OHIO STATEWIDE FILES - Know your Ohio: The Real Settlement of Ohio [2] *********************************************************************** OHGENWEB NOTICE: All distribution rights to this electronic data are reserved by the submitter. Reproduction or re-presentation of copyrighted material will require the permission of the copyright owner. *********************************************************************** File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E.Kelley http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00026.html#0006374 May 31,1999 ********************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio The Kelley Family Collections Newspaper Article, Plains Dealer compiled by S.J. Kelley --1925 And Then They Went West by Darlene E. Kelley 1998 ********************************************** Many of the sufferers sold their grants immediately for cash. In 1795, Connecticut sold the 3 million acres of the Reserve, an estimate, as none of it had been surveyed, to a syndicate of investors which later became the Connecticut Land Company. The purchasers paid $1.2 million in bonds to the State treasurer secured by mortgage. No cash changed hands, although of course it would later, as the lands were resold throughout New England. Purchasers were told they asumed the risk of the conflicting Indian title, described as " unextinguished and unquieted " which was to say that a lot of Indians still lived there. Many of these Shawnees, Senecas, Onondagas, Wyandots, Miamis, Ottawas, Massasagoes, Pottawattomies, Chippewas, and Delawares had helped the French fight the British in the French and Indian War, and the British fight the Americans in the Revolution. After that war was over, they fought on; the Miamis and Shawnees and with British aid killed almost 700 militiamen led by General Arthur St. Clair in western Ohio in 1791, and an army led by General Anthony Wayne killed a lot of Miamis and others in 1794 at the Battle of Fallen Timbers, which resulted in a treaty and brief peace. The Connecticut Land Company sent Moses Cleaveland west to buy some of the Reserve from the Indians and make a survey. His party met with representatives of the Six Nations of the Iroquois, whose own claim to the land was debatable, at Buffalo, New York, in the spring of 1796. The Connecticut men feasted the Indians from Tuesday to Friday and provided whiskey. Among the Indians was Joseph Brant, who had helped plan the attack on the Connecticut colonists in Pennsylvania and translated the Bible into Mohawk. At the signing, a Seneca, Red Jacket, said that the white people made a great parade about religion, but all they wanted was money. The Indians received $500 "New York currency," two beef cattle, and a hundred gallons of whiskey; some also got provisions for the trip home. The Connecticut Land Company got all of the Western Reserve from the Pennsyvania border to the Cuyahoga River, about 400,000 acres. Seven years later, representatives of that company, the war claim holders ( incorporated in a seperate company called the Sufferers ), and the U.S. Government met with the other Indians to buy the rest of the Reserve. They tried to persuade the Indians to come to a council site on Lake Erie, but the Indians wouldn't, so the agents had to come to them, at Fort Industry on the Maumee River. This time the price for 2.75 million acres west of the Cuyahoga was about $19,000 ( $ 4,000 down, the rest installments) payable by the Land Companies, and an annuity of some thousands payable by the Government from then on. Witnesses said the Indians signed the treaty with reluctance and afterwards many of them wept. No one pointed out to the Indians that the lands they were giving up had already been sold, perhaps resold many times, for a lot more. A photostat of the Treaty hangs in the Firelands Museum in Norwalk. People talked about the Western Reserve and traded its lands, but for many years not many moved there. The new State of Ohio assumed legal jurisdiction in 1803. Then the British lost the war of 1812, which removed any last danger of Indian attack and the Real Settlement began. ***********************************************