Newsgroups: freenet.shrine.songs
From: aa300 (Jerry Murphy)
Subject: History of Ohio Natives
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 90 15:34:46 EST
NATIVE AMERICANS OF THE OHIO VALLEY
Traditionally, our studies of the history of an area go back only to that point
in time when it was settled by the immigrants who came over from Europe, or the
movement inland by their descendants.
A large part of this is due to the lack of a written language by the former
owners of the land in the area, or by purely racial bigotry. But the North
American continent has been inhabited and “settled” for several centuries by
groups of people Christopher Columbus mistakenly labeled as ‘Indians’, thinking
he had reached India.
In fact, the natives of this continent have been here so long, they have evolved
into several dozens of completely different people, sharing dozens of different
languages, traditions, ways of life, and even physical characteristics. Numerous
large volumes have been written about the various Native Americans, but this
brief story will center on those who lived and worked in the same area as the
Cleveland Free-Net, the first system of public access computing of many, we
hope.
Many centuries ago, most of this continent was under the influence of the ice
cap which covered the area. A person could walk on the ice all the way from
central Asia, across what we now know as the Bering Sea, and all across the top
half of North America; in fact, many did. They propagated not only east to the
Atlantic, but southwards as well, eventually peopling the whole hemisphere.
Before the age of rapid travel and instant communications, many of these groups
of people must have shared common roots, as evidenced by so many similarities
in their ways of life, their deities, some of their languages, etc. The Inuit
people speak a common language all across the top half of the continent, from
Alaska to Greenland, even today. Further south, languages and most traditions
and ways of life adapted to the territory in which they found themselves,
usually pursuing food or escaping their enemies.
What little we know of the earliest people of the area comes from the few things
we have found that they left behind, principally in their graves. Only a very
few have been found, and it is difficult to gain a true perspective from such
limited sources. “Ohio’s Prehistoric Peoples”, written by Martha A. Potter, and
published by the Ohio Historical Society in 1968, gives us some insight into the
earliest time periods. The book includes drawings which compare their arrow
heads, tools, pipes, and other artifacts.
The very earliest time period in which it is possible to identify inhabitants of
the Ohio valley is that between 9000 and 6000 BC, when the Paleo-Indian people
were here. All we know about them is that they used a fluted-edge tool made of
flint in their hunting and gathering. The ice cap had ‘just’ retreated, and
animals had likely moved back into the area some 11,000 years ago. The Archaic
people were the next we can identify, between 6000 and 1500 BC. In addition to
flint tools, they used primitive stone tools. Perhaps they started fishing in
the great lake. The Glacial Kame people came along next, probably descendents
of the earlier peoples. They were the first to use copper for making tools and
jewelry, 2500 – 1000 BC; notice the overlap in time frames. All of this is
based on just a few graves that have been found.
Carbon dating of the few materials which survived that far back allow iden-
tification of the Adena people, 1000 BC – 700 AD. They were the first farmers
in the area, and built huts in settlements. They also built the earliest
mounds, including the Serpent. Again an overlap; the people first found on the
Hopewell Farm in Ross County lived here between 300 BC and 700 AD. They not
only built mounds, but heroic-proportioned earthen works, and are known as the
Hopewells. Next came the Cole people, named for the finding on the Walter S.
Cole site in Delaware County, who lived there between 800 – 1300 AD. Each
of these peoples probably evolved from the other as time went by. There are
differences in the artifacts they left behind, as well as differences in
locations and types of burials; hence the differences in name. Part of the
evolutionary cycle was likely due to changes in the atmosphere which led to
differences in vegetation and animal life, not to mention the evolution in
finding and utilizing raw materials for tools, shelter and clothing. We come to
the last of these pre-historic peoples in the time frame of 1000 – 1654 AD; in
southern Ohio we had the Fort Ancients, and in the north we had the Eries.
These were the first who apparently used the bow and arrow in this area.
All of these various peoples used flint in their spearheads and other tools.
While there was a large supply of flint in Coshocton County, the more famous
flint came from Flint Ridge in Licking and Muskingum Counties; this flint was of
a higher quality, and had various colors. But not all of the flint was found
here in Ohio; some came from across the lake in Ontario, as we shall soon see.
Now we come to the historic period. We come to the time period of the 15th –
17th centuries, where there are some reasonable records and artifacts. Large
numbers of Native Americans inhabited the entire eastern seaboard, the Saint
Lawrence valley, the Great Lakes area, and all points south and west. Principal
villages were close to sources of drinking water, and near land that could be
cleared, tilled and planted, as well as near the areas where animals that
provided food and skins could be located. They had to compete with one another
for these various necessities, and tribal warfare was not uncommon. When they
defeated an enemy tribe, they frequently tortured, killed or maimed most of the
members of the defeated group. But it was not uncommon for them to adopt some
of the defeated people as their own, either for chattels or for mates; they were
well aware of the need not to marry a close relative, and most tribes specifi-
cally forbade marrying someone from their own clan or sept.
Living along the northern shore of Lake Erie, as we now know it, and west into
the area we now call southeastern Michigan, and northwestern Ohio, were the
people that French explorers named Neutral, so named because they took no part
in the wars between the Huron and Iroquois. In fact, they were not only hunters
and farmers, they also had a monopoly on flint from their quarries near Point
Abino in southern Ontario, and were experienced traders. Their principal allies
included the Wenrohronon. (aka Wenro’s) The Wenrohronon lived in a small area
in what we now call New York state, along the south shore of Lake Ontario. The
tribal name meant “people of the place of the floating scum”; they had oil in
their local water. Their alliance with the Neutrals fell apart in 1639, and
they then sought protection with the Huron.
The Huron were the greater traders, and lived all over southeastern Canada,
taking over most of Ontario and Quebec provinces. They called themselves
“Wendat”, meaning islanders or peninsula dwellers. The word survives today as
Wyandotte. Their first documented experience with white men was with Jacques
Cartier, along the St. Lawrence river, in 1534. At this time, they were at war
with the Iroquois, and were subsequently driven from the area to Huronia, where
Samuel de Champlain found them in 1615. Champlain helped them mount several
attacks against the Iroquois, but they were eventually defeated by them, in
1648-50. Fleeing from the Iroquois, the Huron moved west and north, living
amongst the several peoples around the northern and western parts of the Great
Lakes. In 1745, a large party of Huron moved into the area we now call Sandus-
ky. Except for a brief move to White River, Indiana, they ranged all over Ohio
in the coming years, finally allowing the Shawnee from the south, and the
Delaware from the east, to move into Ohio in the mid-18th century as neighbors.
Prior to this, though, they were friendly with the Erighs (Eries).
This tribe of people, called the “Cat People”, lived all along the south shore
of Lake Erie, to which they gave it’s name. Their neighbors to the west were
the Neutrals and the Miamis, and later the Wyandotte (Huron). To the east were
the dreaded and powerful Iroquois. To the south, they knew the Honniasont, and
southwest the Shawnee. Because of their alliance with the Huron, they were
defeated as a people by the Iroquois in 1656. Their bows and arrows were no
match for the guns provided to the Iroquois by Dutch traders. The Iroquois
wanted the hunting grounds of Ohio. The mountains they were raised in were no
match for the fertile, and relatively flat, lands of Ohio and the Can-tuc-kee
as the Shawnee called it. (Kentucky).
The Miami had been pushed around long enough by the time the wars with the
whites got them so heavily involved. They had begun in the area near Green Bay,
Wisconsin, and migrated, or escaped, to the south and west, and then east, such
that they had people scattered between Chicago and Detroit, and all along the
border between Ohio and Indiana. Named after them are the rivers Miami, Little
Miami, and Maumee. In conjunction with the Shawnee and several other tribes,
they participated in, and lost, the Battle of the Fallen Timbers in 1794, which
led to the treaty of Greenville in 1795, when most of eastern and southern Ohio
was taken from the red men, and opened up to white settlers. The Army General
who had won this battle, marching out of his Fort Defiance, was “Mad” Anthony
Wayne. His aide was William Henry Harrison.
The Shawnee, meaning “southerners”, migrated into the area from Tennessee.
Their 5 tribes included the Piqua, Chillikothe, and Kispokotha, as well as 2
others. Their principal areas of settlement were southern Ohio, and reached
into western Pennsylvania, mostly along the Ohio river and her tributaries.
When the white men started pushing west over the Appalachians, the Shawnee were
most adamant about repelling the invasion. One of their earlier war chiefs was
a Kispokotha adoptee, a white man who took the name Blue Jacket (d. 1810); he
had been born Marmaduke van Swearingen, and is possibly related to the van
Sweringens who developed the Nickel Plate Railroad, Shaker Heights, Ohio, and
the Terminal Tower complex. ‘Duke’ was from the same area of Virginia as the
ancestors of our more modern van Sweringens. Later, the great chief Tecumseh led
the Shawnee and thousands of other native Americans in trying to repel the
spread of white men into their lands; he died in 1813.
Another famous chief was an Ottawa named Pontiac, who came from the area we now
know as Detroit, Michigan. The Ottawa had been located in the area of Canada
north of Lake Huron, but ranged far to the east, in concert with the Huron
Nation. Champlain visited them on Georgian Bay in 1615. Following the defeat
of the Huron by the Iroquois, they were forced west and south, settling in the
areas around Lakes Michigan, Huron, St. Clair and Superior, where they went into
the fur business, trading with the French for needed goods. They were principal
allies of the French during the French & Indian Wars.
Also in Ohio from time to time, and playing major roles in the various wars and
treaties, were the Illinois, Chippewa, Kickapoo, Mosopelea and Potawatomi. But
their principal homelands were elsewhere. And in southeastern Ohio in later
years were the Indians who confederated as the Mingoes; they were of these
and other further east tribes and nations.
Supporting the British all this time were the Iroquois, who had wanted to stay
out of it all, but were forced into defending their lands against the hated
French (and their enemies of old who were aligned with the French). The
“Iroquois” is perhaps a misnomer; there was not just one tribe known as the
Iroquois. In fact, the Iroquois were a confederation of five separate nations,
later six, principally from the state of New York, but who operated in a very
large area, as far south as the Potomoc, and as far west as the Mississippi.
Their principal hunting grounds were in Ohio. From east to west, they included
the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga and Seneca; later they were joined by the
Tuscarora. Legend has it that they were once warring with one another, but were
united into a League of Nations by Hiawatha and Dekanawida. They had a demo-
cratic form of government, with two ‘houses’ and a judiciary. While I have not
yet found written documentation from the period among European sources, (there
was no written language then among the Iroquois, and only word of mouth trans-
cripts of their legends survive), they did have a constitution, rumored to date
from somewhere around 1390, give or take 100 years. You will find it in the
section of Free-Net with other documents that preceeded The Constitution of the
United States.
As referenced in “The Genius of the People”, it is said that their constitution
began with the phrase: “We, the people, to form a union…”; it was this
constitution that John Rutledge of South Carolina used as a basis for coordinat-
ing the several details of the Philadelphia debates into what we now call the
Constitution of the United States. But that Iroquois constitution, reproduced
elsewhere in The Freedom Shrine, does NOT contain this phrase, nor anything like
it. There are many other references to this form of government among the
Iroquois, as well as contacts between the Framers and members of this confedera-
tion. See the speech elsewhere in this Freedom Shrine by Dr. Donald Grinde. See
also the lengthy bibliography, from which came most of these details.
GERALD E. MURPHY (c) 1988
