About 1740-50, a party of Delawares, who had been disturbed in Pennsylvania by European emigration, determined to remove west of the Alleghany Mountains, and obtained from their ancient allies and uncles, the Wyandots, the grant of a derelict tract of land lying principally on the Muskingum. Here they flourished and became a very powerful tribe. From 1765 to 1795, they were at the height of their influence, but the treaty of Greenville, and the disasters sustained by the Delawares in Wayne's campaign, were a death blow to their ascendancy.

3. THE SHAWANESE.-The conflicting testimony, relative to these Bedouins of the American wilderness, is accurately stated by Gallatin. He conjectures that the "Shawnoes," as he writes the word, separated at an early date from the other Lenape tribes, and established themselves south of the Ohio, in what is now the State of Kentucky; that having been driven away from that Territory, probably by the Chickasaws and Cherokees, some portion found their way, during the first half of the seventeenth century, as far east as the country of the Susquehannocks, a kindred Lenape tribe; that the main body of the nation, invited by the Miamis and the Andastes, crossed the Ohio, occupied the country on and adjacent to the Scioto, and joined in the war against the Five Nations; and that, after their final defeat, and that of their allies, in the year 1672, they were again dispersed in several directions. A considerable portion made about that time a forcible settlement on the head waters of the rivers of Carolina; and these, after having been driven away by the Catawbas, found, as others had already done, an asylum in different parts of the Creek country. Another portion joined their brethren in Pennsylvania; and some may

4) Gallatin's Synopsis, 65. Drake's Life of Tecumseh, 10.

have remained in the vicinity of the Scioto and Sandusky. Those in Pennsylvania, who seem to have been the most considerable part of the nation, were not entirely subjugated and reduced to the humiliating state of women by the Six Nations. But they held their lands on the Susquehannah only as tenants at will, and were always obliged to acknowledge a kind of sovereignty or superiority in their landlords. They appear to have been more early and unanimous than the Delawares in their determination to return to the country north of the Ohio. This they effected under the auspices of the Wyandots, and on the invitation of the French, during the years 1740-55. They occupied there the Scioto country, extending to Sandusky, and westwardly towards the Great Miami, and they have also left there the names of two of their tribes, to wit: Chillicothe and Piqua. Those who were settled among the Creeks joined them; and the nation was once more reunited. Mr. Johnston, the Indian agent, says that this southern party lived on the Sawanee River, which empties into the Gulf of Mexico, and is supposed to derive its name from them; and that they returned thence, about the year 1755, to the vicinity of Sandusky, under the conduct of a chief called Black Hoof. It has been reported that Tecumseh and his brother, the Prophet, were sons of a Creek woman married during that migration to a Shawnoe.

During the forty following years, the Shawanese were in an almost perpetual state of war with America, either as British colonies or as independent States. They were among the most active allies of the French during the seven years' war; and, after the conquest of Canada, continued, in concert with the Delawares, hostilities which were only terminated after the successful campaign of General Bouquet. The first permanent settlements of the Americans beyond

the Alleghany mountains, in the vicinity of the Ohio, were commenced in the year 1769, and were soon followed by a war with the Shawanese, which ended in 1774, after they had been repulsed in a severe engagement at the mouth of the Kanhawa, and the Virginians had penetrated into their country. They took a most active part against America, both during the war of Independence, and in the Indian war which followed, and which was terminated in 1795 at Greenville. They lost, by that treaty, nearly the whole territory which they held from the Wyandots; and a part of them, under the guidance of Tecumseh, again joined the British standard during the war of 1812.

4. OTTAWAS.-The name of this tribe was either derived from, or communicated to the Canadian River, on whose banks they lived until driven westward by the Five Nations, where they took refuge among the Pottawatamies and Ojibwas. The western shore of Lake Huron, and the northern portion of the Michigan peninsula, was the asylum of the fugitive Ottawas. The tribe has been distinguished in the person of Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas, whose conspiracy against the British garrisons in 1763, was a master stroke of Indian sagacity, ranking its instigator with Phillip and Tecumseh. The honor of his birth has been claimed by other tribes, and his mother was said to be an Ojibwa woman, but he was doubtless born among the Ottawas. He obtained a controlling influence over the Ojibwas and Pottawatamies, and made their confederacy with the Ottawas the basis of his combination against the English. But we must not anticipate. We have mentioned him in these terms, because the practice. of antiquarian writers is to depreciate the Ottawas, and the name of the great Ottawa chief is their best vindication.

It has been remarked that, among the Ottawas alone, the

heavenly bodies were an object of veneration-the Sun ranking as their Supreme Deity. This tribe, whose mythology was more complicated than usual with the Indians, were accustomed to keep a regular festival to celebrate the beneficence of the Sun; on which occasion the luminary was told that this service was in return for the good hunting he had procured for his people, and as an encouragement to persevere in his friendly cares. They were also observed to erect an idol in the middle of their town, and sacrifice to it; but such ceremonies were by no means general. On first witnessing Christian worship, the only idea suggested by it was that of asking some temporal good, which was either granted or refused.5

Bancroft states that the word "Ottowa," signifies "trader," and was probably applied by the Hurons from the fact that the tribe was principally settled on and in the vicinity of an island in the Ottawa River, where they exacted a tribute from all the Indians and canoes going to, or comimg from the country of the Hurons. It is observed by a Jesuit father, Le Jeune, that although the Hurons were ten times. as numerous, they submitted to that imposition; which seems to prove that the right of sovereignty over the Ottawa River was generally recognized. After their expulsion from this aboriginal custom house, the memory of their island home seems to have been preserved; for during the last century they sought and were suffered to take possession of the islands of Lake Erie and the peninsula of Sandusky, where their fishing and trapping parties were found by the French traders as early as 1750.

Soon after the period now under consideration, straggling parties of New York Indians were occasionally found near

5) Missions en la Nouvelle France, 1635, p. 72.

Lake Erie; and at least one Mingo town (the term designating any of the Six Nations, but, in this instance, a party of Cayuga Indians,) was situated on the Ohio River, just below the present site of Steubenville. Logan, celebrated for the specimen of Indian eloquence attributed to him by Jefferson, was a Mingo or Cayuga, and resided in the village above mentioned. We shall have further occasion to mention the arrival of Caughnewagas and Senecas (the former, a tribe from Canada, supposed by Heckewelder to be the old Connecticut Mohicans, mingled with various Iroquois Indians,) in different sections of the southern coast of Lake Erie. Th four tribes above named, however, alone deserve the designa tion of Ohio Indians at the date before us.

Some idea of the Indian occupation of Ohio in 1750 is now attainable. It will be seen by what precedes, that the Delawares occupied the valley of the Muskingum, and thence to Lake Erie and the River Ohio, asserting a possession over about one-half of the State; the Shawanese were soon admitted to the valleys of the Scioto and Miami Rivers, adjoining the Twigtwees or Miami Indians; while the Wyandots, and a few bands of Ottawas, dwelt upon the waters of Sandusky and Maumee, but nearer the bays into which they fell than their sources. As for the Wyandots, it should be remembered that the principal seat of the tribe was opposite Detroit, and the Ohio settlements were in the nature of colonies from the peninsulas bordering Lake Huron. This was also the case with the Ottawas, whose villages were scattered along the shore; although, on a map drawn in 1763, the remains of an "Ottowa fort" are visible near the present site of Plymouth, Huron county, while an Ottawa town is put down on the Cuyahoga River, about thirty miles from its mouth. The Ohio Indians, it may be necessary to add, were