Sunday, November 21, 1999
Second graders learn of area Indian tribes
By Cathy Willoughby
Staff Writer
The Indians of the Great Lakes region did not fit the stereotype many children have of large headdresses and teepees.
Second graders at Old Fort Elementary were treated to their annual history lesson on the early days in Seneca County from Phillip Engle, a Tiffin historian, last week.
To help illustrate the facts he was sharing, Engle had several dozen prints, copies of original Indian scenes painted by Robert Griffing, who takes the history of the eastern United States and combines it with art.
He began by telling them that the native Indians in the Seneca County area were called the Woodland or Great Lakes Indians. They wore headdresses that were much smaller than what the children thought was typical. "If you see a picture of an Indian with a huge headdress, they are not from Seneca County, they are from the Southwest area of the United States,'' Engle explained to them. "This is the way a typical Indian looked. They wore a minimum number of feathers. They had been here for 1,500 years, where the explorers had only been here since the early 1800s.''
He told them that in 1768, in Fort Niagara, New York, a friar wrote in his log book that a group of Ottawas were going to a hunting trip to the Ohio country. The Indians were traveling by canoe, using bows and arrows as their weapons.
"They had no guns; those they got from settlers and soldiers,'' Engle related. "And they were going to go through the lake system to get there, into Lake Erie. They paddled to the mouth of the San-du-te River, where there is now a town called Sandusky. They would go past the lower Sandusky, what would be Fremont, go on the river past the school and go on to the Upper Sandusky.''
From there the Indians would carry their canoes to another river system, such as the Scioto, and thus travel south all the way to the Ohio River. Indians who went on hunting trips to the area would be gone for one to three years at a time.
Engle said the Ottawas were considered the most fierce of the region's tribes; yet all of them tolerated each other. The Senecas came to the now Seneca County area from Western New York, and the Mohawks lived south of Seneca County.
"Their life was simple; they had no turmoil and they hunted the entire state of Ohio,'' Engle told the children. "The Indians lived in Ohio in peace and quiet; there were no settlers, or explorers.''
That changed when one of the Indian hunting parties asked a "European'' or white explorer, to come along with them. "The explorer sees it, and decides he wants to live in the Ohio country,'' he said. "Then he returns and tells a lot of the settlers, 'Let's go into this area for our future life.' And that's the area we are in today.''
Explorers from the states of Pennsylvania, New York and Maryland traveled off the Ohio River, in search of new areas to settle. Engle held up a picture of an Indian, wearing a red soldier's coat. "What kind of coat did he have on,'' he asked the youngsters. "The Indian has on a soldier's coat, and he probably killed him. I just want to point out to you that a lot of problems are coming.''
The Ohio country was prime hunting ground for 12 tribes, besides the Senecas and Ottawas, the Miamis, Wyandots, Cayugas, Mingos, Chippewas, Maumees, Shawnees, Hurons, Mohawks and Delawares were some that were most prevalent.
"The Indians got together to make a major decision,'' Engle said. "They said, 'We want the Ohio country to remain part of our land; we do not want to give it to the settlers.' The Indians were prepared to fight to keep out the settlers and soldiers, and began burning their homes."
Engle told the story of the Jameson family, who were slaughtered by the Indians. "They burned the house of the Jameson family and took them away,'' he said. "They killed some of the family on the spot; this happened in central Pennsylvania. Two brothers were in the barn and saw all of this, and ran to the woods. They walked all the way to the Shenandoah Valley to get help.''
The woman, Mary, stayed with the Indian tribe. "They put moccasins on her, and she stayed with the Indians. Years later, when she was an old lady, she was found living on the Scioto River with the Indians,'' he said. "This was the beginning of the Indians trying to get rid of the settlers.''
Showing them a picture titled, "Two Miles to Burkie Run,'' Engle told the story of one of the first battles between soldiers and Indians to claim the Ohio country. "The Indians were defending their homeland,'' he said. "And the settlers were creating new areas for us today to live on. A major decision was made by a General Braddock; he wants to go into the Ohio country with soldiers. The Indians sent a message to the army; don't go into the Ohio country, or we will kill you.''
There were 1,400 soldiers, and 400 Indians with both bows and arrows and guns. "The soldiers got up at 1 a.m., and waited until daybreak to march,'' he said. The soldiers suffered huge losses, due to one strategic mistake. "The soldiers marched in columns,'' he said. "They didn't have enough sense to get behind the trees. That was the last military maneuver done in a column marching pattern in the United States. The Indians killed or wounded over 1,000 soldiers, which cost us many, many lives.''