Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/212

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��HISTORY OF RICHLAND COUNTY

��CHAPTER XX.

��INDIAN TRIBES IN THE COUNTY

��Wyandots or Huuons^Ottawas — Delawares — Shawanees — Greentown — Jeromeville — Capt.Pipe — Thomas Armstrong — Other Chiefs — John M. Armstrong, his Education, Marriage, Work and Death — Indian Villages — Manners, Customs, Food — Hunting — Marriage Ceremonies — Religion — Feasts at Greentown and Jeromeville — Removal.

��'• I have given you lands to hunt in, 1 have given you streams to fish in, 1 have given you bear and bison, I have given you roe and reindeer, I have given you brant and beaver. Filled the marshes full of wild-fowl, Fil'ed the river full of fishes." — Longfellow.

COL. CHARLES WHITTLESEY'S map of the Indians of Ohio gives to this coitnty fonr principal tribes, the Wyandots or Hu- rons, the Ottawas.. the Delawares and the Shawanees. The division lines between these nations diverged in three directions from a point a few miles north of the site ot Mansfield, east, west and sonth. All the northern part of the connty was the comitry of the Hurons and 'Ottawas; the southeastern of the Delawares. and the southwestern of the Shawanees. In 1764, these nations were esti- mated by Mr. Hutchins, the United States geographer, to possess L600 warriors, divided among them as follows: Delawares, 600; Shaw- anees, 500; Wyandots. 300; Ottawas, 200. A brief history of each of these nations may not be out of place here, and, in as concise a man- ner as possible, it will be given, following the order given above.

The Delawares, the strongest nation, who had a representation in Richland County, ac- cording to their own traditions — all the authority possessed of Indian history — origi- nally came from the West, crossing the Missis- sippi, gradually ascending the Ohio, fighting their way, and continuing on east until they

��reached the Delaware River, where the city of Philadelphia now stands, in which region of country they for a time obtained a fixed habi- tation. As time passed, they became very numerous and very powerful, and, while here, they welcomed to the shores of the New World that good man, AVilliam Penn, and his peaceful followers, for whom ever after the}^ entertained a very kind and friendly feeling. Col. John Johnston, so long the Indian Agent in the West, relates that, generations after the found- ing of Philadelphia, the Delaware Indians in speaking of a good man, would say •• Wa, she, a E, le, ne" — such a man is a Quaker, i.e., all good men are Quakers. It seems that a portion of the tribe remained on the Delaware until 1823, when Col. Johnston removed them to the West. By their removal to the West, they called themselves '-Wa. l)e, nugh, ka;"" that is, "the people from the East," or "the sun-rising." What remained of the tribe then, the Colonel says, '-were the most wretched, squalid and debased of their race, and often furnished chiefs with a subject of reproach against the whites, pointing to these of their people and saying, ' See how you have spoiled them,' mean- ing they had acquired all the bad habits of the white people, and were ignorant of hunting, and incapable of making a liA^elihood as other In- dians." In 1819, Col. Johnston enumerates eighty Delawares residing in his agency in Ohio, who were stationed near Upper Sandusky, and 2,300 in Indiana. The Colonel mentions

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