OHIO STATEWIDE FILES OH-FOOTSTEPS Mailing List Issue 155 *********************************************************************** USGENWEB NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net/ *********************************************************************** OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest Volume 00 : Issue 155 Today's Topics: #1 Fw: Bio History -- Know Your Ohio ["Maggie Stewart" To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <18ae01bfb598$4628d200$0300a8c0@local.net> Subject: Fw: Bio History -- Know Your Ohio -- Ohio's Huron or Wyandot Natives. [2] Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley ****************************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley ***************************************************** Ohio's Huron and Wyandot Indians -- Part 2. By mutual consent, Ohio was considered part of the Iroquois domain in 1730, and , hoping to lure the Wyandot away from the French alliance and into their " covenant chain " by offering British trade, the league made no objection when the Wyandot began easing south in northern Ohio. Within a few years, the Sandusky Wyandot regularly attended Iroquois councils and were considered the League's representative in Ohio, a position which only added to the prestige the Wyandot already enjoyed within the French alliance as the "eldest children" of Onontio. However, the Wyandot never became the League's puppet, and Ohio slipped rapidly from Iroquois control. Beginning in the 1720s, independent groups of Iroquois hunters had started leaving the Iroquois villages to settle in eastern Ohio. For the most part, these Ohio Iroquois ( Mingo ) were descendants of the Huron, Erie, Neutals, and Tionontati who had been forcibly incorporated into the Iroquois during the 1650's. Although the League did not object to their presence in Ohio so long as they paid lip-service to its authority, the Mingo were effectively independant of its control. By the end of the 1730's the number of Mingo in Ohio had become significant. At the same time, large groups of Delaware and Shawnee had tired of Iroquois domination and the crowded conditions of their villages along the Susquehanna River in eastern Pennsylvania and began lrelocating on their own to the upper Ohio River in western Pennsylvania. During the 1740s, the Wyandot gave permission for them to also settle west in Ohio. These tribes were also nominal members of the " covenant chain," although an important reason for their leaving the Susquehanna was to free themselves from this arrangement. They were soon joined by small groups of Mahican, Abenaki, and New England Algnquin, who had even less allegiance to the League. Meanwhile, groups of Miami ( French Ally ) moved east into western Ohio to gain better access to the British traders. Within a short period, Ohio was occupied by thousands of Native Americans living in mixed-villages who owed not the slightest allegiance to either the Iroquois, British, French, or American Colonists who claimed the land on which they lived. In 1738 Orontony ( Nicholas ), a Detroit Wyandot chief, refused to participate in a raid against the Cherokee ( British Allies ) south of the Ohio River. Going well beyond this, Orontony also helped the Cherokee ambush; a Detroit war party which earned hm the lasting hatred of the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and other Wyandot near Detroit. The Wyandot came to the verge of civil war, but the clan mothers intervened to keep the Wyandot from killing Wyandot. When the other Detroit Wyandot refused to allow the Ottawa to punish Orontony, the resulting quarrel ended a hundred years of close cooperation between them. Orontony and his followers left Detroit to establish a new village on the Lower Sandusky River in Ohio. By 1740 he was trading openly with the British and encouraging the Wyandot near Detroit to do likewise. With the outbreak of the King George's War ( 1744-48 ), the Detroit Wyandot, Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi sent their warriors east to help the French defend Montreal from an expected British invasion. However, the Sandusky Wyandot and Mingo remained neutral and stayed home. Meanwhile, Orontony strengthened his ties with the British. In 1745 he concluded a separate peace with the British-allied Cherokee and Chickasaw. he also allowed Pennsylvania traders to build a blockhouse near his village. By 1747 the French alliance was falling apart after a British blockade of Canada had cut the flow of French trade goods. This strengthened the competition from British traders, and attempts by the French to prevent this only made matters worse. Encouraged by the British, Orontony organized a conspiracy against the French and in 1748 burned their trading post at Sandusky. When he moved against Detroit, the Detroit Wyandot refused to join him, and fearing retaliation, Orontony and his followers abandoned their villages and moved west to the White River in Indiana. Orontony continued efforts to form an alliance with the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Miami to defy the French, and his followers did not return to their old villages until after his death. In 1750 the French built a fort at Sandusky to limit Wyandot trade with the British. The revolt of the Wyandot , their most important ally, sent shock waves through New France. In 1749 Pierre-Joseph Celoron was sent into Ohio to expel British traders and mark the boundary of the French claim with lead plates. His reception by the Ohio tribes was cold, almost hostile, since they did not recognize the French claim to the area. A second expedition in 1751 by Chabert de Joncaire met with a simular response, and a Mingo chief asked him by what authority France was claiming land belonging to the Iroquois. Faced with another revolt, the French could only count on the support of the tribes at Detroit and Mackinac, but the Detroit Wyandot were considering tading with the British themselves and had no wish to fight the Ohio tribes. The situation simmered during the smallpox epidemic that swept through the Great Lakes and Ohio Valley in 1751. In June, 1752, Charles Langlade, a mixed-blood Metis, led 250 Ojibwe and Ottawa warriors from Mackinac in an attack on the British trading post an Miami village at Pickawillany ( Piqua, Ohio). Afterwards,the French lowered their prices, increased the supply of trade goods, and began construction of a line of forts intended to block British access to Ohio. The revolt within their alliance collapsed. The Wyandot renewed their attacks on the Chickasaw in 1752, and by July of the following year, the Miami, Potawatomi, and Sauk had stopped trading with the British. However the Ohio tribes, ( Mingo Delaware, and Shawnee) still refused to recognize the French claim and wished to continue their British trade. Seeing the new French forts for what it was---an attempt to bring them under French control, they turned to the Iroquois and British to prevent it. In 1754, Virginia sent troops commanded by a 23-year-old militia major ( George Washington) to demand the French remove their forts. The resulting confrontation started the French and Indian War.( 1755-63 ). ( See George Washington's Diary at this site.) ****************************************************** to be continued in part 3-- ______________________________ ------------------------------ X-Message: #2 Date: Thu, 4 May 2000 03:10:07 -0400 From: "Maggie Stewart" To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <18af01bfb598$46f9dda0$0300a8c0@local.net> Subject: Fw: Bio History -- Know your Ohio -- Ohio's Huron or Wyandot Natives [3] Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley ****************************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley ***************************************************** Ohio's Huron and Wyandot Indians -- part 3. After Washington's failure, the British began to asemble a large army under General Edward Braddock to capture Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh). As the war clouds gathered, the members of the alliance ( including the Wyandot) supported the French, but the Ohio tribes ( Mingo, Delaware, and Shawnee ) should have been British allies, or at the very least, neutral. This was the case until they learned the Iroquois, at the Albany Conference of 1754, had ceded Ohio to the British. At this point they gave up on the British and Iroquois, and declared that Ohio belonged to the people that lived there. However, they still did not immediately turn to the French. In July,1775 Braddock's army moved on Fort Duquesne, only to be defeated in the woods by a mixed force of French and native allies from Canada and the Great Lakes. The leader of the Natives was Alhanase, a Huron war chief from Lorette. Afterwards, Delaware and Shawnee warriors entered the war and, in direct defiance of the Iqoquois, raided British fronter settlements in Pennsyvania and Virginia. The Wyanot and other French allies went east to fight in the French campaigns in northern New York. After the Great Lakes warriors returned from the seige of Fort William Henry in 1757, smallpox swept through the Great Lakes during the winter of 1757-58 which fairly well ended further participation of the alliance tribes in the war. With the capture of Quebec and Fort Niagara in 1759, the war in North America was over. After Montreal surrendered the Brittish occupied Detroit in 1760, and only the Illinois country remained under French control until 1765. The members of the French allience had to come to terms with the British and in 1761 agreed to meet at Detroit with Sir William Johnson, the British Indian Commissioner. It was a large conference attended by Iroquois, Wyandot, Delaware, Shawnee, Mohican, kickapoo, Miami, Ojibwe, Mingo, Ottawa, and Potawatomi. In keeping with the traditions of the old French alliance, the Wyandot were made the keepers of the council fire. Johnson wisely did not wish to change past relationships but only to adapt them to British authority. Unfortunately, Lord Jeffery Amherst, his superior and the British commander in North Amerca, had different ideas. Viewing the former French allies as a conquered people, Amherst raised prices on trade goods and limited the supply of gunpower. This was a disaster. After 150 years of trade, Native Americans had become dependant on European goods. Tensions rose, and aggravated by crop failures and epidemic during 1762, erupted into the Pontiac Rebellion in 1763. The Wyandot reluctantly joined Pontiac and attacked the British fort at Sandusky, but as the seige of Detroit dragged on, the Detroit Wyandot were among the first to ask the British for peace. Pontiac signed a preliminary truce with the British Commander at Detroit in October and withdrew to Indiana. In August.1764 the Ohio Wyandot made peace with the British and signed the Treaty of Presque Isle. The Detroit Wyandot followed suit in September. During the French and India war, Pennsylvania had unilaterally renounced the Iroquois cession of Ohio at the Albany Conference in 1754 and this was a major factor in the lack of resistance the British encountered when they occupied the Ohio Valley in 1760. In the wake of the Pontiac rebellion, the British halted settlement west of the Appalachians in 1763. However, faced with growing discontent in the American colonies, they began negotiations with the Iroquois in 1768 to open Ohio to settlement. After the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, American frontiersmen (Long Knives) swarmed into western Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and eastern Ohio. The alliance had collapsed with the failure of the Pontiac Rebellion, but having learned in 1754 not to depend on the Iroquois, the Shawnee in 1769 made overtures of alliance to Illinois. Wea, Piankashaw, Miami, Kickapoo, Potawatomi, Wyandot, Ottawa, Delaware, Mascouten, Ojibwe, Cherokee, and Chickasaw. Meetings were held at Sciota in 1770 and 1771, but William Johnson's threats of war with the Iroquois kept the tribes divded, and the Shawnee, Delaware and Mingo were forced to stand alone against the "Long Knives" during Lord Dunmore's ( Cresap's ) War ( 1774 ). With the beginning of the American Revolution in 1775, the British ended their neutrality in the struggle between the " Long Knives" and Ohio tribes and urged the Indians to attack American settlements in Kentucky and Pennsylvania. The Shawnee were the most active in this, but they received increasing support from the Detroit and Ohio tribes. In September,1777 a force of 400 Wyandot, Mingo, and Shawnee attacked Fort Henry ( Wheeling, West Virginia) and burned the nearby settlement. The following year, Half King's Wyandot made a feint at Fort Randolf ( Point Pleasant, West Virginia ) and then attacked settlements on the Kanawha River. They also attacked a blockhouse near Fort Union and later joined the British expedition of Captain Henry Bird which ravaged the Kentucky settlements during 1780. In March,1782, Pennsylvania militia massacred 90 Christian Delaware at the Movarian mission at Gnadenhuetten ( Ohio ). Victims included men, women, and over 30 children, and this senseless act added a bitter note of revenge to the struggle. That June an American force under Colonel William Crawford was sent to attack the Sandusky villages. Defeated by a combined force of Delaware and Wyandot, Crawford was captured by the Wyandot. Half King turned him over to the Delaware who burned him at the stake in revenge for the Movarian Delaware killed at Gnadenhuetten. With the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783, the Wyandot had only 100 warriors. The British asked their allies to stop their attacks, but there was little chance of this. The bitter fighting between the Ohio tribes and Long Knives had taken on a life of its own beyond the control of either the British or United States. The warriors fighting for Ohio were determined to keep the Americans out , and the Long Knives did not consider the peace with Britain included Indians, so the fighting continued. The new American Government needed to sell the lands in Ohio to pay its debts from the war, and the British knowing this, saw an opportunity to regain their colonies through economic collapse and refused to withdraw from its forts in the Ohio valley until the Americans paid the obligations to British Loyalists required by the peace treaty. The Long Knives' solution to this impasse was simple. George Rogers Clark, whose victories had given the Americans the Ohio Valley, asked for authorization to raise an army and conquer all the Indians. Congress thanked him for past services but politely refused. Faced with an invasion of Ohio which might threaten Canada, the British encouraged the formation of an new alliance against the Americans. It was formed at a meeting held at the Sandusky villages of the Wyandot in 1783. Although the British did not attend themselves, they brought the Mohawk chief Joseph Brant from Canada to speak and promise their support. Those joining included; Mingo, Wyandot, Miami, Delaware, Shawnee, Kickapoo, Sauk Ottawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Chickamauga ( Cherokee ). The first council fire was moved to the Wyandot village of Brownstown ( just south of Detroit ). Wishing to avoid an expensive war, the Americans in 1784 negotiated a second Treaty of Fort Stanwix with the Iroquois confirming their earlier cession of Ohio. The next step was to reach an agreement with Ohio tribes, but this would be difficult since the Americans refused to recognize the alliance which had been formed at Sandusky the previous year. The Treaty of Fort MacIntosh ( 1775 ) was signed with the Wyandot, Ottawa,Ojibwe, and Delaware where they agreed to American sovereignty over Ohio in exchange for a boundary with white settlement. Half King signed for the Wyandot but later repudiated the agreement. In 1786 a simular treaty was signed with the Shawnee at Fort Finney ( Greater Miami Treaty ), but both of these agreements were doomed. The chiefs who signed did not represent the consensus of the allience and even before Congress had been able to sell the Ohio Company and a New Jersey syndicate, American frontiersman were flooding into Ohio and squatting on land beyond the agreed boundaries. There were 12,000 white settlers north of the Ohio in 1785, and General Josiah Harmer, the American military commander, could neither keep them from encroaching on Native lands nor remove them once they were there. **************************************************** to be continued in part 4 -- The Chippewa Treaty with the Wyandot -- 1785. ______________________________ ------------------------------ X-Message: #3 Date: Thu, 4 May 2000 03:14:00 -0400 From: "Maggie Stewart" To: OH-FOOTSTEPS-L@rootsweb.com Message-ID: <190f01bfb59a$7d047b60$0300a8c0@local.net> Subject: Fw: Bio History -- Know Your Ohio -- Ohio's Huron or Wyandot Natives. [4] Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit ----- Original Message ----- Contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Darlene E. Kelley ****************************************************** Historical Collections of Ohio Know Your Ohio by Darlene E. Kelley. ****************************************************** Ohio's Huron and Wyandot Indians -- Part 4 Chippewa Treaty with the Wyandot -- 1785 The Chippewa Treaty includes 11 articles and is signed at the end. Most of the signatures of the Indians were marked with his x mark. Articles of a treaty concluded at Fort M'Intosh, the twenty-first day of January, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-five, betwen the Commisioners Pienpotentiary of the United States of America, of the one part, and the Sachems and Warriors of the Wyandot of the Wiandot, Delaware, Chippawa, and Ottawa Nations of the other. The Commissioners Pienipotentiary of the United States in Congress assembled, Give peace to the Wiandot, Delaware. Chippews, and Ottawa Nations of Indias, on the following conditions: ARTICLE I. Three chiefs, one from among the Wiandot, and two from among the Delaware Nations, shall be delivered up to the Commissioners of the United States, to be by them retained till all prisoners, white and black taken by the said nations, or any of them shall be restored. ARTICLE II. The said Indian Nations do acknowledge themselves and all their tribes to be under the protection of the United States and no other sovereign whatsoever. ARTICLE III. The boundary line between the United States and the Wiandot, and Delaware nations, shall begin at th mouth of the River Cayahoga and run thence up the said river to the portage between that and the Tus-carawas branch of Meskingum; then down the said branch to the forks at the crossing place above Fort Lawrence; then westerly to the portage of the Big Miami, which runs into the Ohio, at the mouth of which branch the fort stood which was taken by the rench in one thousand seven hundred and fifty-two; then along said portage to the Great Miami or Ome River, and down the south-east side of the same to its mouth; thence along the south shore of Lake Erie, to the mouth of Cayahoga where it began. ARTICLE IV. The United States allot all the lands contained within said lines to the Wiandot and Delaware nations, to live and to hunt on, and to such of the Ottawa nation as now live there on; saving and reserving for the establishment of trading posts, six miles square at the mouth of Miami or Ome River, and the same at the portage on that branch of the Big Miami which runs into the Ohio, and the same on the Lake of Sandusky where the fort formally stood, and also two miles square on each side of the lower rapids of Sanduske river, which posts and the lands annexed to them, shall be to the use and under the government of the United States. ARTICLE V. If any citizen of the United States, or person not being an Indian, shall attempt to settle on any of the lands allotted to the Wiandot and Delaware nations in this treaty, except on th lands reserved to the United States in the preceding article, such person shall forfeit the protection of the United States, and the Indians may punish him as they please. ARTICLE VI. The Indians who sign this treaty, as well in behalf of all their tribes as of themselves, do acknowledge the lands east, south and west of the lines described in the third article, so far as the said Indians formaly claimed the same to belong to the United States; and none of the tribes shall presume to settle upon the same, or any part of it. ARTICLE VII. The post of Detroit, with a district beginning a the Mouth of the River Rosine, on the west end of Lake Erie, and running west six miles up the southern bank of the said river, thense northerly and always six miles west of the strait, till it strikes the Lake St.Clair, shall be also reserved to the sole use of the United States. ARTICLE VIII. In the same manner the post of Michillimachenac with its dependencies, and twelve mles square about the same, shall be reserved to the use of the United States. ARTICLE IX. If any Indian or Indians shall commit a robbery or murder on ny citizen of the United States, the tribe to which such offenders may belong, shall be bound to deliver them up at the nearest post, to be punished according to the ordinances of the United States. ARTICLE X. The Commissioners of the United States, in pursuance of the humane and liberal views of Congress, upon this treaty's being signed, will direct goods to be distributed among the different tribes for their use and comfort. SEPERATE ARTICLE. It is agreed that the Delaware chiefs, Kelelamand or Lieutenant-Colonel Henry. Hengue Pushees or the Big Cat. Wicocalind or Captain White Eyes, who took up the hatchet for the United States, and their families, shall be received into the Delaware nation, in the same situation and rank as before the war, and enjoy their due portions of America, or as any other person or persons in the said nation. Go. Clark, Richard Butler, Arthur Lee, Daunghquat, his x mark, Abraham Kuhn, his x mark, Ottawerren, his x mark, Hobocan, his x mark, Walendightun, his x mark, Talapoxic, his x mark, Wingenum, his x mark, Packelant, his x mark, Ginewanno, his x mark, Waanoos, his x mark, Konalawassee, his x mark, Shawnaqum, his x mark, Quecookkia, his x mark, Witness; Sam'l J. Atlee, Fras. Johnston, Pennsylvania Commissioners; Alex. Campbell Jos. Harmer, Lieutenant-Colonel commadant. Alex. Lowrey Joseph Nicholas, Interpreter, I. Bradford, George Slaughter, Van Swearingen John Boggs G. Evans, D. Luckett. ****************************************************** to be con't in part 5-- -------------------------------- End of OH-FOOTSTEPS-D Digest V00 Issue #155 *******************************************