by Allan Eckert
It is perhaps ironic that Penn’s former companion, Ebenezer Zane, died that very year, and Zane’s son, William Andrew, now 25, happily married and still living in Moorefield on the South Branch of the Potomac, sired a son. In honor of his own newly deceased father, William named the infant Ebenezer. It was this Ebenezer Zane—and his brothers and sister yet to be born—who would, in time to come, make a lasting mark on the upper Ohio River Valley.32
The so-called “Walking Treaty” and numerous other encroachments on lands the Indians considered their own, plus trade abuses perpetrated by the very British traders the Indians had allowed to establish posts in their lands, finally reached such a point of aggravation to the tribes that the Indians decided it was no longer wise to step back meekly or turn aside when injured. This was becoming evident by the fact that throughout the Indian territories a greater amity was growing between the various tribes who heretofore had been enemies. At long last they were beginning to realize the need to put aside their own differences and concentrate both individually and together on the greater potential danger threatening them all, a danger heralded by this burgeoning encroachment by the British colonists. With this growing realization, even the intermittent squabbling between the French and the Indians abated to a marked degree. Over the past few years a sort of quasi-alliance was developing between the frontier Frenchmen and the westernmost Iroquois League nations—the Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Oneidas and Tuscaroras. Only the Mohawks—closest to British contact—retained their alliance with the British.
For a long while the French had been urging the Indians not to let the British continue insidiously to take their lands through illegal settlement. For equally as long the French had promised to support the Indians with supplies, arms and ammunition should they decide to thrust these intruders back. So now, with just such covert assistance, the Indians finally began to retaliate, and clashes broke out all the way from the Kanawha Valley to western New York, with the preponderance of attacks being made upon new British settlers in the Indian lands. Cabins were burned, cattle were butchered and a number of individuals were captured or slain.
In Virginia a whole new series of settlements were forming near the Blue Ridge crest of the Alleghenies. Orange County, formed only four years before, was divided into Frederick and Augusta counties, with the latter embracing all of Virginia west of the Blue Ridge. Very quickly a number of settlements were laid out, such as Pattonsburg and Staunton, and soon other parties, using these frontier villages as launching points, were starting new and more daringly extensive expeditions into the unknown lands west of the Allegheny crest.
In 1740 a party led by John Howard and James Salling moved down the Kanawha with the idea of claiming lands. Unlike the John Van Bibber party seven years earlier, however, they did not find the valley empty. Unexpectedly encountering a party of Indians, Negroes and French, the pair were taken captive and carried all the way down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans, where they were thrown into prison. Here they remained for some 18 months before finally escaping and, by land and sea, gradually making their way back to their homes in Virginia, where everyone thought them dead. They had been gone for a total of 27 months.
In May 1743, far to the north, a French-Seneca half-breed named Peter Chartier led a party of Indians down the Allegheny from his village on that stream. Just below the mouth of the Kiskiminetas River and some 20 miles upstream from the Forks of the Ohio—called Duendaga by the Indians—they encountered a group of English traders ascending the river. He caught them by surprise, confiscated their goods and took them captive to Montreal. Within two years, however, Chartier, disgruntled with the number of British—traders and settlers alike—still moving into this Allegheny River frontier area, abandoned his village and moved with his followers to reside among the Kickapoos on the Vermilion River in the Illinois country. It was in this same year that King George’s War—also called the War of Jenkins’ Ear—began between the French and Spanish.33 It had little effect on the western frontier in America except to heighten the tensions already existing between the traders.
The year 1744 brought the first British trader far down the Ohio and into the Kentucky country. Oddly, there were no Indian villages in the land they called Kan-tuck-kee. It was a well-established neutral ground for the various tribes, and with good reason: There were an abundance of salt springs there, such as those that became known as the Blue Licks, Upper Blue Licks, Boone Lick, Big Bone Lick and many others. These salt licks were great attractions for the huge herds of woods bison that roamed the eastern forests, as well as for elk, deer and other animals that craved the salt there. The Kentucky country was therefore a favorite hunting ground of the Indians, and through a long-established tradition honored by all, no tribe could build permanent villages or wage war against one another there. In this wonderful neutral land they could establish their temporary camps and move about in peace to hunt, sometimes even within sight of enemy tribesmen whom, had they met them anywhere else, they would have instantly attacked.
Having traded with the Shawnees for several years, learned their language and customs and endeared himself to them with his honesty in trade, John Findlay learned of the Kentucky country and yearned to see it. He felt it would be an ideal place to establish a trading post for the various visiting tribesmen. The Shawnees granted him permission to do so, and in 1744 he became the first American colonist to visit Kentucky and build a structure there. His little log cabin trading post was erected on North Elkhorn Creek.34 Neither he nor the Shawnees had any idea that in the not-too-distant future, this idyllic hunting paradise would become part of what would be fearfully known as “that dark and bloody land.”
That same year of 1744 saw a treaty made between the British and the Iroquois League that opened the door for the disastrous times to follow. The Iroquois had long proclaimed themselves, by right of conquest, masters of all this land west of the Alleghenies. Other tribes simply smiled and shook their heads at the ridiculousness of the claim; the Shawnees openly scoffed and challenged the Iroquois to fight it out to see who would emerge master by conquest. The Iroquois wisely declined but continued their boasting to such extent that the British colonial government accepted the claim as fact. Thus, when they met the Iroquois leaders in grand council at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in this year, the British treaty officials believed—or at least chose to believe—that the Iroquois had the right to sell or otherwise dispose of any land they wished that fell under their “right of conquest” claim. For the sum of £600, the British colonists “bought” a vast territory of undefined extent from the Iroquois—a territory that extended to the Ohio River and downstream from there, including the entire Ohio River drainage. That, of course, took in lands inhabited by the Shawnees, Delawares, Kickapoos, Miamis and other tribes, none of whom had even been invited to the Lancaster treaty council. That such a treaty would, without doubt, generate great contention between the British and those tribes did not cause the Iroquois League the slightest discomfiture.
Even more British traders now streamed into the country, but these were of a different temperament from the traders who had moved about among the tribes for years, established their honesty and gained the trust of the tribes. The newer arrivals seemed to go out of their way to cheat the trading Indians in any manner possible; the goods they sold were no longer of the quality they had once been and wore out or fell apart very quickly. Food goods were tainted or diluted. The traders bullied the Indians wherever possible, made unwelcome advances to their women and, perhaps worst of all, brought cheap liquor—primarily rum from the West Indies—which the Indians could hardly resist and which fired them into uncontrollable acts; liquor that was soon gone, with nothing to show for it except a headache and economic loss. Complaints by the Indians to authorities had virtually no effect, and so the cheated Indians began attacking the new traders entering their country, confiscating their goods and usually releasing the men to wander back where they came from, though in some cases
taking them captive or killing them. Ever more, due to the trade abuses, the tribes were swinging their allegiance back to the French. Yet the French traders were not themselves without peril. A delegation of Iroquois visited the Wyandots on the Sandusky River and presented Chief Orontony with war belts and urgings to strike the French as well as the English. In June 1747 five French traders returning to Detroit were struck by a band of Hurons, and all five were killed. Later, a few more French traders were slain in other areas from western Lake Erie to the Mackinac Strait.
The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in October of that year ended King George’s War, and even though it did not resolve the overlapping territorial disputes on the frontier, the tensions eased somewhat. Attacks by the Indians against the traders—even the more unscrupulous ones—diminished, but the ill feelings remained. Competition remained keen between English and French traders but now with a small degree of mutual tolerance.
The following year John Findlay, back in Virginia from Kentucky, met with a group of men eager to hear an account of his adventures in the wilds. The leader of this group was a physician named Dr. Thomas Walker, who was far more interested in surveying, hunting and otherwise adventuring than in doctoring. He and his group, which included James Patton, John Buchanan, Charles Campbell and James Wood, became highly inspired by tales Findlay told them of a land called Kentucky where there was incredibly fertile soil, vast fields of rich grasses and cane, immense herds of buffalo and untold numbers of elk, deer, wild turkey, grouse, waterfowl and other game. They listened spellbound to his accounts of how the buffalo milled about by the thousands at the salt licks and of the beauty of the gently rolling Kentucky hills.
When Findlay finished, Walker and his party hired him as guide, along with a number of other men as hunters, and set out from the Blue Ridge settlements to explore west and north of the Allegheny crest. The only reasonable access to that country had been down the New and Kanawha rivers, but Findlay advised against it since that route had become so dangerous in recent years. Instead, they struck out toward the south and west, following the Blue Ridge and hoping to find, as Findlay was sure they would, a passage through the mountains and into the lands beyond. They did find it when they encountered a mountain range the Indians called Warioto but that no one in the party had ever heard of before. In the midst of this impressive range was a very significant gap with a major stream running through it in a northwesterly direction. The stream was the headwaters of the river already called the Shawanoe, but the Walker party had no knowledge of this, and it would not have made much difference if they had. With the full approval of his party, Walker named the mountain range, the broad gap through it and the stream that flowed through the gap all by the same name—Cumberland—in honor of the current prime minister of England, the Duke of Cumberland.
The party filed through the newly named Cumberland Gap, followed the Cumberland River downstream and explored a good portion of the Tennessee and Kentucky country, dallied for a while in the impressive valley of the Kentucky River and then, not having encountered any Indians at all, elected to return home via the Kanawha and New rivers. They had seen enough to convince them where the colonial future of America lay. Immediately on their return late in the fall they organized the Loyal Land Company and soon received a grant from King George II of 800,000 acres lying north of the North Carolina border and west of the Alleghenies.
It was not the only land grant King George authorized in this year of 1748. Thomas Lee, a member of His Majesty’s council in Virginia, organized the Ohio Land Company, its backers comprising a dozen wealthy land owners in Maryland and Virginia, including Lawrence and Augustine Washington, elder brothers of George, as well as a prosperous merchant of London named James Hanbury. The company, formed with the stated objective of settling lands and engaging in large-scale trade with the Indians, was given a grant of 500,000 acres within the Dominion of Virginia but west of the mountains, all the way to the Ohio River and the Kanawha, with the stipulation that the company establish 100 families on that land within seven years.
One of the Ohio Company’s first acts was to hire a well-known trader and frontiersman, Christopher Gist, to survey both the Ohio and Kanawha for them in the area included under the terms of the grant. He was to keep a journal of his journey, draw accurate maps, explore the country inland from the river for some distance to assess its value for projected settlement and farming and make a full report to the company. He was also advised that if he thought it practicable to do so, he might carry that survey all the way down to the Falls of the Ohio—a distance of just over 600 miles. Merchant Hanbury’s contribution to the plan was to send to America two full cargoes of trade goods valued at £2,000 sterling.
Another appointment by the Ohio Company was to make the experienced interpreter and guide Conrad Weiser their agent to the Iroquois and dispatch him at once to meet delegates of that confederation at Logstown and get permission—deemed desirable, though not essential—to go on with their plan. In the 23 years since the Shawnees had first established Logstown, it had undergone a considerable change. Disenchanted with all the unaccustomed activity, they had moved out and returned to the Scioto Valley, but other tribes—and traders—had continued using the place as a rendezvous point and trading center.
Logstown had grown considerably, now having upward of 40 log cabins and numerous wegiwas erected by more transitory Indians. The population now was more Mingo than anything else. The Mingoes were not a tribe but rather a very loose confederation of Indians from a variety of tribes—Senecas, Cayugas, Delawares, Wyandots and even a few Shawnees—who, disgruntled with the politics of their individual tribe or simply expatriates for one reason or another, had banded together. There was to be no argument about who would be chief of their unusual confederation. Their spokesman was Talgayeeta—better known to the English traders as Chief Logan. As he put it, “We are all warriors and we are all chiefs. Among the tribes to the south, a chief is called a Mingo, so we now call ourselves Mingoes, as we are all chiefs.”35 Conrad Weiser, when he visited Logstown that year, was astounded at the town’s growth and at the amazing amount of trading that was going on—mostly between the Indians and British traders, but even with a few French traders on hand.
News of the successfully completed Walker expedition through the Cumberland Gap and of the wondrous land they had found called Kentucky swept through the colonies, instigating a resurgence of interest in establishing new settlements. One group so inspired to “go west and grow up with the country” included John Draper, along with his wife, Bettie, and their two nearly grown children, John Jr. and Mary.36 Adam Harmon and his son, Jacob, were part of that group, as were Henry Lenard, James Burke and Thomas Ingles, along with Ingles’s three sons, William, George and John. Moving southwestward from the Pattonsburg settlement, where they had been staying for some time, they followed the Blue Ridge, gradually angling westward until they crossed the Allegheny Divide. At length they came to a beautiful grassy meadow with a stream running through it to the northwest. This was the New River—or Wood’s River, as some were still calling it—and it was here that they decided to establish their settlement. With everyone working to help each other, in a short time all the families had their own cabins, and the settlement was proudly named Draper’s Meadows—the first Virginia settlement on the Kanawha River drainage.37 In a very short time this most remote settlement in Virginia became a rendezvous for adventurers and new settlers bound for the forbidding interior beyond.
That matters on the frontier would eventually cause a confrontation between the French and the British was considered a possibility by many. But the vague possibility became a strong likelihood in 1749. With both factions claiming territorial rights to the vast unknown lands between the Alleghenies and the Mississippi, France decided it was time to establish those claims in a more concrete manner. In Montreal, the Marquis de la Galissonière, governor-general of New France—which was what the French were terming their claims in the New World—commi
ssioned a young officer, Capt. Pierre Joseph de Céloron de Blainville, to lead an expedition to the Ohio Valley.38 At various major streams he was to pause and bury an engraved lead plate that reaffirmed French ownership of the entire Ohio River drainage. Each plate had blank spaces in the inscription, those blanks to be engraved in the field, when the time came, with a knife blade as to date and location.39
On June 15, 1749, Céloron left Montreal with a total force of 272 men.40 Using the rude map made by de Léry 20 years earlier, they ascended the St. Lawrence River to Lake Ontario and followed its southern shore westward to the lake’s head at the mouth of the Niagara Portage, where on Thursday, July 6, they reached the French post called Fort Niagara, the predecessor of which had been erected by La Salle more than 70 years earlier. Here they paused only briefly to exchange news with the post commander, Capt. Daniel Joncaire, brother of the Canadian commander with the expedition, Chabert Joncaire.41
Early the following morning they began the long and arduous Niagara Portage past the falls, the Great Whirlpool and Niagara Rapids and in record time relaunched their canoes just above the mouth of Buffalo Creek.42 They followed the south shore of Lake Erie some 60 miles and, on Sunday, July 16, spotted a cairnlike Seneca rock structure that marked the mouth of a stream identified on their map as Rivière aux Pommes—Apple River. Here they headed upstream but quickly had to portage.43 It turned out to be the most arduous portage most had ever encountered. The path moved rather sharply uphill, rising almost 1,000 feet above the level of Lake Erie to the divide that separates the Great Lakes drainage from the Ohio drainage. The portage was a mere five miles long, but hampered by rains every day, it required a full week of unbelievable effort to traverse it with their boats and baggage, an effort that severely sapped the stamina of the men. At the end of the portage path they came at last, on Saturday, July 22, to the head of Lake Chautauqua, marked on Céloron’s map as Lac Tjadakion.44