“The name which the
Shawannees give (the river) Siota has slipt my memory, but it
signified 'Hairy River.' The Indians tell us that when they came
first to live here, deers were so plenty,that in the vernal
season, when they came to drink, the stream would be thick of hairs;
hence they gave it the
name.”
– The Journal of Rev.
David Jones, 1772-1773
In a previous entry, I wrote of the
Scioto Trail and its importance to Native Americans and to early
white settlers. I want to follow up on that report with some more
local history that occurred in relation to the early settlements on
and nearby the trail. The links I discovered uncovered interesting
information about famous Native Americans and about significant
archeological finds. I hope local historians will use this blog to
further investigation into our beautiful homeland.
Ancient Mound Builders populated our
area before their mysterious disappearance. And, the Fort Ancient
peoples are now accepted as an independently developed culture that
descended from the Hopewell culture (100 BCE–500 CE). Much later,
groups like the Shawnee, Miami, Delaware, and Wyandot re-filled some
of Ohio (the Shawnee in particular are known to have lived in the
Scioto Valley), but by then, their way of life had changed much from
pre-contact times, looking much less like Fort Ancient and much more
like the Euro-American pioneers who would, in the mid-late 1700s,
begin to push them out of Ohio.
The nearest well-documented Fort
Ancient village is the Feurt Village site along U.S. Route 23 and
just north of Portsmouth. Just north of that, near the south edge of
Lucasville, is the Schisler Village site, though this site is less
well documented. I will reveal much more about the Feurt and Schisler
sites a little later in this entry.
It is possible that there are many 18
undocumented Fort Ancient sites in the floodplains above and below
Piketon. However, there is little information available for the area
concerning the period from 1650 to the 1790s, when Euro-Americans
began flooding into the Scioto Valley. This period in Ohio is
referred to as the Protohistoric period. It indicates the brief time
when European manufactured goods such as beads, axes, knives, and
kettles are traded into an area but before there are any historic
records.
Several individuals are known to have
traveled through the area and written journals during their travels,
including Christopher Gist in 1750, William Trent in 1752, and the
Reverend David Jones in 1772-1773. Since both Gist and Trent were
visiting the Shawnee towns at the mouth of the Scioto and traveled
back and forth to Pickawillany, a Miami town with an English trading
fort near modern day Piqua, Ohio, it is likely that many other
Euro-Americans also were traveling around southern Ohio in the
early-mid 1700s.
According to a report from the U.S.
Department of Energy (2015) ...
“Several historic maps (e.g.,
the Mitchell 1755 map, the Pownall 1776 map, and the Hutchins 1777
Map (all shown in Smith 1977) show the famous Scioto Trail running
north-south along the Scioto River, but only two Native American
villages are shown in the lower Scioto Valley. A Delaware village of
as many as twenty families (Smith 1977), that of Wanduchales, is
present on the Mitchell 1755 map and reappears on the Pownall 1776
and Hutchins 1777 maps.
“One wonders, however, if the
village was still there in 1777 or if Hutchins had just copied over
its location from the earlier maps. Smith (1977), likely informed by
Christopher Gist’s journal, suggests that Wanduchales’ (or
Windaughalah) town, also known as the Lower Delaware Town, was
founded as early as 1738 and was located on the east side of the
Scioto River in Clay Township, Scioto County.
“The only other Native American
village or town to appear on any maps of the lower Scioto valley
(i.e., below Chillicothe) is Hurricane Tom’s town, which is shown
on the west side of the Scioto River, opposite its confluence with
Salt Creek and near what today is the small town of Higby. Many
Shawnee villages are known from the Portsmouth area and around
Chillicothe, but none have been recorded near Piketon.”
* Note – Piketon was
originally called “Jefferson,” and it was laid off on what was
called “Miller's Bank” in a tract ceded to the United States
(Virginia Military District). About 1795, early settlers from
Kentucky, known as Mr. Miller and Mr. Owens, quarreled about the
spot. In the fray Owns shot Miller, whose bones may be found interred
near the lower end of the high bank, which was then in Washington
County, the Scioto being then the line between Washington and Adams
counties. Owens was taken to Marietta, where he was tried and
acquitted.
Artist Daniel Huntington -- Washington and Gist Crossing Allegheny River
Christopher Gist
Christopher Gist, (1706-1759) was
perhaps the best known early explorer of the Ohio Valley and its
tributaries. Gist provided England and its colonists with the first
detailed description of southern Ohio and northeastern Kentucky.
While Daniel Boone is generally given credit for opening Kentucky to
white settlement, Gist preceded the frontiersman by more than fifteen
years.
Through his connection to the Ohio
Company, Gist developed a close association with George Washington.
Traveling with Washington to the Ohio Country in 1754, Gist served as
scout, messenger, and Indian agent. It was Gist’s reconnaissance
that alerted Washington to the French presence at Great Meadows and
allowed for the subsequent massacre of Jumonville’s forces. Gist
was also at the battle at Fort Necessity the following month. During
this time with Washington, Gist solidified his place in history,
twice saving the young colonel's life.
Earlier, in the autumn of 1750, the
Virginia Land Company employed Christopher Gist, pioneer and
woodsman, to explore its alleged possessions on the Ohio and the
tributaries of that river. On January 16, 1751, Gist and company
crossed the Licking, on on the 19th, they arrived at a
small Delaware village bearing the name of Hockhoeking. From there,
he passed on to Maguck, another Delaware village, situated near the
Scioto. And on January 24, they went south fifteen miles to a town
called Hurricane Tom's Town near the present Pike County border,
approximately four miles from Salt Lick Creek.
Not only was Gist a trained surveyor,
but also he kept three detailed journals that attest “to his
thoroughness and intelligence.” His writing presents impressive
descriptive abilities. Here is his account of Monday, January 28,
1751 in which Gist describes the Delaware Chief Windaughala and his
people:
“We went into Council with the
Indians of this Town, and after the Interpreter had informed them of
his instructions from the Governor of Pennsylvania, and given them
some Cautions in Regard to the French they returned for answer as
follows. The Speaker with four strings of Wampum in his Hand stood up
and addressing himself as to the Governor of Pennsylvania, said
'Brothers, We the Delawares return You our Heart thanks for the News
you have sent Us, and We assure You, We will not hear the Voice of
any other Nation for We are to be directed by You our Brothers the
English, & by none Others: We shall be glad what Our Brothers
have to say to us at the Loggs Town in the Spring, and to assure You
of our Hearty Good will & Love to Our Brothers We present you
with these four Wampum.'
This is the last Town of the Delawares to
the Westward – The Delaware Indians by the best Accounts I could
gather Consist of about 500 fighting Men all firmly attached to the
English Interest, they are not properly a part of the Six Nations,
but are scattered about among most of the Indians of the Ohio, and
some of them amongst the six Nations, from whom they have Leave to
Hunt upon their Land.”
Chief Windaughalah
On the east branch of the Scioto, in
the present Clay Township, Scioto County, there existed a small
village of about twenty Delaware families (and also “a Negro man
that belonged to the chief”). There dwelt Windaughalah, a great war
chief during the French wars. His name implies “ambassador.” He
was a prominent counselor in peace times named in many important
treaties.
Christopher Gist, himself, wrote in his
journal under the date of January 27, 1751, that the town last named
was a small village of the Delawares, and that he lodged there "at
the house of an Indian whose name was Windaughalah, a great man and
chief of this town, and much in the English interest." Later,
this town was abandoned. Windaughalah lived at Tuscarawas in 1762,
where he had the figure of a water lizard tattooed on his face above
the chin; he was then named Swe-gach-shasin.
This chief appeared at a conference
held in Pittsburgh on July 5, 1759 between George Croghan, Deputy
Indian Agent with chief responsibility for the Ohio region tribes,
and the Indian chiefs and warriors of the Six Nations, Shawanese,
Delawares, and Wyandots. Windaughalah was also at a conference
between Governor Hamilton and many other Indian nations. And in
January 1785 at the Treaty of Fort McIntosh, while representing the
Delawares and Wyandots, the chief executed a deed to the State of
Pennsylvania for the remainder of their lands within that state. As
the oldest, or the “Council Don,” he signed the agreement first.
Buckongahelas, was the son of
Windaughalah. Buckongahelas is the subject of the famous Journeycake
account, and his lineage reveals the story of the first American
Indian to be ordained a Roman Catholic priest in the United States.
Aren't the connections to local history simply amazing?
Artist Depiction of Buckongahelas
Buckongahelas
Buckongahelas first received the
surname “Journeycake” after Indians of another tribe kidnapped
the little boy at age six. After escaping from his kidnappers several
months following his abduction, the child, known as “The Buck,”
survived by eating a large corn cake during his return journey to his
father, Chief Windaughala; thus, “Buck” earned the name
“Journeycake” from his father and the other tribal elders.
Buckongahelas grew up to become a
mighty war chief of the Delaware Nation, who would in his life meet
with presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Three of his
sons were murdered in separate incidents. One son, the teenager
Mahonegon, was shot in the back in a forest that then was part of
Virginia, later West Virginia in June 1773. His murderer was Captain
William White, a white man who had killed several other Indian
individuals and families. (Local legend states that the current
Upshur County Courthouse was built over the grave of Mahonegon.)
* Background Note – John
and Samuel Pringle, local settlers of the area, had enlisted
in the Army where they served at the British Garrison at Fort Pitt
during the French and Indian War. The Pringle brothers left the fort
without permission in 1761 and wandered the Buckhannon Valley
wilderness as trappers and traders for several years before taking up
residence in the hollow cavity of a large sycamore tree from about
1764 to 1767. The tree, located near the confluence of Turkey Run and
the Buckhannon River in present Upshur County, supposedly had a
cavity so large that an eight-foot fence rail could be turned inside
it.
Upon John Pringle’s 1768 return from the trading post on the
South Branch, where he had gone to buy ammunition, the brothers
decided they were no longer considered renegades and left their tree
home. By 1769, they had led a small group of settlers back to the
Buckhannon Valley to begin a permanent settlement there.
Chief Buckongahelas (for whom the
Buckhannon Valley is named) had welcomed the Pringle brothers and
their friends there, but following his son’s murder, he “turned
his face and heart away from white skins – and joined the British
in the Revolutionary War.”
After the Revolutionary War, the United
States claimed the Ohio Country by right of conquest through its
defeat of Great Britain. In the late 1780s, Buckongahelas joined a
Shawnee-led confederacy to try to repel the American settlers who had
begun migrating west of the Appalachian Mountains, using the Ohio
River to penetrate the territory.
The confederacy won several battles
against the Americans in the Northwest Indian Wars. Buckongahelas led
his warriors in helping to win the most devastating military victory
ever achieved by Native Americans in the United States, in 1791
against General Arthur St. Clair, who lost 600 troops. The Delaware
described Buckongahelas as their own George Washington.
The confederacy was finally defeated at
the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1794. The British failed to support
the Indian confederacy after this battle, and Buckongahelas signed
the Treaty of Greenville on August 3, 1795. By this treaty, his band
and other Lenape ceded much land in Pennsylvania and Ohio to the
United States.
The Delaware were coerced by the U.S.
government to move from their lands more often than any other
American Indian tribe. The U.S. government forced the Delaware to
leave their “forever home” on their reservation between
Leavenworth and Lawrence in Kansas, where they had lived less than 38
years until railroad officials coveted their land and railroaded them
into Indian Territory. At the end of the line for the tribe, the
Delaware Nation didn’t even have its own reservation, as promised
by the U.S. government, but were ordered to move onto Cherokee lands.
The
book, Journeycake Saga,
follows three of Buckongahelas's other sons, Kistawa,
Whapakong, and Solomon, as they struggled to adjust to the wave of
settlers who washed unto the shores of the country into their lands.
Kistawa and his brother Whapakong both were murdered separately
within one year. Watomika, son of Kistawa and the French woman Marie,
witnessed the deaths of both his father and his uncle. Watomika holds
a special place in American history.
Watomika
At the age of eleven, the
grief-stricken Watomika, or “the Swift-Footed One,” was taken to
Marietta College in Ohio in 1834 where he received his first literate
education. It was there he was converted to Christianity and where he
prepared for ministry in the Presbyterian church. It was some twelve
years later, however, while on a visit to St. Louis that he was
confirmed into the Catholic church and later entered the Jesuit
Order.
In his later years Watomika become the
first Native American ordained a Catholic priest in the United
States. He took on the name Father James Bouchard and became
known as the “Eloquent Indian.”
Pat McNamara of Patheous
described Father Bouchard as “an orator of premier rank who held
forth in the baroque style of his era as preacher, lecturer, and
conversationalist, he had no equal in California. For three decades,
audiences listened in open-mouthed amazement to the eloquent Indian,
charmed by the sound of his silvery voice, by the power of his
nervous eloquence.”
Msgr. Patrick Riordan, Archbishop of
San Francisco would reserve the following words of praise at the time
of the priest's death in San Francisco on December 27, 1889:
"To no man in all the West
is the Church of God more beholden than to Father James Bouchard of
the Society of Jesus. He kept the faith in the mining districts; he
sustained the dignity of God's Holy Church in the midst of ignorance
and misunderstanding and everywhere championed her rights. My debt to
him, and I speak for my brother bishops, is incalculable.”
*Note – Bouchard's Uncle Solomon, the
fourth son of Buckongahelas, died in bed of old age after an exciting
life as a guide for the famed explorer of the West, John C. Fremont,
whose life Solomon saved when he led him out of a wild prairie fire.
Father James Bouchard
Schisler Village Site
On Thanksgiving Day in 1942, Philip
Keintz and H. R. McPherson were digging in the Schisler Village Site
of the Fort Ancient Culture, on the east side of the Scioto River,
about one mile south of Lucasville. Keintz reported they had spent a
number of days at this site “with only moderate results.” But, on
that day they came upon a burial. The account of the find ...
“Soon were found seven nicely-chipped
triangular arrow points of dark-gray flint, from one and one-fourth
to one and one-half inches in length; one flint blade of similar
material two and one-fourth inches long; two flint drills from one
and three-fourth to two and one-fourth inches long; five nice flaking
tools of antler from two and one-half to four and one-fourth inches
in length ; one very fine cutting instrument fashioned from a beaver
tooth and about three inches long; seven broken-off antler tips
intended as a 'stock supply' for arrow points or flaking tools when
needed; and two paint stones of limestone burned to a reddish texture
– in all twenty-six items, pipe included.”
It was the pipe found that day that
drew the greatest interest. Here is the description:
“It is cut from reddish-brown,
compact -grained sandstone, and is admirably and boldly executed. The
pipe is two and five-eighth inches in height, two and one-fourth
inches in diameter find may be considered 'roundish' in
cross-section. However, it is slightly oval with the greater diameter
from the front to back. The bowl is one and one-eighth inches in
diameter and practically two inches in depth. Workmanship i n
connection with the inner carving of the bowl is equally as good as
that of the exterior. The interior of the bowl is slightly blackened,
apparently from smoking. The stem hole tapers from one-half to
three-sixteenths of an inch . The pipe is outstanding not only from
its numerous fine characteristics but also from the story it mutely
depicts regarding the style or method of cutting end wearing the
hair.
“It is sculptured t o denote the hair
as cut and hanging in "bobbed fashion" on each side and
entirely around the back of the head. The outer layer of the hair at
the back of the neck was bobbed, while the under layer in the same
area is bobbed about twice as long as that above and at the sides of
the head. The hair on the top of the head was permitted to grow long
and evidently was divided into two queues …
“Another very interesting feature is
the co-called 'weeping eye' design beneath each eye. This unique
design has been noted previously in Ohio, where it was carved on
objects of stone, bone and shell found at the Madisonville Village
Site of the Fort Ancient Culture. The same design has been noted on
shell gorgets from the Temple Hound in Oklahoma, from mounds in
Tennessee, " ' and from other southern states. An interesting
viewpoint of the weeping eye design may be obtained by looking at the
pipe upside down. In some instances the design appears in a somewhat
different form - sometimes having three points downward. An
interesting sidelight in connection with the type and variety of
artifacts found with this burial, is the similarity to two others
which may bo mentioned at this time.burial about three miles
northwest of Circleville, discovered by Mr, H. R. McPherson in
December, 1946.”
Sources
Carmean, Kelli (Winter 2009), Points in
time: Assessing a Fort Ancient triangular projectile point typology,
Southeastern Archaeology, p. 2
Christopher Gist's Journals: With
Historical, Geographical and Ethnological ...William McCullough
Darlington.
“First Indian ordained a priest in
the United States Book highlights Kansan Father Bouchard and his
Delaware family. The Southwest Kansas Register. September 14, 2014
Page 11
Charles A. Hanna. The Wilderness
Trail, Volume II. 1911.
Henry Howe. Historical Collections
of Ohio: In Three Volumes ; an Encyclopedia of the State. Volumes
2-3. 1907.
Pat McNamara. “First Native American
Jesuit.” Patheous. September 06, 2009.
Albert M. Pecora, Ph.D. and Jarrod
Burks, Ph.D. OVAI Contract Report #2012-4 Phase II Archeological
Investigations of 33PK347...(PORTS). Pike County. April 28, 2014.
Ohio Archaeologist, Vol. 1,
Number 2. New Series - July 1951 Ohio Indian Relic Collectors
Society Columbus, Ohio
Charlene Scott-Myers. The
Journeycake Saga. 2014.
VOL. 1 NUMBE R 3 New Series. October
1951 Ohio Indian Relic Collectors Society Columbus, Ohio.
Richard White. The Middle Ground:
Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991
