Local history buffs will appreciate this poetic description of the Lower Scioto Valley. It gracefully recalls the splendid natural beauty of our home …
“The present boundary of the Lower Scioto Valley was first made the home of the palefaces in 1795. That year civilization first secured it for its home. It was then a part of the territory of the Northwest, its eastern portion, east of the Scioto River, however, being included within the bounds of the new-made county of Washington. At that time Ohio could boast of but three counties within her limits – Washington, Hamilton and Wayne, the latter extending so far as to include all of the State of Michigan, besides other territory, and her county seat was Detroit.
“This country was the home of the red men, a home from which they were loth to part. God had given them this beautiful valley of the Scioto for their home. It was a migratory field for the restless buffalo; the elk and the bear roamed its wooded hills; the deer and wild turkey made it their home; the valleys and the upland were filled with small game; fish sported in the cool and pellucid (translucently clear) waters of its rivers and creeks, and in shadowy nooks, near bubbling springs and crystal fountains, the aborigines built their wigwams. It was a paradise for the hunter, and the Indians roamed lord of all.
“In 1795 the valley of the Scioto, with its wealth of forest and stream, with its high and rolling upland, bold bluffs and nestling valleys, became the property of the palefaces, and that which stood for centuries in its wild and rugged grandeur was, ere long, to assume a prominent place in the future of our State.
“The pioneers of Ohio, especially those who settled in the valley of the Ohio and its tributary streams, like the Scioto, Hocking and Muskingum, came generally from the older States which were upon the border, like Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kentucky, but not a few found their way from the Atlantic States, and from those composing New England.”
(History of Lower Scioto Valley: Together with Sketches of Its Cities, Villages and Townships, Educational, Religious, Civil, Military, and Political History, Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Representative Citizens. 1884. Reprinted 2007)
In this same volume, editors also recalled a lack of a natural crystalline compound vital to human existence. In the fertile Lower Scioto Valley, salt was very scarce.
“One of the greatest troubles that the pioneers had to contend with was the extreme scarcity of salt, and the high price of that essential article often caused severe privation. At the time of the first settlement of the Scioto Valley, it was sold for $6 to $8 a bushel, and had to be packed on horseback a great distance. As early as 1788, when the first colony arrived at Marietta, it had been rumored that salt springs existed on a stream, since called Salt Creek, which flows into the Muskingum River, near Duncan’s Falls, Muskingum County, and even during the Indian war a party was sent up the river from Marietta to search for them. The exploration was made at great risk, but the springs were not found. White men, held as prisoners by the Indians, had seen them make salt at these springs, and had noted their locality.
“An accurate description of the country having been gained from these persons, another exploring party of hunters and experienced woodsmen were sent out, a year or two later, to find the springs. This time they were successful, and brought back with them a small supply of the precious article.
“In 1790 a joint stock company was formed of fifty shareholders, at $1.50 each, making a capital of $75, with the object of buying castings, erecting a furnace, and manufacturing salt. Twenty-four kettles were bought at Pittsburg, and transported by water to Duncan’s Falls, and thence, on pack-horses, to the salt springs, seven miles further. A well was dug, near the edge of the stream, about fifteen feet deep, to the bed rock, through the crevices of which the salt water oozed and rose, though not very abundantly. The trunk of a hollow sycamore tree was fixed in the well to exclude the fresh water. A furnace was built, of two ranges with twelve kettles each. The water was raised from the well by a sweep and pole.
“The company was divided into ten sections of five men each, who worked in turns for two weeks at a time, and the works were thus kept in operation day and night, the men standing regular watches. They were thus able to make about 100 pounds of salt in twenty-four hours, using about 1,600 gallons of water. This was the first attempt to manufacture salt in Ohio, and the product was a very inferior and costly article. For several years all, of the salt used by the pioneers of the valley was brought from these works, and from the Scioto salt licks, in Jackson County, on pack-horses, of which an extended notice will be found in the Jackson County department of this work.”
( History of Lower Scioto Valley: Together with Sketches of Its Cities, Villages and Townships, Educational, Religious, Civil, Military, and Political History, Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Representative Citizens. 1884. Reprinted 2007)
Of course, salt is necessary for heart function, joint function, metabolism, and kidney function; without the correct balance of salt and minerals we would literally die. According to the American Heart Association (AHA), the minimum physiological requirement for sodium is less than 500 mg a day – or less than the amount in one quarter of one teaspoon of table salt.
Thus, salt always has been extremely valuable. For example, in ancient Europe, salt and gold were traded evenly, pound for pound, and the English word “salary” refers to people being paid in salt. Humans started realizing the importance of salt in their diet in ancient times after they started cultivating their own farms and began relying less on wild game (which was the primary source of salt).
And, remember, in those days that Ohio was settled, many of foods were carried with people – not just pemmican and jerky, but also other snacks prepared for easy travel. This is one of many reasons that salt became one of the most sought-after commodities during those times – it was a preservative. Not iodized sodium chloride like the table salt of today, but real, whole salt from the oceans and salt flats.
Salt was also necessary to tan hides and to stabilize dyes. Without the ability to work hides, winters would have been unbearably cold and portable shelter would have taken a lot more effort to construct.
Salt was one of the most needed and scarcest commodities on the frontier. At the time of its exploration, Scioto Saline or Scioto Salt Licks along Salt Lick Creek in Jackson County was the most important mineral industry in Ohio. Scioto Salt Licks figured prominently in the development of Ohio.
So it was that the City of Jackson was "The Center of Early Salt Boiling.” Native Americans obtained salt here at the licks for at least 8,000 years and did so until 1795 when the Treaty of Greenville separated the Native American and European populations. Early pioneer settlers utilized the licks in the second half of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries, constructing salt furnaces that extended for four miles up and down Salt Lick Creek.
Note: Trade in salt may go back to the Hopewell era (roughly between 100 BCE and 400 CE). The McKittrick Earthworks were built by the Scioto Hopewell at this time, very close (less than half a mile) to spring of Salt Creek in Ohio, which were used by Native peoples to acquire salt into the historic period. (The Ohio Hopewell group were wealthy and able to buy or trade with other groups for these minerals. The currency used to acquire these exotic minerals is left to conjecture, but it might be as simple as salt.) We don't know if the Hopewell used salt for their food, though it is likely; what we do know is that they used it in their art, adding a patina to their copper.
(Daniel Troy Case and Christopher Carr. The Scioto Hopewell and Their Neighbors: Bioarchaeological Documentation and Cultural Understanding. 2008.)
Original map of the center of the Scioto Salt Reserve as mapped by Eli Langham, 1798, by order of Congress, 1796.
One of the "Salt Springs" is shown to be in Section 19 on the north side of the meander. The other "Salt Springs" shown on the 1798 plat map made by Elias Langham was in the north end of the east half of Section 29 and specifically spotted along the north bank of Salt Lick Creek and east of the mouth of Sugar run.
There are a surprising number of references to the "Scioto Salt Springs" and "Scioto Salt Works" as they were known to the Native Americans, traders, and settlers until their decline about 1816. At that time “Salt Lick Town” became Jackson, Ohio.
(Emmett A. Conway, Sr. “The Scioto Salt Springs and the Scioto Salt Works. oldeforester.com. 1977.)
Salt springs were also a natural gathering place for grazing animals. The Scioto Licks at Jackson exhibited all the characteristics of this activity, having been available for countless centuries – even preceding the Glacial Period when extinct animals inhabited the region.
The earliest method of obtaining salt used by Native Americans and early settlers was to dig shallow pits into the Sharon sandstone during low water when the rock was exposed in the stream bed. These pits would slowly fill with weak brine which was dipped out and boiled over fire. Pioneer salt boilers soon found out that brine would accumulate in pits up to thirty feet deep. These pits, or wells, were cased at the surface with a hollow black gum log in order to prevent an inflow of surface water.
Christopher Gist, a professional surveyor and explorer for The Ohio Company of Virginia (not the later Ohio Company from New England who settled Marietta), provides the first English description of the Scioto Salt Springs at Jackson when nine days later he had left the Pickaway Plains Indian town of Maguck for Lower Shawnee Town at the mouth of the Scioto River.
Gist's party of traders and Indian guides arrived at the Scioto opposite Higby after passing through "fine level Land to a small Town called Harrickintoms.” Gist recorded “The Creek being very high and full of Ice, We could not ford it, and were obliged to go down it on the SE side SE 4M to the Salt Lick Creek – about 1M up this Creek on the S Side is a very large Salt Lick, the Streams which run into this Lick are very salt & tho clear leave a blueish Sediment: The Indians and Traders make salt for their Horses of this Water, by boiling it; it has at first a blueish Colour, and somewhat bitter Taste, but upon being dissolved in fair Water and boiled a second Time, it becomes tolerable pure Salt."
The Moravian hero-missionary, the Reverend David Zeisberger, labored for fifty active years among the Delaware Indians. He described the characteristics and habits of the Native Americans during the Indian-White Contact Period in Ohio and the physical characteristics of Ohio geography. In this treasure-trove is his description of salt springs and the use made of them by Native Americans, Zeisberger relates the following:
"Salt springs are to be found both along the Muskingum and along the Ohio. Of this salt the Indians make little use; they prefer to buy it from the whites, even though they have to pay a high price for it owing to the fact that it has to be brought a considerable distance from the seaports. Moreover, they use very little salt and seem not to require it. They often eat their food unsalted, even though they may have the salt, until they feel a longing for it.”
(History of the Northern American Indians published in the 1910 Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications, Vol. XIX, pages 1-189.)
The Scioto Salt Springs were the most important source of salt in Ohio until approximately 1816 when it was found that you could drill a hundred feet or more and find richer brines than those which exuded from the surface of the earth. The race from then on is amply documented in the reports of the Ohio Geological Survey.
The first salt well west of the eastern mountains was on the Great Kanawha, where in 1807, a brine was found which only required 200 gallons per bushel of 50 pounds of salt. The first well in Ohio to be successfully drilled was at Gallipolis in 1809 where at 100 feet, they reached water of 400 gallons per bushel. Drilled wells at Jackson did not prove that successful, which led to the rapid decline of that source, as greatly increased demands for salt had to be met elsewhere.
(Emmett A. Conway, Sr. “The Scioto Salt Springs and the Scioto Salt Works. oldeforester.com. 1977.)
“A Roman religious ritual in which grains of salt were placed on an eight-day-old babe’s lips, prefigures the Roman Catholic baptismal ceremony in which a morsel of salt is placed in the mouth of the child to ensure its allegorical purification. In the Christian catechism, salt is still a metaphor for the grace and wisdom of Christ. When Matthew says, 'Ye are the salt of the earth,' he is addressing the blessed, the worthy sheep in the flock, not the erring goats.”
(Staff. “A Brief History of Salt. Time. March 15. 1982.)
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