Page:History of Richland County, Ohio.djvu/31

 one by Gen. Forbes, at Fort Du Quesne (Pitts-burgh), in 1758; one by Col. Bradstreet, at Erie, in August, 1764; one by Col. Boquet, at the mouth of the Waldhoning, in November, 1764; in May, 17<>5, at Johnson's, on the Mohawk, and at Philadelphia, the same year; in 1774, by Lord Duamore, at Camp Charlotte, Pickaway County. By the treaty at the Maumee Rapids, in 1817, reservations were conveyed by the United States to all the tribes, with a view to induce them to cultivate the soil and cease to be hunters. These were, from time to time, as the impracticability of the plan became manifest, purchased by the Government, the last of these being the Wyandot Reserve, of twelve miles square, around Upper Sandusky, in 1842, closing out all claims and com- posing all the Indian difficulties in Ohio. The open war had ceased in 1815, with the treaty of Ghent.

"It is estimated that, from the French war of 1754 to the battle of the Maumee Rapids, in 1794, a period of forty years, there had been at least 5,000 people killed or captured west of the Alleghany Mountains. Eleven organized military expeditions had been carried on against the West- ern Indians prior to the war of 1812, seven regu- lar engagements fought and about twelve hundred men killed. More whites were slain in battle than there were Indian braves killed in military expeditions, and by private raids and murders; yet, in 1811, all the Ohio tribes combined could not muster 2,000 warriors."

Attempts to determine the number of persons comprising the Indian tribes in Ohio, and their location, have resulted in nothing better than estimates. It is supposed that, at the commencement of the Revolution, there were about six thousand Indians in the present confines of the State, but their villages were little more than movable camps. Savage men, like savage beasts, are engaged in continual migrations. Now, none are left. The white man occupies the home of the red man. Now


 * " The verdant hills
 * Are covered o'er with growing grain,
 * And white men till the soil,
 * Where once the red man used to reign."

EARLY EXPLORATIONS IN THE WEST.
WHEN war, when ambition, when avarice fail, religion pushes onward and succeeds. In the discovery of the New World, wherever man's aggrandizement was the paramount aim, failure was sure to follow. When this gave way, the followers of the Cross, whether Catholic or Protestant, came on the field, and the result before attempted soon appeared, though in a different way and through different means than those supposed. The first permanent efforts of the white race to penetrate the Western wilds of the New World preceded any permanent English settlement north of the Potomac. Years before the Pilgrims anchored their bark on the cheerless shores of Cape Cod, "the Roman Catholic Church had been plant- ed by missionaries from France in the Eastern moiety of Maine; and LeCaron, an ambitious Franciscan, the companion of Chaniplain, had passed into the hunting-grounds of the Wyandots, and, bound by the vows of his life, had, on foot or paddling a bark canoe, gone onward, taking alms of the savages until he reached the rivers of Lake Huron." This was in 1615 or 1616, and only eight years after Champlain had sailed up the waters of the St. Lawrence, and on the foot of a bold cliff laid the foundation of the present City of Quebec. From this place, founded to hold the country, and to perpetuate the religion of his King, went forth those emissaries of the Cross, whose zeal has been the admiration of the world. The French Colony in Canada was suppressed soon after its establishment, and for five years, until 1622, its immunities were enjoyed by the colonists. A grant of New France, as the country was then known, was made by Louis XIII to Richelieu, Champlain, Razilly and others, who, immediately after the restoration of Quebec by its English conquerors, entered upon the control and government of their province. Its limits embraced the whole basin of the St. Lawrence and of such other rivers in New France as flowed directly into the sea. While away to the south on the Gulf coast, was also included a country rich in foliage and claimed in virtue of the unsuccessful efforts of Coligny.