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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.