part of the American continent; thence by a slow emigration, they at length reached the Alleghany River, so called from a nation of giants, the Allegewi, against whom the Delawares and Iroquois (the latter also emigrants from the westward) carried on successful war; and, still proceeding eastward, settled on the Delaware, Hudson, Susquehannah and Potomac rivers, making the Delaware the center of their possessions. The Delawares, thus seated on the Atlantic, divided themselves into three tribes, distinguished by the names of the Turtle, the Turkey and the Wolf; or the Unamis, Unalachtgo and Minsi. The latter, also called Mon seys or Muncies, were considered the most warlike and active branch of the Lenape. We shall see hereafter that the latter designation was revived, with important consequences, in Ohio.

Heckewelder seeks unsuccessfully to explain the subjection of the Delawares to the Five Nations, whom they called Mengwe, as a stratagem by the latter; but there is no doubt that a tribe who, more readily than any other, accepted Christianity, found themselves unable to cope with their more warlike neighbors on the war path.3

3) Loskiel's History of the Moravian Missions in North America; Part 1, 130. Heckewelder's History Indian Nations