The Scioto River Basin is rich in prehistoric and historic cultural materials. The mound-builders, known as Ohio's first people, left evidence of their presence in a lasting and unmistakable way. They left behind innumerable earthworks in the form of forts and mounds. The mound-builders have been classified into three basic cultures – the Fort Ancient, the Adena, and the Hopewell, representing primitive, intermediate, and advanced cultural levels.
(“Scioto River Basin, Ohio: Letter from the Secretary of the Army. United States. Engineers Corps. September 27, 1962.)
The incredibly rich land in the basin of the Scioto River has been a cradle for humanity since the beginnings of North American habitation. How rich and varied is our homeland. We live in a natural and cultural Eden. The undeniable connection of the people and the land is emblematic of the love for the Scioto home.
Evidence proves that mound builders thrived here beginning in roughly 3,000 BCE until the 16th century, and over that time span, their cultures greatly evolved.
The Adena Culture was spread all along the tributaries of the Ohio River. Hopewell's range was much more compact, centered chiefly in the Scioto Valley. Some historians see the Hopewell concentration as a “wedge” driven in the Adena territory from the northwest. According to these experts, “a mixing and blending of two different people brought about a hybrid vigor, genetically and culturally” that resulted in the magnificence of the Ohio Hopewell.” Eventually, the Adena people were swallowed up by the Hopewell. And, later, there was no opposition to the spread of the Hopewell westward through Indiana and Illinois.
(Robert Silverberg. The Mound Builders. Ohio University Press. 1986.)
How important were these early inhabitants of the Scioto territory?
Don W. Dragoo (1925-1988), prominent archaeologist and physical anthropologist, wrote of the area's mythical qualities…
"No remains of prehistoric man in the eastern United States have excited the imagination and interest of laymen and scientists alike more than the great burial mounds and earthworks now known to belong to the Adena and the Hopewell cultures in the Ohio Valley. Speculations as to the origin of the people who constructed these imposing earthworks to hold the remains of their dead was a favorite mental exercise of many from the first discovery of the mounds by Europeans.
“Because the Indian with whom the white people first came into contact in the Ohio Valley knew nothing of the origin of the mounds, it was believed that the Indian could not have built these structures. It was suggested by some that one of the lost tribes of Israel was responsible, by others the Egyptians, the Norsemen, or some other fabled people of western history and mythology. Improved methods of excavation and dating and the evidence of physical anthropology have demonstrated the Indian ancestry of the 'Mound Builders.'"
(Don W. Dragoo. Mounds for the Dead: An Analysis of the Adena Culture. 1963.)
It is believed that Native Americans from eastern North America – mostly hunters – came into the Ohio Territory and waged a war against the primarily agricultural Mound Builders. Later Mound Builder sites that we have identified as the Fort Ancient Culture, were constructed on elevated positions, with walls surrounding increasingly larger villages suggesting that these sites were created as possible defensive positions.
Excavations of grave sites, particularly in the northeast, show numerous remains that had arrowheads embedded in the skeletons. Some remains besides having multiple arrowheads, also showed signs of animal teeth marks suggesting that the individual may have been killed outside the compound and left to scavengers before being brought inside for proper burial.
(“Touring Ohio” http://touringohio.com/history/mound-builders-disappear.html.)
And, of course, after the Mound Builders, the continued importance of the Scioto River watershed to Ohio’s early history cannot be underestimated. This river was a transportation artery for the Shawnee, Wyandot, Delaware, Ottawa, Seneca and Miami on their way to camps in the Pickaway Plains and beyond.
(Owen Jarus. “Hopewell Culture: Moundbuilders of the Midwest.” Live Science. April 29, 2017.)
“From 1754 to 1814, fighting raged within the state between Native Americans and their adversaries,” Janet Shailer, a former editor with the Columbus Messenger Newspapers said. “Those years are vital to understanding the history of Ohio. By 1843, the last of the Native Americans left the state after the signing of the Treaty with the Wyandots. A mere 18 years later, the Civil War would start.”
(Editor. “Rivers help tell the story of the Ohio frontier.” Columbus Messenger. February 11, 2021.)
Historian Andrew Feight, Ph.D. wrote this of the Scioto Valley and its importance to early white settlers …
“Southern Ohio, in the
minds of many Americans, was part of a larger "Promised Land,"
whose settlement followed quickly on the heels of the United States'
victory over the alliance of Indian nations at the Battle of Fallen
Timbers in 1794.
“The Treaty of Ft.
Greenville ceded Shawnee, Miami, and other Indian land claims to
two-thirds of the future state of Ohio and officially opened the
pioneer era of the Scioto Valley. From the campaigns of Dunmore's War
in 1774 through those of the Northwest Indian War in the 1790s, many
of the region's future settlers had traversed the forested hills and
crossed the rich, flat bottom lands. They liked what they had seen
and many would make plans to cast their lot and seek their fortunes
along its banks.
“Other early settlers,
having read or heard glowing accounts of the region, would hail from
Pennsylvania and the states of the Northeast. Still others, such as
the French settlers at Gallipolis and the French Grant, had crossed
the Atlantic with their sights on the Scioto country, hoping to
escape the dangers of Revolutionary France in exchange for a new life
on the American frontier.
“As these pioneers poured into the
valley, federal law and land surveying methods would shape much of
the settlement patterns in the region. The Valley had already been
cleaved into two parts by the creation of the Virginia Military
District (VMD) in 1783, when Congress set aside 3.8 million acres of
land for the Revolutionary War veterans of Virginia.”
(Andrew Feight, Ph.D. “Settling the Scioto Valley.” Scioto Historical. https://sciotohistorical.org/tours/show/7.)
Scioto Valley Allure
What is it about the Scioto Valley that draws human occupation?
Nature provides most of the answers to that question.
Let's look to an old reliable source for some further illumination on the natural resources of the Scioto Valley – History Of Lower Scioto Valley (1884). The volume states …
“Within its limits known as such are fifteen counties, and it is one of the richest of the river sections of the State, both from an agricultural and mineral point of view. The richness of this valley is known far and wide. Its deep alluvial soil is inexhaustible, and this may also be said of its mineral deposits of coal and iron ore, its quarries of stone and its beds of fire-clay.
“Especially is this mineral region in the Lower Scioto Valley the theme of wonder for its richness, ease of mining and its immense quantity and quality. Nature has seen fit to combine nearly all the wants of man within the area of this wonderful and fruitful valley, and in this great laboratory of minerals she has abundant material for future exhibits of her cabinet of mineralogical wealth …
“The Scioto Valley bottoms contain a very large amount of gravel of the hills and the decay of vegetable matter make a soil fertile in the extreme. The limestone ridges also make a very durable and fertile soil …
“The topography of the Lower Scioto Valley presents a great variety of interesting features. The valley presents a magnificent array of … hills, gorges, ravines, etc., present to the eye a varied landscape which, at every turn, presents new, beautiful and interesting changes upon which the sight never wearies …
“Following the eastern divide of the Scioto Valley beginning at its southern extremity and traveling northward, nature varies your prospect with every change of horizon. The curves which you are following (the curves of the water-land) which drain the mineral region of the Lower Scioto Valley, seem to change their course in every few rods of advance. At one time you are climbing a high conical peak from which your view is quite extended and enchanting. Again you descend into a low gap in the divide, where your outlook is circumscribed by surrounding ridges and protracted spurs, shooting forth from the chief divide …
“The land surfaces in the Scioto Valley present a continued succession of bottom lands, more or less extended. Above these low creek and river bottom lands are a few plains, scattered here and there, while the higher lands consist of sidehills, slopes or plains, forming with the horizon every possible angle of inclination, having a face for every point in the heavens.
“Other portions of the surface form coves under which were the early creek and river channels, now covered by ancient land-slides to the depth of twenty to fifty feet. The crests of the spurs and principal ridges are usually very narrow. Sometimes, however, they are broad, rich and well adapted to grain and fruit culture.
“In the Scioto Valley, consisting of the river trough, its tributary valleys, its ravines, gulches, plains, river and creek bottoms, coves, side-hill slopes, spurs, and their main ridges, we can find but little waste land. A few acres of swamps and ponds, the remaining parts of old beds of the river and branches, are to be found in the Scioto Valley.”
(History Of Lower Scioto Valley. Chicago : Inter-state Publishing Co. 1884)
Conclusion
As the history book explains, “the Scioto Valley is noted far and wide for the richness, the fertility and the inexhaustible quality of its soil, the beauty of its landscape, and the wealth, culture, and refinement of her enterprising and hospitable people, but no less so is the beautiful and gentle Scioto River, known for its extraordinary length and the fan-like shape shown by its numerous heads.”
And, to conclude, one would be remiss not to mention the history and the magic of the place, so fit for these poetic lines …
“The rugged outlines of its massive ranges of hills, of its dark, deep and gloomy gorges, its little valleys that here and there admit the shimmering rays of the glorious sunlight.”
“Then again as a dark cloud obscures the sun's bright rays, a weird and ominous-like gloom pervades and hovers over its wild and mystic water-course, giving shape to the imagination of phantom spirits reveling in the spirit world.”
“South from Chillicothe, where this fan-like shape unites into one noble stream, it enters the sandstone region and breaks through these hills, spreading out again into the beautiful and far- famed valley which has become so well known and noted.”
“The River Scioto is fully 200 miles in length, and from its head waters to its mouth it has a distance on an air line of one hundred and thirty miles, and this is the length of this magnificent valley, with a breadth averaging from fifty to seventy miles.”
“Here, just before the harvest season, can be seen a perfect paradise, waving with grass and grain as far as the eye can see, interspersed with fine farm residences, well-filled barns, lowing herds, and here and there beautiful cities, hamlets and villages nestling on its quiet bosom.
“Seeing this valley, and then the work of the Mound-builders, showing that it once was largely peopled with a prehistoric race, and remembering in our time the love the Indians had for this rich and lovely valley, the mind can easily contemplate the bitter and unrelenting hate of the Indian for his paleface brother, when he was deprived of this glorious heritage of his ancestors.”
“And it is not to be wondered that the daring pioneer left many a record of Indian hate and revenge in the deadly work of the tomahawk and scalping knife and in the burning of his cabin. Time and man's industry has but added to its beauty, and the present is but a continuance of the past and the light of its future.”
(History Of Lower Scioto Valley. Chicago : Inter-state Publishing Co. 1884)
Scioto residents, please read this entry and reconsider your homeland. Think of the beautiful place in which we live, a natural paradise steeped in cultural history. We are the present custodians of the land, and we should understand that our tenancy here is tied to a sacred obligation to maintain the generous resources that sustain our rich way of life.
Someday, we will pass this charge on to our sons and daughters. Unless they realize the value of the gift we bestow – and I'm not speaking of expensive personal houses and real estate but of shared natural surroundings – they will lose sight of traditions and values we love. We have unfortunately let too much devaluation of our earth mother already occur. We must reevaluate our place here, and we must revere our connection to the land as one in the long line of human inhabitants of the Scioto Valley. When we depart, we must leave with the knowledge we helped improved our surroundings … the land on which we spent our short journey.
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