Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 8).djvu/76

 CHAPTER II

HE various campaigns directed from Kentucky and western Pennsylvania had, by 1779, comparatively freed what is now eastern and central Ohio of red-men. Little by little they had been pushed in a northwesterly direction until the headwaters of the Great and Little Miami and Scioto were reached. Here on the backbone of Ohio, near the headwaters of the St. Mary and Auglaize Rivers—a pleasant country which the Indians always loved—the most heroic stand was yet to be made against the encroaching white men.

The point of vantage was well chosen, as the bloody years of 1780–1795 proved. The forests were divided by large stretches of open land, which were easily cultivated and exceedingly rich. To the northward flowed the Auglaize River affording a highway to the great Maumee Valley and Lake