View of the Ohio Valley from Raven Rock
“Lower Shawnee Town
was a 'Super Village,' at least twice as big as it protohistoric or
prehistoric predecessors and larger than most contemporary Native
American settlements in the region. Its inhabitants were a diverse
lot, a mixture of indigenous people, Europeans, Africans, and
offspring of their unions. Permanent native residents, transient
French and English traders on business, native and European captives,
relatives visiting from Shawnee towns located up the Ohio or even
farther away, and diplomats and spies of all nationalities spent time
in the town.”
-- Craig Thompson
Friend, The Buzzel about Kentuck: Settling the Promised Land
How many area residents know of the
tremendous importance and influence of an 18th century
town at the convergence of the Scioto and Ohio rivers? Have they even
read of a place called “Sonnontio” and considered how the
cultural exchange in that place formed a unique, often uneasy society
that crossed national and international boundaries?
Lower Shawnee Town, or Sonnontio, or
Sonhioto, or Shannoah or the Bentley Site – many names exist for
the settlement located on the second flood terrace of the Ohio at the
mouth of the Scioto River. The grounds were home to an ancient
culture archaeological site (Fort Ancient Culture) that later became
a large network of Native American villages. At one point the
population may have been as high as 1500 people, with 100 houses
north of the Ohio River and another 40 on the Kentucky side.
Growing European populations on the
east coast of North America and in southern Canada had caused Native
American populations to concentrate in the Ohio River Valley, and
Lower Shawnee Town was situated at a convenient point, accessible to
many communities living on tributaries of the Ohio River.
Craig Thompson Friend writes that
natives found the Ohio and Scioto valleys fertile places to live …
“Land rich with the resources
slash-and-burn farmer-hunters required: fertile soil, a mosaic of
mixed hardwood forests, flat grassy plains, canebrakes, salt and
freshwater springs, and clear streams. Deer, bear, elk, and bison
wandered the countryside; wild plants and nut-bearing trees were
abundant. Chert-bearing bedrocks and clay-bearing river banks
provided the essential materials for tools and durable containers.”
The opportunity to trade for furs and
to broker political alliances also attracted both British and French
traders and the town became a key center in dealings with other
tribes and with Europeans. Therefore, between about 1735 and 1758,
Lower Shawnee Town became a center for commerce and diplomacy, "a
sort of republic populated by a diverse array of migratory peoples”
(the Iroquois, the Delawares, the Miamis, and the Shawnee) supplied
by British traders.
Some historians have described the
place as “the most important British trading village NW of the Ohio
River” while other, less complimentary sources say it was “a
village of mixed ethnicities with a large number of bad characters of
various nations.”
Located at the confluence of the Scioto
and Ohio Rivers, the village sat astride three important trade,
travel, and communication routes of the time:
- The Warriors' Path, the major north-south Indian trail that may have had great antiquity;
- The overland Pennsylvania traders' path to Muskingum and Pickawillany, which led north and northwest from the towns; and
- The Scioto and Ohio river systems, which offered access both access north-south and east-west.
The town also lay near the Seneca
Trail, which was used by Cherokees and Catawbas, and it was
surrounded by fertile, alluvial flatlands that were ideal for growing
corn. The Shawnee were the settlement's largest ethnic contingent,
and these people shared origins in village-based tribal farming
societies. Care of their corn fields was the responsibility of the
women. Many important Shawnee ceremonies were tied to the
agricultural cycle: the spring bread dance at planting time; the
green corn dance when crops ripened; and the autumn bread dance to
celebrate the harvest.
The Shawnee considered the Delaware as
their "grandfathers" and the source of all Algonquin
tribes. They also shared an oral tradition with the Kickapoo that
they were once members of the same tribe. The loss of their homeland
has given the Shawnee the reputation of being wanderers, but this was
by necessity, not choice.
The Shawnee have always maintained a
strong sense of tribal identity, but this produced very little
central political organization. During their dispersal, each of their
five divisions functioned as an almost autonomous unit. This
continued to plague them after they returned to Ohio, and few Shawnee
could ever claim to the title of "head chief." Like the
Delaware, Shawnee civil chiefships were hereditary and held for life.
The native community a the mouth of the
Scioto River was less a village and more of a “district extending
along the wide Scioto River and narrower Ohio River floodplains and
terraces.” It was a sprawling series of wickiups and longhouses, so
expansive that French and British traders regarded Lower Shawneetown
as “one of two capitals of the Shawnee tribe" (aka
Chalahgawtha meaning "principal place").
Shannoah, on the Kentucky bank, became
the first village in Kentucky built by Shawnee Indians and French
traders sometime around 1830. But, in time, the village became a
formidable threat to French ambitions. The French under Beauharnois
pressed the Shawnees to move to Detroit with no success.
English adventurers did eventually make
their way to Shannoah. On March 6, 1750, early explorer Christopher
Gist wrote that he "killed a fat Bear" nearby. Gist would
later guide Major George Washington on missions during the French &
Indian War.
In 1751, Gist noted in his journal:
"Set out...to the Mouth of
Sciodoe Creek opposite to the Shannoah Town, here we fired our Guns
to alarm the Traders, who soon answered, and came and ferryed Us over
to the Town — The Land about the Mouth of Sciodoe Creek is rich but
broken fine Bottoms upon the River & Creek. The Shannoah Town is
situated upon both Sides the River Ohio, just below the Mouth of
Sciodoe Creek, and contains about 300 Men, there are about 40 Houses
on the S Side of the River and about 100 on the N Side, with a Kind
of State-House of about 90 Feet long, with a light Cover of Bark in
which they hold their Councils."
Shannoah was abandoned about November
1758, perhaps because of a 1753 flood, or maybe because of the French
and Indian War, which began in 1755 in the Ohio Valley. After
Shannoah was abandoned, the Lower Shawnee Town community on the north
bank remained for a number of years before it, too, was deserted.
The population relocated to another
site further up the Scioto River. Perhaps it was increased contact
with whites on the Ohio River that persuaded the Shawnee to abandon
the area. Whatever the reason, by 1760, the Shawnee had consolidated
near present day Chillicothe, Ohio. Other evidence of these Indian
towns are found on John Filson's 1784 map of Kentucky, which notes an
"Old Shawnee Town" on the north side of the Ohio River
where it and the Scioto River join.
As Native sojourners who moved every
generation for more than 250 years, the Shawnees adopted a wide range
of identities, and the differences among them accelerated over time.
Through migration, the Shawnee and their neighbors adapted to
disease, warfare, and dislocation by interacting with colonizers as
slavers, mercenaries, guides, and traders. These adaptations enabled
them to preserve their cultural identities and resist coalescence
without forsaking their linguistic and religious traditions.
Lower Shawnee Town was excavated in the
1930s and was discovered to have had similar structures and building
techniques as those found at another nearby Fort Ancient site, the
Hardin Village Site located 8.1 miles up the Ohio. Also found during
the excavations were distinctive Madisonville horizon pottery,
including cordmarked, plain and grooved-paddle jars, as well as a
variety of chert points, scrapers and ceremonial pipes.
Many 18th century European trade goods
were also found at the site, including guns, gunspalls (manufactured
gunflints) and gunflints, gun parts (sideplates, mainsprings, ram
pipes, and breech plugs), wire-wound and drawn glass beads, tinkling
cones, a button, pendants, an earring, cutlery, kettle ears, a key,
nails, chisels, hooks, a buckle, a Jew's harp, and pieces of a pair
of iron scissors.
* Historical Note – By
the 1600's Native Americans of the Northeast had acquired a wealth of
knowledge for working European sheet metals which was no doubt
combined with experience in indigenous copper before contact. Both
men and women wore tinkling cones for their dancing.
Even the tiniest pieces and
scraps of copper and brass were recycled. Native Americans of New
England mastered techniques of cutting, drilling, etching, forming,
joining, and decorating indigenous and European sheet metal. Because
of the skill required to make many of the rolled and riveted items,
and because of the similarity between items made by both coastal and
interior groups of Natives, there may have been Native metal work
specialists who traded their products inland (Wray et. al. 1987).
The next time you cross over the Scioto
River that links Portsmouth and its West Side, take a close look at
the scenery. Imagine the appeal of the enduring landscape and how
these natural resources helped form the vibrant community at the site
of Lower Shawnee Town in the 18th century. Let the vivid
imagery transport you to this time and consider what it meant to be
in this place once inhabited by a truly distinct mixture of
population.
Consider the beginnings of America as
we know it and the long history that even predated European
discovery. No wonder the place called “Lower Shawnee Town, or
Sonnontio, or Sonhioto, or Shannoah” was a Super Village. We must
acknowledge the heritage afforded by those in a colorful, diverse
past and use this understanding to cultivate the same beautiful land
we occupy today. How rich the harvest.
Allow me to leave you with a few more
words by Craig Thompson Friend about the people in Lower Shawnee Town
...
“The intermarriage and ethnic
diversity within these settlements created a multitude of new kinship
and social situations, adding layers of ethnic, social, and village
relationships. Thus, the potential for factionalism and the
development of different European responses may have been even
greater in these villages than in traditional single-ethnic villages.
As autonomous communities, these republics existed politically beyond
the control of the French, British, and even the Six Nations at
Onondaga, and their residents were responsible only to themselves.
Thus, they had the freedom to make decisions based on their own
needs, traditions, and cultural proscriptions, and they could ally
themselves with whomever they wished or change their alliances with
it suited their needs.”
Scioto, here is history in your own
backyard. Please, take it to heart.
Sources:
David
Pollack and A. Gwynn Henderson, "A Preliminary Report on the
Contact Period Occupation at Lower Shawneetown (l5GP15), Greenup
County, Kentucky.” Paper presented at the 58th Annual Meeting of
the Central States Anthropological Society on April 9, 1982.
Craig Thompson Friend, editor. Klotter,
James C., and James Klotter. “Foreword.” The Buzzel About
Kentuck: Settling the Promised Land. University Press of
Kentucky. 1999.
Stephen Warren. Worlds the Shawnees
Made: Migration and Violence in Early America. 2016.
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