by Allan Eckert
The Shawnees, so many of whose villages were recently destroyed by the invasion of the Kentuckians under Col. Logan, had come here from their new villages that had been built on ground given to them by the Miamis and Wyandots in the northwestern Ohio country, along such streams as the Auglaize, Little Auglaize, Blanchard and Ottawa. The majority, however, were presently on the Maumee River, and a new village of Chalahgawtha had been established just a short distance upstream from the mouth of the Auglaize.
The present Grand Council here at Sindathon’s Village was the result of a series of belts and speeches that had passed between Sagoyewatha and the western tribes via the Wyandots. Over a year ago a confederacy of sorts had been set up among the tribes at his encouragement, patterned to some extent after the old Iroquois League, in which the good of one was the good of all and mutual protection was a cornerstone. Now, even though the real power of the Iroquois League was gone, there remained a certain degree of deference and respect for individual chiefs of the Six Nations, though not so much that it let them forget the old animosities, particularly that which had existed for so long between them and the Shawnees.
All the chiefs on hand acknowledged that what Sagoyewatha had been saying over the past year or so was quite logical and very true: They really did need to form a strong confederacy among themselves for their own protection, but a major hurdle existed that virtually precluded such a formation. The simple fact was that the old intertribal hatreds seemed just too strong to wholly overcome. At the same time, however, all were uncomfortably aware that they could not really depend upon the British for help, despite some encouraging signs in this direction, including the fact that, in direct contravention to the Treaty of Paris, the British were presently beginning some very heavy reinforcements at the posts both at Niagara and Detroit.
It had been when this present council first began, some six weeks ago, that Sagoyewatha had addressed the assembled chiefs in a manner laced with urgency. But his words merely articulated what most of the tribes had already come to believe; that in order to survive, the tribes would have to unite and support each other in any situation involving the Americans.
Sagoyewatha leaned toward peaceful coexistence with them, and the Wyandots, among others, tended to agree and pledged themselves toward that end. Nevertheless, it was apparent that other tribes, still more or less under the American gun, knew unequivocally that an equitable peace with the Americans was an impossibility. Probably least inclined toward peace with the Americans any longer were the Shawnees.
Even though some of the more pacific Shawnee chiefs were inclined toward the premise of peace as propounded by the Grand Council, so far as the overwhelming majority of Shawnees were concerned, chiefs and warriors alike, their tribe had never been—and would never be—treated fairly by the Americans. In addition, the Shawnees still despised the Iroquois too much to ever believe what they said, or to enter into any kind of an agreement with them.
Thus, despite Sagoyewatha’s commendable attempts to conciliate and mediate, the detested Shemanese would enjoy no respite from Shawnee raids. The Miamis, who were having as difficult a time as the Shawnees in putting aside their hatred for the Iroquois, also believed the Shawnees correct in their views in respect to the Americans and let it be known that they, like the Shawnees, would continue in their efforts to resist the encroaching whites and persist in their raids against them on the Wabash in the vicinity of Vincennes and in the Kentucky country. Both tribes clung to the belief that they might even find future strong support among the now wavering Wyandots and Delawares.
[December 31, 1787—Monday]
The entire year of 1787 had been one not only of gradual encroachment by the whites into the Ohio country but of strengthening their hold throughout the Ohio Valley, and resultant counterattacks by the Indians against the settlers in the Kentucky country and the upper Ohio River.
Attempts at settling things amicably always seemed to be undermined by individuals or small groups. A prisoner exchange agreed to between the Shawnees and Kentuckians took place on the Ohio shore directly across from the Limestone settlement on March 10, and for a brief time it seemed it might evolve into a more lasting peace.671 That rosy prospect was snuffed out when, as the exchange was concluding, one of the Kentucky settlers, Luther Calvin, enlisted the aid of a number of other men and stole the Shawnee horses, swimming them across the Ohio River before the theft was discovered. Shots broke out, but no one was hit. The Shawnees, however, had just learned one more painful lesson about the perfidy of the Americans under almost any circumstance, and they accordingly retaliated.
A short time later two young men, both 18 and living in the new Washington Settlement seven miles from Limestone, set out to hunt on the North Fork Licking River. They were Nehemiah Stites and Zephaniah Wade. In the evening they made camp along the river about six miles from Washington. Early in the morning, just after they roused, the pair were fired on by a party of Indians, and young Stites was killed by bullets that struck him simultaneously in the chest and head. Wade, barefoot but uninjured, ran all the way back to the Washington Settlement. Pursuit of the Indians was made by a small party of settlers under Simon Kenton, who followed the trail as far as the Ohio River and then lost them. Back at Washington and Limestone word of the attack was quickly going the rounds, though in some tellings the dead man was confused with his friend.
At the small tavern in Limestone, where Wade dropped in after the expedition returned, he was greeted with handshakes and cheers, and one of their neighbors gripped Wade’s shoulders and commented relievedly, “Why, Zeph, we heard you was killed.”
“Y’know,” Wade replied dryly, “I heard that, too, but decided it was a lie.”
It was attacks of such nature that once again caused the Kentuckians to pass a resolution mounting another force to invade Ohio, with Benjamin Logan again their leader. Logan sent a copy of the resolution to the Virginia governor and, before the expedition could be equipped and carried into operation, he received a very strong letter by express from the state’s chief executive in return:
In Council, June 5th, 1787
Colonel Benjn Logan.
Sir:
I submitted to Council the resolutions of a committe enclosed by you. They highly disapprove of the measures proposed to be adopted by these resolutions, and have advised me to direct you in no instance to give countenance to such irregular proceedings. You will, therefore, conform yourself to the wishes of the Executive by taking no steps which may be recommended by any self-erected body of men who may assume powers unknown to the Constitution. I have forwarded to Congress copies of all the dispatches received from your country. I have no doubt but that Honorable body will exert the Federal force in giving every relief to your present distresses.
Despite the governor’s quick action in forbidding the proposed expedition, he was very worried they or another group would go ahead with it anyway and undermine the efforts being made to come to some sort of resolution of the border problem with the Indians. In this respect, he wrote to Congress on June 29:
Report says that the people of Kentucky are preparing for offensive operations against their savage neighbors. The Government here have used every possible means to restrain its citizens from undertaking any offensive measures whatever, although there seems to be the fullest conviction that nothing will put an end to the very cruel predatory war now carried on against the frontier of this State, but changing the scene from our settlements to the Indian towns.
On the upper Ohio the attacks by roving bands of Mingoes, Delawares and Wyandots continued despite the edicts of the chiefs that they should cease. Many of these were merely attempts to steal horses and take them back to the Ohio country, but some were considerably more deadly. When a party of seven Mingoes came to the Wheeling area and stole five horses—three belonging to Capt. Lewis Bonnett, one of Martin Wetzel’s and one of Henry Winter’s—Bonnett and Wetzel raised a party of six other men and followed the Indians across the O
hio and all the way to Will’s Creek before overtaking them where the Indians had stopped to repair their saddles. They fired upon them, and two of the warriors were wounded, one by Martin Wetzel and another by John McCulloch. The Indians fled and the stolen horses were recovered. Since they were not far from some of the Indian camps, the men thought it wise that they also withdraw quickly and they did so, arriving back at Wheeling without further incident.
All too often, however, attacks by maverick parties of marauders became much more deadly, such as the vicious attack on the Jacob Simms family on Fish Creek, as Col. David Shepherd reported in his letter to Virginia Gov. Edmund Randolph:
Ohio County, April 30th, 1787
Dr Sir:
Three days past I recdan express from Fish Creek that the Indians had taken a boy prisoner, & that several guns had been heard at the plantation of one Simms. Upon which I ordered a party of the militia to go down & see what was done. They returned in three days & informed me that the Indians had killed Simms, his wife & one of his children, & three more taken prisoners. They likewise saw several trails of Indians that had crossed the river with their horses, and the small tracks of a number of children & others, which we expect to be prisoners from Monongahela County. The number of Indians appeared to be about forty. This being the third time the have visited us this spring, I thought it my duty to inform you that unless we get some relief, the most of the County will be left desolate, as we have neither guns nor ammunition to defend ourselves, & for us to stand, in order to be a convincing proof to the Continent of an Indian War, is a situation not very agreeable.
I am, Sir, &c.
David Shepherd
What all this led to was the biggest news of the year: the ordinance issued by the infant United States government officially establishing the Northwest Territory. By this ordinance, all land to the north and west of the Ohio River, clear to the Canadian border and bounded on the west by the Mississippi River, was organized into a commonwealth that was the first in the world whose organic law recognized every man as free and equal. It was a unique document that became for weeks and months the principal topic of discussion, especially on the frontier, where copies were publicly posted. This Ordinance of 1787 provided, among other things, for the appointment of a governor and other territorial offices, for the establishment of both civil and criminal laws, for the laying out of counties, the setting up of a general assembly, and the authorization of a delegate to Congress who would have the right to debate but not to vote during the temporary government. The Ordinance further prohibited the molestation of any man because of his mode of worship or his religion; it provided the benefits of the writs of habeas corpus and of trial by jury; that there would not be permitted in this territory either slavery or involuntary servitude; and that with religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education should forevermore be encouraged.
Article Five of the Ordinance declared that this Northwest Territory was to be separated into no less than three nor more than five divisions. The westernmost division in the Illinois Territory was to be bounded on the west by the Mississippi River, on the south by the Ohio and on the east by the Wabash River as far upstream as Vincennes and then, from there, on a line due north to the Canadian border. The middle division’s southern border would also be the Ohio River and its eastern boundary a line drawn due north from the mouth of the Great Miami River to the Canadian border, the country thus enclosed to be called the Indiana Territory. The easternmost division of the Northwest Territory would take in the remainder of the land to the east of that line and to the north and west of the Ohio River and Pennsylvania border to the Canadian border as established by the Treaty of Paris and called the Ohio Territory.672
The portion of the Ordinance of 1787 that thoroughly outraged the people on the frontier from Pittsburgh to Louisville, however, was Article III, Section 14, which declared in part:
The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their lands and properties shall never be taken from them without their consent; and, in their property, rights and liberty, they shall never be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress; but laws founded in justice and humanity shall, from time to time, be made, for preventing wrongs being done to them, and for preserving peace and friendship with them.
What this amounted to, where the frontier people were concerned, was that once again it had become illegal for the whites to mount retaliatory excursions against the Indians who crossed the Ohio River to burn and steal and kill. The several county lieutenants of the Kentucky counties of Lincoln, Bourbon, Fayette, Jefferson, Mercer and Madison thereupon held a meeting at Danville on July 19 and issued a statement to the effect that:
the instructions of the Executive, dated the 5th day of June, 1787, prohibiting the people of Kentucky from going out of the State, unless in actual and immediate pursuit of an invading enemy, we are of opinion have placed us in so critical a situation as to oblige us to decline all offensive operations at present & can only act on the defensive.
However much the authorities, both federal and local, prohibited it in keeping with the sweeping Ordinance of 1787, it remained the one portion of that new Ordinance that few whites on the border had any intention of obeying.
There were other immediate and far-reaching effects to the Ordinance. In New York, sales of parts of the Seven Ranges in Ohio amounting to almost $73,000 were made, and in Salem, Massachusetts, the agents for the Ohio Company, Winthrop Sargent and Manasseh Cutler, immediately made a contract with the government to buy, at the rate of no less than a dollar per acre, a section of Ohio encompassing an area of nearly one million acres—a deal consummated only ten days following enactment of the Ordinance.673
John Cleve Symmes, too, had lined up his backers for the Symmes purchase of the land between the two Miami rivers. Even before the sale was legally consummated, he sold to Matthias Denman of Springfield, New Jersey, a tract of 740 acres of land in Ohio directly opposite the mouth of Kentucky’s Licking River. Denman paid him five shillings per acre in Continental scrip, or about 15 pence per acre in specie, which amounted to less than $125 for the entire plot. Here Denman planned to build a port settlement that he envisioned would, in the future, become one of the greatest ports on the entire Ohio River. To begin such a project he needed help, and so he journeyed to Lexington where two of his good friends, Robert Patterson and John Filson, lived, hoping to get them interested in forming a partnership with him.
Expecting a sharp increase of settlement, another land office was opened in Louisville on August 1 for the reception of locations and surveys made north of the Ohio River. The Virginia Legislature, now recognizing the importance of Limestone as a probable port city, also approved of the laying out of a city there on 100 acres of land that was the joint property of Simon Kenton and John May, to be incorporated as the city of Maysville. May had also recently established a new settlement 15 miles south of Limestone named May’s Lick.
Fort Finney, opposite Louisville, was now well established, as was Fort Harmar at the mouth of the Muskingum, but now a new and impressive two-story walled fortification was begun on high ground on the opposite side of the Muskingum from Fort Harmar, less than a mile upstream and some 700 feet east of the Muskingum. It was being called Campus Martius.674 On October 28 Col. Josiah Harmar at Fort Pitt received the welcome news that he had received his commission as brigadier general and, after congratulating himself with several solitary toasts of brandy, he immediately set off with the troops under his command for Fort Harmar.
In the midst of all these occurrences, the federal government finally responded to the speech made to the Americans at the Grand Council of the confederation of northwestern tribes at Sindathon’s Village last December. It was the superintendent of Indian Affairs, Commissioner Richard Butler, who responded, sending his reply not to Sagoyewatha, but to the chief still believed to be heading t
he Wyandots, Monakaduto. It said:
Brothers: I received your Speech in the following effect—I am directed by Congress to inform you and all the other Indian Nations who joined the Representation made to Congress, dated 18th December 1786, that Congress, on the 18th day of the present month, July 1787, received your said Representation and have taken it into serious consideration, and in due time will send you their answer. Brothers, I advise you to mind your cornfields and hunting and to take care that your young men do no mischief to our people. I expect to have orders to call the Nations together in a short time to Council. I therefore wish you to sit still till you hear from me again.
Richard Butler
Supr. Indendt. of Indian Affairs
To the Wyandot Half King and Chiefs
Monakaduto, still alive but very weak, was joined by a Pimoacan in answering in a much shorter time than had the United States. His speech to the Congress by way of Richard Butler, dated September 2, said:
Brothers:
You desire us to mind our cornfields and hunting and likewise to correct our young men from doing any mischief to your people. This is the second speech you sent us upon the same matter of correction to our young men. We have accordingly done as you desired us and shall do all that lies in our power to continue so. This comes from our hearts, not from our lips only, what you hear from us at present.