That Dark and Bloody River

by Allan Eckert

  There was little wonder why the Indians were again threatening war against the Americans: The United States government, despite all the fine promises in the Greenville Treaty, was still pushing forward in its aim to take ever more land from them, one way or another. New spearheads of American penetration in the west had already occurred, pointing out new lands to be taken. Capt. Zebulon Montgomery Pike had explored up the Mississippi River to its headwaters in the Minnesota country, then followed that up with an expedition up the Arkansas River all the way to its headwaters in the Colorado country. Already an expedition under Capts. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had penetrated far west of the Mississippi, all the way to the Pacific Ocean, and wondrous tales were being told of the land “out west” available for the taking, despite the fact that it was inhabited by a multitude of native tribes. In eyeing this grand prize, the United States was simply following the guidelines established by President Thomas Jefferson, who had written to Indiana Territory Governor William Henry Harrison:

  Our system is to live in perpetual peace with the Indians, to cultivate an affectionate attachment for them by everything just and liberal which we can do for them within the bounds of reason and by giving them effectual protection against the wrongs from our own people. When they withdraw themselves to the culture of a small piece of land, they will perceive how useless to them are the extensive forests and will be willing to pare them off in exchange for necessaries for their farms and families. To promote this, we shall push our trading houses, and be glad to see the good and influential individuals among them in debt, because we observe when these debts go beyond what the individual can pay, they become willing to lop them off by a cession of lands. But should any tribe refuse the proffered hand and take up the hatchet, it will be driven across the Mississippi and the whole of its lands confiscated.

  But such a war, if and when it did, in fact, come to be, would evidently be fought far away from the Ohio River Valley, and the event that was taking place this very day in Pittsburgh made it all seem of little consequence. Here, a giant step was being taken in the full-scale development of the Ohio River Valley.

  Today, to the wild excitement of a huge crowd, a vessel that had been built in Pittsburgh was just setting off on her maiden voyage down the Ohio, bound for New Orleans.

  She had been built at a cost of over $40,000.

  She weighed an incredible 400 tons.

  She had been designed and built under the supervision of the man who had invented the prototype, Robert Fulton.

  Her name was the New Orleans, and she was the first steamboat on the Ohio River.841

  A new era had begun—for the west and for the entire nation … and most certainly for what had once been called “that dark and bloody river.”

  Amplification Notes

  1. The village of Onondaga, which became the seat of the Five Nations or Iroquois League, was on the site of present Rochester, N.Y.

  2. Gov. William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony complained early on that the Indians were becoming more proficient in the use of firearms than the whites and that the illegal trade in firearms to the tribes “will be the overthrow of all, if it be not looked into.”

  3. The five septs of the Shawnee tribe are the Thawegila and Chalahgawtha (the peace septs, from among whom the principal chief of the tribe must be chosen); the Peckuwe (in charge of the maintenance or order or duty and matters pertaining to the Shawnee religion); the Maykujay (in charge of matters pertaining to health, medicine and food); and the Kispokotha (in charge of all matters pertaining to warfare, including the preparation and training of warriors).

  4. This is the modern Suwannee River, made famous by the Stephen Foster melody; the stream rises in the Okefenokee Swamp of southern Georgia and empties in the Gulf of Mexico, some 20 miles north of Florida’s famed Cedar Key.

  5. The specific disease involved in this plague of 1616–17 is not known for certain. It was simply referred to as the “pestilential sickness” or “the plague.” Conservative estimates suggest a mortality rate of at least one-third of the Indians east of the Alleghenies, from Canada to Florida. Existing evidence indicates that it was not yellow fever, typhoid, hepatitis or smallpox, but it may have been either measles or bubonic plague. Robert Cushman, writing of it at the time, doubted that more than one out of every 20 Indians survived; his contemporary John White firmly believed that no less than 99 out of every 100 died. All too soon the eastern tribes were either exterminated or else survived only as remnant groups that sooner or later lost their tribal identity as they became absorbed into healthier tribes to the west. In 1622, fully five years after that worst plague had abated, Thomas Morton was sickened by the skeletons he encountered in his travels in New England and wrote, after a particularly trying day of encountering untold hundreds of them, “that as I travailed in that Forrest nere the Massachusetts, it seemed to mee a new found Golgotha.”

  6. The first American slave ship, Desire, left from Marblehead, Mass., in this same year (1639) to collect its first cargo of slaves on the west coast of Africa.

  7. The Falls of the Ohio, a low, short rapids with only a few emergent boulders, was located at the site of present Louisville, Ky.

  8. The French map of the Ohio River, executed more than half a century later by Rapin Dethoyer in 1744, was much less accurate than Franquelin’s map. On the Dethoyer map the Ohio River is indicated as the Hohio.

  9. As historian George Bancroft wrote in 1834: “Not a fountain bubbled west of the Allegheny but was claimed as belonging to the French Empire.”

  10. The portage route from the Fox River to the Wisconsin terminated at present Portage, Wis. The Wisconsin River empties into the Mississippi at present Prairie du Chien.

  11. The Illinois empties into the Mississippi 15 miles above present Alton, Ill., and 35 miles above present St. Louis, Mo.

  12. The mouth of Salt Creek is at present Portage, Ind., and the start of the portage route was near the present city of Valparaiso.

  13. The mouth of the St. Joseph River is at present Benton Harbor, Mich.; the portage path began in the center of present South Bend, Ind.

  14. The mouth of the Maumee River on Lake Erie is at the site of present Toledo, O., and the head of that river is at present Fort Wayne, Ind. The Little River empties into the Wabash just below present Huntington, Ind., and the Ouiatenon post—named after a subtribe of the Miamis and pronounced Wy-uh-TEE-non—was located on the site of present West Lafayette, Ind. Post St. Vincent eventually became present Vincennes, Ind. The Wabash empties into the Ohio River at present Evansville, Ind.

  15. This installation was later named Fort Massac and was located at present Massac State Park, at the eastern edge of present Metropolis, Ill.

  16. The Allegheny and Monongahela rivers converge to form the Ohio River at present Pittsburgh, Pa. The term “a thousand miles” for the length of the Ohio River is a rounded-off figure. The actual river mileage, as indicated by the U.S. Geological Survey, from the junction of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers to where it empties into the Mississippi is 981 miles.

  17. This belief that the Western Sea (Pacific Ocean) lay just beyond the Alleghenies was quite prevalent among the British colonials for a considerable time. As late as 1612, Sir Dudley Digges offered what he termed “scientific proof” that the North American continent at its greatest expanse from east to west was not more than 360 miles.

  18. The Falls of the James River are located at the site of present Richmond, Va.

  19. The Falls of the Appomattox are located on the site of present Petersburg, Va.

  20. The salt spring was located near the mouth of present Campbell’s Creek, some six miles above present downtown Charleston, W.Va. The Kanawha itself empties into the Ohio.

  21. The Blue Ridge crest was crossed in present Madison County, Va.

  22. The village of Pickawillany was located at the site of present Piqua, O. The Miami tribe often referred to themselves as the Twigtwees, an onomatopoeic name deri
ved from the call of the sandhill crane. Many of the early traders also referred to them as the Twigtwees rather than as the Miamis.

  23. This trading center was located on the site of present Cumberland, Md.

  24. This old Nemacolin Trail route began at present Cumberland, Md., and follows in large measure the course of U.S. Route 40, crossing the divide separating the Atlantic drainage from the Ohio drainage at present Grantsville, Md., then on to present Uniontown, Pa., and finally terminating at the Monongahela River, at present Brownsville, Pa.

  25. The majority of accounts indicate that Spotswood and his party crossed the Blue Ridge crest through present Rock Fish Gap, but that is not correct. Their passage was through present Swift Run Gap.

  26. Gov. Spotswood, on his return, proclaimed himself to be first to cross the Allegheny divide—wholly ignoring the several parties that had done so long before him in southern Virginia. For this alleged feat he was subsequently knighted, becoming a Knight of the Golden Horse Shoe. Despite the error of his claim, which soon became clear, his knighthood was not rescinded.

  27. The site of present Ambridge, Pa. This village should not be confused with another, named Shenango but also sometimes called Chiniqué, which was located on the west bank of the Allegheny River well above Pittsburgh. The village name situation becomes a little confusing here, since there was yet another village called Shenango located at the mouth of Beaver Creek about this time.

  28. At some point an early chronicler made what appears to be a typographical error and wrote the name as Loggstown. George Washington did so in his journal when he visited the place in 1753, though he may have gleaned his spelling of it from some other source. Unfortunately, this misspelling was picked up and has been used perhaps as much as the correct one, even by modern-day historians.

  29. The early traders phonetically and in spelling reproduced Goschachgunk as Coshocton. It was located on the site of the present Ohio city of that name.

  30. The term Chautauqua (pronounced Shuh-TAWK-wuh) has a great many variant spellings, none of which is exactly the one used today, but to avoid confusion, the modern spelling and pronunciation are used.

  31. This was of course to be the first President of the United States.

  32. The elder Ebenezer Zane had another son, Isaac, who was born the year before William Andrew. Isaac, however, was captured near their South Branch Potomac cabin in Moorefield, Va., by a band of Wyandots when he was only nine years old. He was carried deep into the Ohio country to Tarhe’s Town, on the headwaters of the Mad River, at the site of present Zanesfield, O. There he was adopted into the tribe, adapted well to Indian life and subsequently married the daughter of Chief Tarhe—The Crane. Eventually Isaac Zane became a chief in his own right, and though he never returned to live among the whites, he did return on one occasion to Wheeling and visited his grown-up nephew, Ebenezer.

  33. The War of Jenkins’ Ear got its unusual name from the fact that a Spanish galleon captain named Fandino captured an English mariner, Robert Jenkins, in Havana and cut off his ear, causing an international incident that subsequently erupted into war.

  34. Findlay’s camp was located on the site of present Lexington, Ky. John Findlay’s surname appears in historical documents as Findly, Findley, Finlay, Findlay and Finley. The author has been unable to locate any document signed by this man so as to ascertain the correct spelling. The most reliable accounts, however, seem to favor Findlay, so that is the spelling that will be used in this account.

  35. Some accounts have erroneously assumed that the name Mingo was a corruption of the alternate term the Iroquois called themselves, the Mengwe.

  36. John Draper’s wife was the former Bettie Robertson of Williamsburg.

  37. This settlement was located in present Montgomery County, Va., about ten miles northwest of the headwaters of the Roanoke River, on the east side of the New River and just east of the great Horseshoe Bend of that river. Some of the structures built were on the property later occupied by the Virginia Agricultural and Mechanical College. The closest town of note at present is Radsford.

  38. This young officer’s name appears in the early documents as both Blainville and Bienville; more contemporary accounts seem to favor Bienville, yet the earlier accounts, including a report signed in his own hand, indicate that Blainville is correct.

  39. An exact copy of the inscription on one of these lead plates follows. This particular plate was stolen from Céloron by some Senecas and turned over to the British Indian supervisor, Sir William Johnson: “L’an 1749 dv regne de Louis XV Roy de France, Novs Céloron, Commandant d’vn detachment envoie par Monsieur le Mis. de la Galissonière, Commandant General de la Nouvelle France povr retablir la tranquillite dans quelques villages sauvages de ces cantons, avons Enterre cette plaque”—blank space for place of deposit, followed by blank space for the date — “pres de la rivière oyo autrement belle rivière monument du nenounellement de possession que nous avons pris de la ditte rivière oyo, et de toutes celles qui y tombent, et de toutes les terres des deux cotes jvsqce avx sources des dittes rivières ainsi qv’en ont jovi ou dv jovir les precedents rois de France, et qu’ils s’y sont maintenvs par les armes et par les traittes, specialment par cevx de Riswick, d’Vtrecht et d’Aix la Chapelle.” The translation of which is: “In the year 1749, of the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, King of France, we, Céloron, commander of a detachment sent by Monsieur the Marquis de la Galissonière, Governor General of Canada, to re-establish tranquility in some Indian villages of these cantons, have buried this plate of lead at”—blank space for place of deposit, followed by blank space for the date—“near the river Ohio, otherwise Belle Rivière, as a monument of the renewal of the possession we have taken of the said river Ohio, and of all those which empty into it, and of all the lands on both sides as far as the sources of the said rivers, as enjoyed, or ought to have been enjoyed by the Kings of France preceding, as they have there maintained themselves by arms and by treaties, especially those of Ryswick, Utrecht and Aix la Chapelle.” The name of the artist who designed and engraved the lead plates, Paul de Brosse, was engraved on the reverse side of each of the plates.

  40. Céloron’s entire force consisted of eight junior officers, six cadets, 20 picked regular soldiers from the governor-general’s own guard, 180 Canadians under command of the well-known half-breed trader Chabert Joncaire, and 55 Indians—Caughnawagas and Abnakis—plus a Jesuit priest, Father Bonnecamps, and the commander himself. Second and third in command of the expedition were Capt. C. Pierre Contrecoeur and Lt. Coulon de Villiers.

  41. Daniel Joncaire has been identified incorrectly in some documents as Jean Coeur. Both of the Joncaire brothers, Chabert and Daniel, are believed to have been sired by a French trader, while their mother was Seneca.

  42. Site of present Buffalo, N.Y.

  43. The mouth of that stream, today known as Chautauqua Creek, is near the site of the present village of Barcelona, N.Y. The portage began about two miles upstream from the present village of Westfield and moved southward in the direction now followed by State Route 17.

  44. The portage path terminated at the edge of present Lake Chautauqua near the present Chautauqua County seat, Mayville. Chautauqua is spelled on various early maps and documents in a variety of ways, but the original root in the Seneca tongue, Jahdahgwah, seems closest to the present pronunciation.

  45. This swampy area lay on the site where the village of Jamestown is now situated.

  46. Chautauqua Creek empties into Cassadega Creek at the present town of Levant.

  47. Conewango at that time was spelled Kanaquagon. The mouth of the Cassadega is located less than a mile west of the present village of Frewsburg. The Céloron plate buried here has never been discovered.

  48. Conewango Creek empties into the Allegheny River within the limits of the present city of Warren, Pa. Céloron believed, as had de Léry twenty years earlier, that the Allegheny at this point was the upper Ohio River. For that matter, the Senecas still consi
der the Allegheny to be the upper Ohio and refer to it as such.

  49. This was another plate that has never been recovered.

  50. The so-called Great South Sea meant the Pacific Ocean. California at this time was thought by the British and French alike to be an island.

  51. The Indians initially encountered were largely Senecas and Loups (pronounced Loos), the latter a subtribe of the Delawares. Farther downriver the expedition encountered Shawnees, Wyandots and other tribes.

  52. This bottom, not very extensive in area, was stated by Céloron to be four leagues below the site of present Franklin, Pa. (itself located at the mouth of French Creek, which the French commander referred to as Rivière aux Boeufs due to a herd of woods bison they had seen there). Close examination of his distances shows his estimation of a league is closer to two and a quarter miles than just two. The bottom where they landed is bisected by a small stream presently known as Snyder Creek, which emerges from a very steeply banked ravine. Directly across the river at this point the shore rises in a sharply angled hill to a point of land 550 feet above the river level, a hill that Céloron in his journal refers to as a bald mountain. The hill on the side of the river where they landed rises some 700 feet, on the crest of which, a mile and a half southeast of their landing site, is the present village of Coal City.

  53. Unfortunately, most of this peculiar inscription has been worn away by wind, ice, debris and water, since during spring floods the entire rock becomes submerged. A reasonably accurate rendering of the inscription was made before this occurred by a Capt. William Eastman, U.S. Army, who, at the time he copied it onto paper, had to stand in waist-deep water in order to get a proper view. That rendering appears in Henry Schoolcraft’s Indian Tribes in the United States, vol. 6, p. 172. This landmark is referred to as Harts Rock on U. S. Army cartographer Capt. Thomas Hutchins’s Topographical Map of Virginia. Céloron wrote that the plate was buried near the rock, whereas Bonne-camps wrote that it was buried under the rock. Whichever is the case, this lead plate has never been recovered, despite the fact that its location seems more closely pinpointed than any of the others.