suits and perplexities. Such men as Kenton and Boone, who had done so much for the welfare of Kentucky in its early days of trial, found their indefinite entries declared null and void, and were dispossessed, in their old age, of any claim upon that soil for which they had periled their all. The close of the Revolutionary war, for a time only, suspended Indian hostilities, when the Indian war was again carried on with renewed energy. This arose from the failure of both countries from fully executing the terms of the treaty. By it England was obliged to surrender the north-western posts within the boundaries of the Union, and to return slaves taken during the war. The United States, on their part, had agreed to offer no legal obstacle to the collection of debts due from her citizens to those of Great Britain. Virginia, indignant at the removal of her slaves by the British fleet, by law prohibited the collection of British debts, while England, in consequence, refused to deliver up the boats, so that they were held by her more than ten years, until Jay's treaty was concluded.

Settlements rapidly advanced. Simon Kenton having, in 1784, erected a block-house on the site of Maysville-then called Limestone that became the point from whence the stream of emigration, from down its way on the Ohio, turned into the interior.

In the spring of 1783, the first court in Kentucky was held at Harrodsburg. At this period the establishment of a government independent of Virginia appeared to be of paramount necessity, in consequence of troubles with the Indians. For this object, the first convention in Kentucky was held at Danville, in December, 1784; but it was not consummated until eight separate conventions had been held, running through a term of six years. The last was assembled in July, 1790; on the 4th of February, 1791, Congress passed the act admitting Kentucky into the Union, and in April following she adopted a State Constitution.

Prior to this, unfavorable impressions prevailed in Kentucky against the Union, in consequence of the inability of Congress to compel a surrender of the north-west posts, and the apparent disposition of the Northern States to yield to Spain for twenty years the sole right to navigate the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico, the exclusive right to which was claimed by that power as being within her dominions. Kentucky was suffering under the horrors of Indian warfare, and having no government of her own, saw that that beyond the mountains was unable to afford them protection. When in the year 1786 several States in Congress showed a disposition to yield the right of navigating the Mississippi to Spain, for certain commercial advantages, which would inure to their benefit, but not in the least to that of Kentucky, there arose a universal voice of dissatisfaction; and many were in favor of declaring the independence of Kentucky, and erecting an independent government west of the mountains.

Spain was then an immense landholder in the west. She claimed all east of the Mississippi lying south of the 31st degree of north latitude, and all west of that river to the ocean.

In May 1787, a convention was assembled at Danville to remonstrate with Congress against the proposition of ceding the navigation of the

Mississippi to Spain; but it having been ascertained that Congress, through the influence of Virginia and the other southern states, would not permit this, the convention had no occasion to act upon the subject. In the year 1787 quite a sensation arose in Kentucky, in consequence of a profitable trade having been opened with New Orleans by Genera Wilkinson, who descended thither in June, with a boat load of tobacco and other productions of Kentucky. Previously, all those who ventured down the river within the Spanish settlements had their property seized. The lure was then held out by the Spanish minister, that if Kentucky would declare her independence of the United States, the navigation of the Mississippi should be opened to her; but that never would this privilege be extended while she was a part of the Union, in consequence of existing commercial treaties between Spain and other European powers. In the winter of 1788-9, the notorious Dr. Connolly, a secret British agent from Canada, arrived in Kentucky. His object appeared to be to sound the temper of her people, and ascertain if they were willing to unite with British troops from Canada, and seize upon and hold New Orleans and the Spanish settlements on the Mississippi. He dwelt upon the advantages which it must be to the people of the west to hold and possess the right of navigating the Mississippi; but his overtures were not accepted. At this time settlements had been commenced within the present limits of Ohio. Before giving a sketch of these, we glance at the western land tlaims.

The claim of the English monarch to the Northwestern Territory was ceded to the United States by the treaty of peace, signed at Paris, September 3, 1783. During the pendency of this negotiation, Mr. Oswald, the British commissioner, proposed the River Ohio as the western boundary of the United States, and but for the indomitable, persevering opposition of John Adams, one of the American commissioners, who insisted upon the Mississippi as the boundary, this proposition would have probably been acceded to.

The states who owned western unappropriated lands under their original charters from British monarchs, with a single exception, ceded them to the United States. In March, 1784, Virginia ceded the soil and jurisdiction of her lands northwest of the Ohio. In September, 1786, Connecticut ceded her claim to the soil and jurisdiction of her western lands, excepting that part of Ohio known as the "Western Reserve," and to that she ceded her jurisdictional claims in 1800. Massachusetts and New York ceded all their claims. Besides these were the Indian claims, asserted by the right of possession. These have been extinguished by various treaties, from time to time, as the inroads of emigration rendered necessary. ́

The Indian title to a large part of the territory of Ohio having become extinguished, Congress, before settlements were commenced, found it necessary to pass ordinances for the survey and sale of the lands in the Northwest Territory. In October, 1787, Manasseh Cutler and Winthrop Sargeant, agents of the New England Ohio Company, made a large purchase of land, bounded south by the Ohio, and west by the Scioto River. Its settlement was commenced at Marietta in the spring

of 1788, which was the first made by the Americans within Ohio. A settlement had been attempted within the limits of Ohio, on the site of Portsmouth, in April, 1785, by four families from Redstone, Pennsyl vania; but difficulties with the Indians compelled its abandonment.

About the time of the settlement of Marietta, Congress appointed General Arthur St. Clair governor, Winthrop Sargeant secretary, and Samuel Holden Parsons, James M. Varnum, and John Cleves Symmes judges in and over the Territory. They organized its government and passed laws, and the governor erected the county of Washington, embracing nearly the whole of the eastern half of the present limits of Ohio.

In November, 1788, the second settlement within the limits of Ohio was commenced at Columbia, on the Ohio, five miles above the site of Cincinnati, and within the purchase and under the auspices of John Cleves Symmes and associates. Shortly after, settlements were commenced at Cincinnati, and at North Bend, sixteen miles below, both within Symmes's purchase. In 1790 another settlement was made at Gallipolis by a colony from France the name signfying city of the French.

On the 9th of January, 1789, a treaty was concluded at Fort Harmer, at the mouth of the Muskingum, opposite Marietta, by Governor St. Clair, in which the treaty, which had been made four years previous, at Fort M'Intosh, on the site of Beaver, Pennsylvania, was renewed and confirmed. It did not, however, produce the favorable results anticipated. The Indians, the same year, committed numerous murders, which occasioned the alarmed settlers to erect block-houses in each of the new settlements. In June, Major Doughty, with one hundred and forty men, commenced the erection of Fort Washington, on the site of Cincinnati In the course of the summer General Harmer arrived at the fort with three hundred men.

Negotiations with the Indians proving unfavorable, General Harmer marched, in September, 1790, from Cincinnati with thirteen hundred men, less than one fourth of whom were regulars, to attack their towns on the Maumee. He succeeded in burning their towns; but in an engagement with the Indians, part of his troops met with a severe loss. The next year a larger army assembled at Cincinnati, under General St. Clair, composed of about three thousand men. With this force he commenced his march towards the Indian towns on the Maumee. Early in the morning of the 4th of November, 1791, his army, while in camp on what is now the line of Darke and Mercer counties, within three miles of the Indian line, and about seventy north from Cincinnati, were surprised by a large body of Indians, and defeated with terrible slaughter. A third army, under General Anthony Wayne, was organized. On the 20th of August, 1794, they met and completely defeated the Indians, on the Maumee River, about twelve miles south of the site of Toledo. The Indians, at length, becoming convinced of their inability to resist the American arms, sued for peace. On the 3d of August, 1795, General Wayne concluded a treaty at Greenville, sixty miles north of Cincinnati, with eleven of the most powerful northwestern tribes, in grand council

This gave peace to the west, of several years' duration, during which the settlements progressed with great rapidity. Jay's treaty, concluded November 19, 1794, was a most important event to the prosperity of the west. It provided for the withdrawal of all the British troops from the north-western posts. In 1796 the North-western Territory was divided into five counties. Marietta was the seat of justice of Hamilton and Washington counties; Vincennes, of Knox county; Kaskaskia, of St. Clair county; and Detroit, of Wayne county. The settlers, out of the limits of Ohio, were Canadian or Creole French. The head-quarters of the north-west army were removed to Detroit, at which point a fort had been built by De la Motte Cadillac, as early as 1701.

Originally Virginia claimed jurisdiction over a large part of Western Pennsylvania, as being within her dominions; yet it was not until after the close of the revolution that the boundary line was permanently established. Then this tract was divided into two counties-the one, Westmoreland, extending from the mountains west of the Alleghany River, including Pittsburg and all the country between the Kishkeminitas and Youghiogheny; the other, Washington, comprised all south and west of Pittsburg, inclusive of all the country east and west of the Monongahela River. At this period Fort Pitt was a frontier post, around which had sprung up the village of Pittsburg, which was not regularly laid out into a town until 1784. The settlement on the Monongahela at "Redstone Old Fort," or "Fort Burd," as it was originally called, having become an important point of embarkation for western emigrants, was the next year laid off into a town, under the name of Brownsville. Regular forwarding houses were soon established here, by whose lines goods were systematically wagoned over the mountains, thus superseding the slow and tedious mode of transportation by pack-horses, to which the emigrants had previously been obliged to resort.

In July, 1786, "The Pittsburg Gazette," the first newspaper issued in the West, was published; the second being "The Kentucky Gazette," established at Lexington in August of the next year. As late as 1791 the Alleghany River was the frontier limit of the settlements of Pennsylvania, the Indians holding possession of the region round its north-western tributary, with the exception of a few scattering settlements, which were all simultaneously broken up and exterminated in one night, in February of this year, by a band of one hundred and fifty Indians. During the campaigns of Harmer, St. Clair, and Wayne, Pittsburg was the great depot for the armies.

By this time agriculture and manufactures had begun to flourish in Western Pennsylvania and Virginia, and an extensive trade was carried on with the settlements on the Ohio and on the Lower Mississippi, with New Orleans and the rich Spanish settlements in its vicinity. Monongahela whisky, horses, cattle, and agricultural and mechanical implements of iron, were the principal articles of export. The Spanish Government soon after much embarrassed this trade by imposing heavy

duties.

The first settlements in Tennessee were made in the vicinity of Fort Loudon, on the Little Tennessee, in what is now Monroe county, East

Tennessee, about the year 1758. Forts Loudon and Chissel were built at that time by Colonel Byrd, who marched into the Cherokee country with a regiment from Virginia. The next year war broke out with the Cherokees. In 1760 the Cherokees besieged Fort London, into which the settlers had gathered their families, numbering nearly three hundred persons. The latter were obliged to surrender for want of provisions, but, agreeably to the terms of capitulation, were to retreat unmolested beyond the Blue Ridge. When they had proceeded about twenty miles on their route, the savages fell upon them and massacred all but nine, not even sparing the women and children.

The only settlements were thus broken up by this war. The next year the celebrated Daniel Boone made an excursion from North Carolina to the waters of the Holstein. In 1766 Colonel James Smith, with five others, traversed a great portion of Middle and West Tennessee. At the mouth of the Tennessee Smith's companions left him to make farther explorations in Illinois, while he, in company with a negro lad, returned home through the wilderness, after an absence of eleven months, during which he saw "neither bread, mouey, women, nor spirituous liquors."

Other explorations soon succeeded, and permanent settlements were first made in 1768 and '69, by emigrants from Virginia and North Carolina, who were scattered along the branches of the Holstein, French, Broad, and Watauga. The jurisdiction of North Carolina was in 1777 extended over the western district, which was organized as the county of Washington, and extending nominally westward to the Mississippi. Soon after, some of the more daring picneers made a settlement at Bledsoe's station, in Middle Tennessee, in the heart of the Chickasaw nation, and separated several hundred miles, by the usual traveled route, from their kinsmen on the Holstein. A number of French traders had previously established a trading post and erected a few cabins at the "Bluff" near the site of Nashville. To the same vicinity Colonel James Robertson, in the fall of 1780, emigrated with forty families from North Carolina, who were driven from their homes by the marauding incursions of Tarleton's cavalry, and established "Robertson's Station," which formed the nucleus around which gathered the settlements on the Cumberland. The Cherokees having commenced hostilities upon the frontier inhabitants about the commencement of the year 1781, Colonel Campbell, of Virginia, with seven hundred mounted riflemen, invaded their country and defeated them. At the close of the revolution, settlers moved in in large numbers from Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. Nashville was laid out in the summer of 1784, and named from General Francis Nash, who fell at Brandywine.

The people of this district, in common with those of Kentucky, and on the Upper Ohio, were deeply interested in the navigation of the Mississippi, and under the tempting offers of the Spanish governor of Louisiana, many were lured to emigrate to West Florida, and become subjects of the Spanish king.

North Carolina having ceded her claims to her western lands, Congress, in May, 1790, erected this into a territory under the name of the "Southwestern Territory," according to the provisions of the ordinance of 1787, excepting the article prohibiting slavery.