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Updated: May 19, 2025
Indeed the most discreditable of all the recorded episodes of the time was a heartless massacre by Americans of a large band of Indians that had been Christianized by Moravian missionaries and brought together in a peaceful community on the Muskingum. But it was dearly paid for. From the Lakes to the Gulf redskins rose for vengeance.
That the whole number of effective men in the Muskingum country would not exceed two hundred and eighty-seven, and that many of them were badly armed, and that unless the government speedily sent a body of troops for their protection, they were "a ruined people." Virginia, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, were all being sorely pressed by savage incursions.
About the time of the adoption of the Ordinance for the government of the northwest territory, the Ohio Company composed of revolutionary officers and soldiers, had negotiated with congress for the purchase of a large tract of land in the Muskingum valley, and on the 7th day of April, 1788, the town of Marietta, Ohio, had been established at the mouth of that river, opposite Fort Harmar.
The men were all absent, hunting. The interpreter returned to camp in the evening, bringing the truth of the murderous tale. A trader had fallen a victim to his temerity, having been drowned in attempting, in company with another, to swim his horse across the Ohio. Two days more of voyaging brought them to an Indian hunting camp, near the mouth of the Muskingum.
The men went up in canoes to the mouth of Duck creek, where they left their water craft. The more experienced rangers soon fell upon the trail, which they traced across the wide bottoms on to the Little Muskingum. At a point about half a mile below where Conner's mill now stands, the Indians forded the creek.
In consequence men began to look elsewhere, and an advocate of big business wrote in 1802: "The country has received a shock; let us immediately extend our views and direct our efforts to every foreign market." One of the most remarkable plans for the capture of foreign trade to be found in the annals of American commerce originated almost simultaneously in the Muskingum and Monongahela regions.
Alienated from their ancient friends, here were Delawares from the Susquehanna eager to speed the fatal stroke, and Shawanoes from Grave Creek and the Muskingum; scattered warriors of the Six Nations; Ojibwas, Pottawottomis from the far Michigan; Abenakis and Caughnawagas from Canada; Ottawas from Lake Superior, led on by the royal Pontiac; and Hurons from the falls of Montreal and the mission of Lorette, whose barbarous leader gloried in a name torn from the most famous pages of Christian story.
There was more than one bond of sympathy between us, for he worshipped Washington, detested the French party, and had a hatred for "filthy Democrats" second to none I have ever encountered. We stopped for a few days at Fort Harmar, where the Muskingum pays its tribute to the Ohio, built by the Federal government to hold the territory which Clark had won.
Miss Catherine Comstock herself was, in the last analysis, from Toledo, Ohio, of an excellent family that had its roots in the soil of Muskingum. When her father died, there being no immediate prospect of marriage, she had taken to teaching in a girls' private school.
A hundred and sixty backwoodsmen gathered at Mingo Bottom under the lead of Colonel David Williamson, who had once disgraced himself among them by preventing them from killing some Moravian prisoners, and who now seems to have been willing to atone for his humanity. They marched swiftly to the Muskingum, where they stole upon the Indians in the cornfields, and seized their guns.
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