years later; while Massachusetts delayed till the nineteenth of April, 1785, and Connecticut till the fourteenth of September, 1786.

Meanwhile, upon the twenty-second of October, 1784, the Five Na tions had relinquished to the United States all their claims to the grounds west of Pennsylvania; and, upon the twenty-first of the following January, the Wyandots and Delawares, by the treaty of Fort M'Intosh, (which post stood near the ground now occupied by Beaver, Pennsylva nia,) gave to the whites the whole south of what is now Ohio. The Indian title being thus done away, and all the state claims but that of Connecticut given up, Congress, upon the twentieth of May, 1785, passed their ordinance for the disposal of lands in the West. Under this ordinance, Thomas Hutchins, geographer of the United States, assisted by a surveyor from each state, proceeded to examine and divide the newly acquired territory.

Among those who at that time visited the region in question, was Colonel Benjamin Tupper. During the summer and fall of 1785, this gentleman, acting as temporary surveyor for Massachusetts, made himself acquainted with the country about the Muskingum; and, being fairly carried away by its beauty and seeming fertility, was strongly instrumental, it is believed, in causing its selection as the resting-place for the colony that went out nearly two years afterward, under the patronage of the Ohio Company. Indeed, there is reason to think that Tupper's visit to the West was the immediate cause of the formation of that company; which resulted from a meeting of those entitled to land-bounties called through the newspapers by General Putnam and Colonel Tupper, in January, 1786. The meeting took place upon the first of March; the "Ohio Company of Associates" was organized, and the resolution taken to collect a million dollars' worth of certificates, and to employ some one at the West, who would select a spot, for which they might definitely contract with Congress. Congress, on their part, showed a disposition to do all in their power to forward the settlement of the northwestern lands; and with that view, upon the twenty-first of April, 1787, passed & resolution, authorizing the sale of those surveyed townships, which might remain after the portion assigned the army had been drawn for, for public securities; the sale to commence upon the twenty-first of the following September, and the price not to be less than one dollar per

acre.

Before this public disposition of the lands commenced, however, it was the purpose of the Associates to make a separate contract for that part of the territory which their agent in the West might select as most suitable. This agent was General Samuel Holden Parsons, who, as Indian commissioner, had, in the year 1786, visited the Ohio country, as far down, at least, as the mouth of the Great Miami, where a treaty was concluded, on the thirty-first of January, with "the Shawnee Nation." This gentleman, in the spring of 1787, selected, after due examination, the same spot which had pleased Colonel Tupper-the valley of the Muskingum. At the mouth of this river he proposed to have the chief city, while the purchase was to stretch along the Ohio to the mouth of the Scioto, so as to include the half of the rich valley that borders that

stream. Many things acted as inducements to this selection; the beautiful scenery and rich soil upon the banks of the clear "Elk-eye;" the protection that would be afforded to the settlers by Fort Harmar, built in 1786, and then the frontier post; the near neighborhood of Western Virginia, from which men and food might be had in time of need; the knowledge, that within the selected territory were coal, salt, and iron' and (as strong an inducement as any) the expectation, then entertained, that through the Cuyahoga and Muskingum would be the communication between the Ohio and Lake Erie, while the bulk of the Atlantic trade, it was thought, would pass the mountains from James river and the Potomac, and flow down the Kanawha.

One other thing is said to have influenced General Parsons; this was the advice of some persons, that were supposed to be good judges, that he should not select the spot he did. The story is this, and, as our informant had it from General Rufus Putnam, we suppose it to be correct. After General Parsons had examined the country immediately about the junction of the Muskingum with the Ohio, he proceeded up the valley of the former, that he might have a view of the interior. Having gone many miles, he met with one of the Zanes, four of which family were among the most noted of the frontier rangers. Zane was probably engaged in salt-making at Salt Creek, which runs into the Muskingum, about ten miles below the present town of Zanesville. Parsons, well knowing that the man he had chanced upon knew, from an acquaintance of fifteen years or more, the whole of what now forms the state of Ohio, asked his advice touching the location of the purchase which the Ohio Company proposed to make. Zane, having pondered the matter, and consulted with some of the old Delaware Indians that lived thereabout, recommended the general to choose either the Miami country, or the valley of the Scioto, in preference to that which he was then examining. What it was that made Parsons doubt the good faith of the pioneer, we know not; but he came to the conclusion that Zane really preferred the Muskingum to any other point, and wished to purchase it himself when the sales should begin during the following September. This impression did away what little doubt still remained in his mind; and, returning to the east, he laid his proposal to contract with Congress for all the land along the Ohio, between the seventh range of townships and the Scioto, and running back as might be afterward agreed upon, before the direct ors of the Company of Associates.

His choice being approved by them, he addressed a memorial to the legislature of the confederation, asking them to empower the Board of Treasury to make the proposed contract. This memorial was reported upon the fourteenth of July, the day after the passage of the well-known ordinance of 1787; and the report was passed, and the Board authorized to make the contract, on the twenty-third of that month. Information of this act of Congress having reached New York, Rufus Putnam and Manasseh Cutler, for themselves and their associates, wrote upon the twenty-sixth to the Board of Treasury, offering to accept the proposition of the report with some few variations, but providing that the company should receive no more land than they paid for. Three months

passed before the contract was finally concluded, the indenture bearing date October twenty-seven; and, when the patents issued, in 1792, the million and a half acres named in this contract, were diminished to something over eleven hundred thousand; the rise in continental certifi cates having prevented the Company from securing the sum they had expected. In consequence of this non-performance, by the Associates, of their original plan, they lost the rich lands upon the Scioto, their western range of townships being the fifteenth.

All being now ready for actual emigration, a plan of the city, which was to be built at the mouth of the Muskingum, was prepared in Boston; and by a vote of the company in November, one hundred settlers were to be sent forward at once; being furnished with provisions while on the way to the new country, and taken into pay at four dollars per month, from their arrival at Pittsburg till the following May. Each man was to provide himself with "a good musket, bayonet, and cartridge-box;" and if he had besides an axe and hoe, and the mechanic his needful tools, he was to be transported free of cost. Accordingly, in December, one party assembled at Danvers, Massachusetts, and upon the first of January a second detachment left Hartford. Their route was the old road nearly that followed by Braddock; and it was April before the united parties left the Youghiogany, and began to float down toward their des tined home; so that any who might have counted upon the wages which they were to receive after passing Pittsburg, and which were to be paid in land, must have found their farms but small, compared to their expec

tations.

Upon the seventh of April, 1788, this little band of forty-seven per. sons landed, and encamped upon the spot where Marietta now stands; and from that day Ohio dates her existence. The river, at whose mouth this first colony of the new settlers placed itself, was noted, even then, as the scene of many interesting historical events.

At the forks of the Muskingum, upon the ninth of November, 1764, Bouquet had received from the Indians two hundred and six persons who had been made captive during the short but bloody war of Pontiac. Near that spot the first Protestant Christians that lived in Ohio, the Moravians, built their house of worship in 1772. There dwelt the noblespirited Logan, and the well-known peace chief of the Delawares. Heckewelder labored upon its banks; there, upon the sixteenth of April, 1781, was born his daughter Maria, the first of the "Buckeyes;" and, in one year from that time, was enacted there the most disgraceful of all the frontier acts, the murder of the Moravian Indians.

Upon these matters we cannot dwell; nor can we, indeed, refer to more than a few events relative to the settlement made by Putnam and his companions. As this settlement was undertaken at a time when Indian hostilities were much to be apprehended, the more remote savages, having the preceding fall avowed their intention to oppose all attempts to civilize the northwestern wilderness, upon the ground that those who had made the treaties of 1785 and 1786, were not authorized to do so, one of the most prominent objects of the settlers was the renewal of these treaties: and the Indians were invited to meet the whites for that

purpose in May, at a spot seventy or eighty miles up the Muskingum. Meanwhile, the governor, Arthur St. Clair, who had been appointed upon the fifth of the preceding October, not having reached the West, it became necessary to erect a temporary government for their internal security; for which purpose a set of laws was passed, and published by being nailed to a tree in the village, and Return Jonathan Meigs was appointed to administer them. It is a strong evidence of the gocd habits of the people of the colony, that, during three months, but one difference occurred, and that was compromised. Indeed, a better set cf men, altogether, could scarce have been selected for the purpose, than Putnam's little band. Washington might well say, "No colony in America was ever settled under such favorable auspices as that which has first commenced at the Muskingum. Information, property, and strength, will be its characteristics. I know many of the settlers personally, and there never were men better calculated to promote the welfare of such a community."

With the information which belonged to them was mingled a little of that pedantic love of ancient learning which tinged the better educated of those days. This showed itself in a meeting of the directors and agents, held July 2nd, upon the banks of the Muskingum, for the purpose of naming the city which had just been laid out, and also the public squares. As yet, the settlement had been called merely "The Muskingum," but the name Marietta was now formally given it, in honor of Maria Antoinette; the square upon which the block-houses stood was christened Campus Martius; the square No. 19, Capitolium; the square No. 61, Cecilia; and the great road through the covert way, Sara Via. Nor was the taste in English composition much more in accordance with that of our days, than the conceits just mentioned. this we have evidence in an oration, now before us, delivered upon the 4th of July, 1788, by James M. Varnum, who, together with S. H. Parsons and John Armstrong, had been appointed to the bench on the 16th of the previous October.

Of

The governor, as we have said, had not yet arrived, which fact gives occasion for the following passage:

"May he soon arrive! Thou gentle-flowing Ohio, whose surface, as conscious of thy unequaled majesty, reflecteth no images but the grandeur of the impending heaven, bear him, oh! bear him safely to this anxious spot! And thou, beautifully-transparent Muskingum, swell at the moment of his approach, and reflect no objects but of pleasure and delight."

But at the close of this first-fruit of Ohio literature, the judge looked forward, with prophetic eye, to the fortunes of the just-entered wilderness; and, in these dim and seer-like terms, foretells the future:

"Religion and government commenced in those parts of the globe, where yonder glorious luminary first arose in his effulgent majesty. They have followed after him in his brilliant course; nor will they cease till they shall have accomplished, in this western world, the consummation of all things.

"Religion inspires us with certain hope of eternal beatitude, and that

it shall begin upon the earth, by an unreserved restitution to the common centre of existence. With what rapture and ecstasy, therefore, may we look forward to that all-important period when the universal desires of mankind shall be satisfied! When this new Jerusalem shall form one angust temple, unfolding its celestial gates to every corner of the globe! When millious shall fly to it, "as doves to their windows," elevating their hopes upon the broad-spreading wings of millenial happiness! Then shall the dark shades of evil be erased from the moral picture, and the universal system appear in all its splendor! Time itself, the era and the grave of imperfection, shall be engulfed in the bosom of Eternity, and one blaze of glory pervade the universe!"

It would appear that the Ohio listened to the prayer of the orator, for, upon the 9th, St. Clair arrived. The ordinance of 1787 provided two distinct grades of government for the northwest territory, under the first of which the whole power was in the hands of the governor and the three judges, and this form was at once organized upon the governor's arrival. The first law, which was "for regulating and establishing the militia," was published upon the 25th of July; and the next day appeared the governor's proclamation, erecting all the country, that had been ceded by the Indians east of the Scioto river, into the county of Washington.

A proposal was made to the Indians early in 1788, to hold treaty with the whites in May, at a spot seventy or more miles up the Muskingum. The proposed meeting was delayed from time to time; but stores, presents, and other valuables were collected at the designated spot, to wait there until both nations were ready. Upon the 12th of July, however, a party of Chippewas attacked this post; and, though they were repulsed, and six of them made prisoners by the Delaware Indian, who were friendly to the settlers, it was thought best to withdraw the stores to Fort Harmar, and there hold the treaty. This was done, thouş h the Indians could not be brought to conclusive action until the 9th of the following January, when the business was "ended to the entire satisfaction of all concerned."

"The progress of the settlement," says a letter from the Muskingum, "is sufficiently rapid for the first year. We are continually erecting houses, but arrivals are faster than we can possibly provide convenient covering. Our first ball was opened about the middle of December, at which were fifteen ladies, as well accomplished in the manners of polite circles as any I have ever seen in the old states. I mention this to show the progress of society in this new world; where I believe we shall vie with, if not excel, the old states, in every accomplishment necessary to render life agreeable and happy."

The emigration westward at this time was very great; the commandant at Fort Harmar reporting four thousand five hundred persons a having passed that post between February and June, 1788; many of whom would have stopped on the purchase of the Associates, had they been ready to receive them.

During the following year, and indeed until the Indians, who, in spite of treaties, had been committing small depredations all the time, stealing