“I … went to the south westward down the little Miamee River or Creek, where I had fine traveling thro rich land and beautiful meadows, in which I could sometimes see forty or fifty buffaloes feeding at once … ”
– Quote in 1751 from Christopher Gist (1706–1759) – explorer, surveyor and frontiersman and one of the first white explorers of the Ohio Country
Many of the early explorers, travelers and settlers who followed the Ohio River into the wilderness that would later become the state of Ohio offered their own accounts of the scenic beauty, natural diversity and abundance of wildlife they encountered.
(Jean Backs, Editor. “Ohio’s Wild History.” http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/parks/magazinehome/mag2005fallwin/wildheritagefw2005/tabid/428/Default.aspx. Ohio State Parks Magazine. Fall/Winer 2005/2006.)
Did buffalo once roam Scioto County? Yes. Just imagine. And, history shows they were a great natural resource of Native Americans here for a long, long time before European pioneers arrived.
Local history reports the last buffalo seen in Scioto County was killed by Phillip Salladay, on the headwaters of Pine Run, in what is now Vernon Township, in 1797.
(One report adds it was on the farm of Mr. Chaffin with a date of 1801.)
(History of Lower Scioto Valley. Chicago: Inter-State Publishing Co. 1884.)
According to local legend, Phillip and his son were hunting on Pine Creek when they came across a solitary buffalo. Phillip took the first shot, which only wounded the animal. The bison turned and charged straight at them. “As the boy was getting his rifle ready to shoot, the father snatched it from him, and killed the buffalo.” The general consensus among scholars who have studied the demise of the bison east of the Mississippi, is that its extirpation was the result of over-hunting and the “destruction of their habitat destroyed their range.”
(“Flora and Fauna.” Lower Scioto Blog. December 20, 2008.)
When did the species disappear from Ohio? In 1851, Professor Mather, in the Western Agriculturalist, said:
“In 1843 an old hunter of Jackson county, Mr. George Willis, told us that he saw the last buffalo killed within the limits of Ohio. It was reportedly shot by a hunter named Keenes, near the headwaters of Symmes creek, in the year 1802.”
In 1854, Rev. John Kelley at the ripe age of 75 said, this is a mistake as he himself shot the last buffalo killed in Ohio in 1803, the next year after Keenes killed his buffalo.
Kelley'a account that follows is taken from a compilation of John Kelley’s Reminiscences and is dedicated to the Kelley family both past and present as well as to all those pioneers whose endurance made possible the comforts we have become used to. But particularly, “it is dedicated to the Indians, who met with dignity, bravery, and honor the injustice and upheaval they were powerless to prevent.”
This book was compiled by Lois Davisson Scherer, a lineal descendant of Luke and Mary Keyser Kelley through their older daughter, Elizabeth, who was married to Judge Nathaniel Davisson on October 5, 1802 by Kimber Barton, Justice of the Peace, at Haverhill, French Grant, Ohio – the first marriage of record in what is now Scioto County. The text was checked against the original newspapers by Phyllis Hamner of Briggs Library.
(Lois D. Scherer passed away in 1986. This electronic version used here was compiled from the printed booklet in the Summer of 1999 by Robert Davisson.)
Let Mr. Kelley, who was raised on the frontier, tell his own story:
“I was out hunting and came upon the buffalo, on the waters of Storms creek, above where Vesuvius Furnace now is. He was a monstrous large buffalo. The place for shooting a buffalo is just behind the shoulders, but I shot this one too far back, so that it didn’t kill him right off, although I saw that he was so badly hurt that he would soon die; and he stood pawing and bellowing at the dogs. I loaded my gun again, and for curiosity aimed another shot square at his face, which only caused him to shake his head, but made him mad, and he broke right at me, but I dodged behind a tree, and he struck off, right ahead, in a bee line.
“I followed on as fast as I could, with the dogs. He ran about two miles before he fell; the last part of the distance he began to stagger like a drunken man; he would lean up against a tree or sapling, and move on slowly; finally down he fell, all at once, dead – he never kicked after he fell.
“I then skinned him and laid his skin up across some sticks on a tree, and went home. The next day I took out a horse and packed his skin home. That was a monster in size you may know from this: Out of his hide I cut eleven pair of traces and two bed cords, and had some large scraps left. Judge Davisson, my brother-in-law, and Josiah Lambert, my wife’s father, had some of the traces. They lasted in our families for many years.”
(“The Last Buffalo Killed In Ohio.” The Lawrence Register. “Luke Kelley’s Reminiscences #2.” Submitted by Bob Davisson. Ironton Register August 3, 1854.)
The bison, or more scientifically Bison bison, is the largest existing land mammal in the United States and has been since the end of the last Ice Age. A full grown male bison, called a “bull,” can reach 6 feet at the shoulder and weigh a staggering 2,000 pounds. At full clip, a Bison can reach 35 mph for short distances. There are stories of a single Bison herd stampeding across the plains for hours, with millions of individuals in its ranks.
For at least 12,000 years they made the trek every year from Alabama or Georgia through the primal forests up to the southern shores of Lake Erie.When the French and British colonists arrived in what is now Southern Indiana, thousands of bison were plodding through the wilderness from the grasslands of the Great Plains to the Falls of the Ohio.
Part of Thomas
Hutchins' map, published in 1778, which
showed the Ohio Country,
including some Indian trails
The routes they followed year after year – buffalo traces – were the first interstate highway systems to cross the continent. After thousands of buffalo had made a thousand road trips along these forest thoroughfares, the roads they created were wide, pounded hard, and without question the easiest way to get through the dense forest once the paleo peoples got here.
When surveyors and map makers were defining the Ohio country in the early 1800s in advance of the settlers, every Indian trail they drew, every trail connecting outposts in the wilderness, was originally a bison trail. Their routes tended to follow high ground between river valleys, with periodic detours into the flats for drinking and swimming parties and other forms of recreation.
(Timothy Brian McKee. “Bison Trails became roads in Richland County.” www.richlandsource.com. August 15, 2020.)
History Note:
Bison spend 9 to 11 hours a day simply eating green things. One of the reasons they followed the same routes every year was because in addition to picking up forage along the way they also left behind a considerable amount of fertilizer … all of which served to grow the seeds of their favorite foods that passed through their system. So every year there were more and more of their favorite foods along the way.
Settlers And Bison
When European settlers first arrived in Ohio, there were many bison throughout the state.
“At one time these animals appeared in great numbers along the Muskingum but as soon as the country begins to be inhabited by the Indians they retire and are now only to be found near the mouth of the above named river. Along the banks of the Scioto and further south, both Indians and whites say that they may be seen in herds numbering hundreds. That is two or three hundred miles from here.”
(David Zeisberger, The History of North American Indians, 1779-1780. 1910.)
With the arrival of settlers, the bison population rapidly declined. As more and more them moved into the Ohio Country, new hunting technology, deforestation, and bovine disease followed. The bison were an economic boon to the new people of Ohio. The meat and leather trade exploded, attracting commercial interest in this commodity. Even the bones were prized as commercial fertilizer.
Over 50 million bison were slaughtered by hunters during the 19th century resulting in the near extinction of the creatures and the local extirpation of the bison from the Ohio Country and lands east of the Mississippi River.
(Tim Pawlak. “Bye-Son: The Extirpation and Reintroduction of the Bison in the Ohio Country.” Ohio History Connection. 2022.)
By 1790, few, if any, bison could be found along the Ohio River. In 1795, Charles Duteil, while hunting for deer, came across a herd of bison two miles west of Gallipolis. The event was recorded in an 1876 letter from George Graham:
“Duteil fired without aiming at any particular one, and luckily a large one fell. He was so elated with this feat that without stopping to examine the animal he ran as fast as he could to the town, and having announced his luck, came back, followed by the entire body of colonists,. They quickly formed a procession with musicians playing violins, flutes, and the fortunate hunter proudly marching with his gun. And for several days there was feasting, as the first and last buffalo of Gallipolis was served up.”
(“Bison.” Ohio History Central. https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Bison?rec=1125.)
Natives And Bison
“Those who once pushed their horses down the Warriors' Path or went whooping down the Scioto or Mahoning are now hunting the souls of the moose and the beaver in the Land of the Souls, 'walking on the souls of their snowshoes on the soul of the snow.' But they have left their trails behind them and nothing else so interesting, so pregnant with varied memories, so rich in historical suggestion.”
– Archer
Butler Hulbert, Historic Highways Of America Volume 2: Indian
Throughfares (1902)
The American Bison has always been held in high esteem by the American Indian tribes who hunted and used the bison in many aspects of their lives. From using the Bison hair for headdresses and ropes to utilizing the bones for jewelry and eating utensils, there was and still is great respect for “Tatanka,” as the Lakota peoples called it. To many American Indian Nations the Bison is seen not just as an animal but an ancestor and a brother to them.
In Ohio, Bison were hunted by the Native Americans, but not to the extent that they were by the Plains Indians in the western United States. Moravian missionary, David Zeisberger, reported in the late 1700s that (in regard to the Delaware Indians he came in contact with) …
"Buffalo they shoot little and rarely, as the hides are too heavy and of little value, and if they shot one of these animals now and again, most of the meat is left lying in the woods, where it is consumed by wolves, or other animals or birds."
(David Zeisberger, The History of North American Indians, 1779-1780. 1910.)
Lewis Evans, A General Map of the Middle British Colonies, in America (Philadelphia, 1755). In the middle and lower left portions of the map, Evans demarcates Shawnee territory that spans across the Ohio River; Evans also locates “salt” and “coal” directly beneath Lower Shawneetown, “Elephant Bones” at the site of present-day Big Bone Lick, and a number of pathways connecting places like “G. Buffalo Lick” and “Eskippakithiki.” Public domain, retrieved from the Library of Congress.
Salt – The Big Game Essential
One of the most (the most?) important understandings of bison is the necesssity of salt. Sodium chloride – salt’s main homogenous compound – allows animals to retain hydrating fluids, process essential nutrients and minerals, and support microcellular processes critical to circulatory, muscular, and nerve function. Humans reliant upon large mammals for food recognized this dependency.
In the Ohio Country, salt commonly took the form of mineral-rich mud or saline springs. Most large mammals in the region consumed their fill at mineral licks. American settler John Filson – Continental Army veteran whose writings about Kentucky made it a popular destination for people moving to the frontier – wrote in 1784 of the “amazing herds of Buffalo” that came to the licks (Noblick), and how “their size and number, fill the traveller with amazement and terror, especially when he beholds the prodigious roads they have made from all quarters, as if leading to some populous city; the vast space of land around these springs desolated as if by a ravaging enemy, and hills reduced to plains.”
Annabel LaBrecque, Ph.D. is a student in the Department of History at University of California, Berkeley, Her work explores interdisciplinary approaches to the significance of salt throughout North American history. She has previously published research on salt and power in the sixteenth-century Lower Mississippi Valley for the Scottish Centre for Global History.
Elbert S. Mowery, Pioneer Salt Gourd, 1935-1942. Mowery’s sketch is based on an actual eighteenth-century salt gourd recovered from Kentucky. See Mel Hankla, “A Pumpkin Salt Gourd,” in Kentucky by Design: The Decorative Arts and American Culture, ed. Andrew Kelly (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2015), 187-88. National Gallery of Art, CC0, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Please read Annabel LaBrecque's entire article. Just click here: http://commonplace.online/article/salt-and-deep-history-in-the-ohio-country/.
LaBrecque wrote that Filson wasn’t fabricating; on May 18, 1774, a British survey party traveled up the Kentucky River “to a Salt Spring, where [they] saw about 300 Buffaloes collected together.”
And, because they attracted large mammals, mineral licks also attracted hunters. At places like Big Bone Lick for at least centuries – and possibly over 10,000 years – prior to European arrival. Located just south of the Ohio River in present-day Boone County, Kentucky, Big Bone earned its English name from massive skeletal exposures that captured the awe and attention of both Indigenous peoples and Euro-American newcomers.
In a 1762 letter, James Wright relayed the origins and significance of Big Bone Lick according to “two Sincible Shawanese Indians”:
“There were many roads thro this Extent of land, larger & more beaten by Buffolas and other Creatures, that had made them [Shawnees] to go to it . . . they [Shawnees] had indeed a tradition, such mighty Creatures, once frequented those Savannahs, that there were then men of a size proportionable to them, who used to kill them, and tye them in Their Noppusses [back straps] And throw them upon their Backs As an Indian now dos a Deer, that they had seen Marks in rocks, which tradition said, were made by these Great & Strong Men, when they [sat] down with their Burthens . . . that when there were no more of these strong Men left alive, God had Kill’d [the] last 5 [buffalo] . . . they [Shawnees] supposed them to have been Killd by lightening — these the Shawanese said were their traditions.”
(Annabel LaBrecque. “Salt and Deep History in the Ohio Country.” Common Place. http://commonplace.online/article/salt-and-deep-history-in-the-ohio-country/. January 2022.)
Visiting the lick in the early 1760s, British trader George Croghan commented on the “large road which the Buffaloes have beaten, spacious enough for two wagons to go abreast and leading straight into the Lick.”
Apparently unbeknownst to Croghan, four roads converged at Big Bone, each up to fifteen feet in width. The most important road crossing through Big Bone was Alanant-o-wamiowee (the Great Buffalo Path), one of the oldest in eastern North America. The corridor originated somewhere in present-day Illinois, where bison converged by the millions to migrate toward Kentucky and Tennessee. The path spanned 225 miles across northern Kentucky, connecting at least four major springs and licks along the way.
LaBrecque writes …
“Reconstructed maps of Indigenous roadways through northern Kentucky show paths starting and ending at places like Es-kip-pa-ki-thi-ki and Upper and Lower Blue Licks, all sites of major salt springs and licks. Shawnees had departed the Ohio Country during the early seventeenth century in response to war, disease, and political instability. We may imagine their eventual return to places like Lower Shawneetown, at the confluence of the Scioto and Ohio rivers, occurred along these familiar pathways. Through the eighteenth century, Shawnees continued to reinforce the significance of these veritably ancient networks.
“Salt production was also part of the diverse economies dominated by Indigenous peoples in the eighteenth-century Ohio Country. This was especially true at Lower Shawneetown, where its residents engaged in a generations-old practice of exploiting rich local springs.
“Visiting the bustling Lower Shawneetown in January of 1751, British trader Christopher Gist noted that 'The Indians and Traders make salt for their horses' from a local spring 'by boiling it.'
“As A. Gwynn Henderson has demonstrated, local salt makers seemed to have replaced their shallow ceramic pans, which their predecessors had used since at least the 1100s through the early seventeenth century, with kettles by the mid-eighteenth century. When a hunting party departed Lower Shawneetown for Big Bone Lick in 1755, for instance, they took kettles and two captured colonists with them 'to make salt.' Perhaps they intended to use the salt to treat hides, season or preserve meat, or supplement their trading wares.”
(Annabel LaBrecque. “Salt and Deep History in the Ohio Country.” Common Place. http://commonplace.online/article/salt-and-deep-history-in-the-ohio-country/. January 2022.)
Salt making was difficult. It required the strongest, cleanest brine and physically demanding labor. As Susan Sleeper-Smith and A. Gwynn Henderson have suggested, salt making seems to have been one of the many industries managed by Indigenous women in the Ohio Country.
LaBrecque speculates …
“Perhaps that is why one group of Shawnees, who captured Daniel Boone and a group of squatters in the winter of 1777-1778, forced the male captives to make salt while travelling northward along the Scioto River. Whether it was the physical taxation or the embarrassment of doing women’s work under the orders of Indigenous men, the captives came to resent the task of salt making.
“One captive, James Callaway, refused to carry kettles and salt forfeited by William Brooks. When a Shawnee man took out his tomahawk, Callaway responded with dramatic defiance – 'Strike! I would as lie here as go along, and I won’t tote your kettle' – after which the salt-making gear was assigned to someone else.”
(Annabel LaBrecque. “Salt and Deep History in the Ohio Country.” Common Place. http://commonplace.online/article/salt-and-deep-history-in-the-ohio-country/. January 2022.)
La Brecque says that salt could also make indigenous women targets of gendered colonial violence. In early 1778, a group of Munsee Delaware women were making salt at a spring near the Mahoning River when American soldiers murdered them. Intended to be a retaliative campaign against British-allied Seneca and Cayugas, American general Edward Hand’s bloody foray into the eastern Ohio Country reached a sinister climax at the Mahoning spring, where the women, according to American correspondence, were tragically misidentified as potential enemies.
Between 1780 and 1790,
dozens of saltworks cropped up throughout the Ohio Country. Digging
wells, expanding furnaces, and siphoning brine, settlers considered
themselves titans of industry and tamers of wilderness. Natives hated
to see the white man thus engaged in salt making: they saw it as an
invastion of the “owner of the soil” and suffocating local
environments
The attacks prompted white men living and laboring in upper central Kentucky’s salt industry to seek state protection. In May 1793, some 75 residents petitioned to Kentucky governor Isaac Shelby for “a guard of men to be stationed at the mouth of Salt River.” Whether Shelby ever provided state protection at Bullitt’s Lick is uncertain, but Indigenous men did not readily relinquish their ability to move and mobilize power south of the Ohio River.
La Brecque explains …
“Fighting back wasn’t the Shawnees’ only strategy to maintain access to salt resources. In the summer of 1783, a group of Shawnee hunters convened with three Kentucky settlers south of the Ohio to trade. The Shawnees requested “licker and sault,” and the American traders reportedly secured assurance from a nearby militia commander that traders would soon bring salt to Shawnee towns.
“Treaties also became another means of negotiation over salt. In the 1803 Treaty of Fort Wayne, Indigenous leaders ceded control over the Grand Saline at the mouth of the Wabash River to the U.S. government. Their price was an annual annuity of 150 bushels of salt that would “be divided among the several tribes in such manner as the general council of the chiefs may determine …
“Early American salt makers exploited productive precedents established by generations of people who had engaged with salt resources for thousands of years …
“As the tumultuous salvation of the Shawnees’ Go-cum-tha and her Wash-et-che reminds us, salt’s ability to invite both creation and destruction to the heart of Shawnee homelands was hardly contradictory and hardly ancient history. That great salt water that drowned and drained the region’s lands long ago remained just as powerful and potent generations later, emerging in the form of brine seeps, mineral springs, and salt licks that helped to orient life across the Ohio Country.”
(Annabel LaBrecque. “Salt and Deep History in the Ohio Country.” Common Place. http://commonplace.online/article/salt-and-deep-history-in-the-ohio-country/. January 2022.)
Richard Graham, Lands. Lands to be rented, or for sale, Dumfries (Dumfries, 1789). In this broadside, Graham solicits leases for multi-thousand-acre tracts in lands that, after 1792, became the state of Kentucky. Tracts no. 5 and 8 highlight local salt springs; tract no. 6 describes land that “has contained the most populous Tribe of Indians that were formerly settled on any Part of the Ohio River, from the amazing Extent of old Fortifications, &c. that still remain there; one of the old Works has a covered Way of 300 feet long.” At the bottom of the broadside, Graham advertises a special leasing offer to “those who wish to make Iron, Lead, or Salt.” Public domain, Retrieved from the Library of Congress.
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