The Pioneers

by David McCullough

  At the Point a good crowd had gathered, people cheering, dogs barking. Rufus Putnam, Samuel Parsons, and Winthrop Sargent were among the welcoming committee. Not to be seen among the crowd, however, was Jervis Cutler, whose adventurous spirit, as his father already knew, had propelled him elsewhere for the time being.

  First reactions by the newcomers to the realities of what was to be their new home in Campus Martius were mostly favorable, as one of the Tupper daughters would write. “Our buildings are decent and comfortable. The Indians appear to be perfectly friendly,” she said, adding notwithstanding, “There is a guard placed every night.”

  In his usual energetic fashion, Manasseh Cutler was bent on seeing as much as possible and enjoying to the full the hospitality provided and the encouraging progress to be seen. “Cabin raisings” were taking place, joint efforts by neighbors to provide the newcomers places to live, and with many working together a cabin could go up in remarkably little time. The customary pay provided for such efforts was whiskey in generous quantity.

  With Rufus Putnam, Cutler walked the “city lots” and a cornfield the size of which “astonished” him, as did corn already grown to an unimaginable fourteen feet high. One tulip tree nearly six feet in diameter he estimated to be over 400 years old.

  Not surprisingly, it was the trees that commanded Cutler’s greatest attention. He could be seen studying and measuring the stumps of those that had been cut down, carefully counting the circles. One sycamore, or buttonwood, measured twenty-one feet in circumference. On the stump of one elm he counted 336 well-defined circles.

  With Generals Parsons and Varnum he inspected what was known as “the great tree,” a giant, hollow black walnut just back from the Muskingum River. At two feet above ground the tree measured forty-one feet in circumference. Six men on horseback could parade inside it at the same time, Cutler was told.

  As always, he took time to record every day’s activities and with particular attention to the natural wonders to be seen. One day he carefully dissected a poisonous copperhead snake.

  Took off his head and examined his teeth. Took out seven teeth from the bladder on one side [of] his jaw. Found a circular bone, in which the teeth were inserted; this bone is connected with the jaw by a strong ligament.

  Sudden and heavy rains by which he was “almost drowned,” mist, fog, along with abounding mud, appear to have characterized a greater part of his visit. In compensation the women he met all struck him as bright and charming. Miss Anna Symmes was a “very well accomplished young lady.” (She would one day become the wife of President William Henry Harrison.) Mrs. Harmar, the general’s wife, was a “fine woman,” and at a dinner given by Captain William McCurdy featuring squirrel pie, he found Mrs. McCurdy “very agreeable.”

  As might have been expected, Cutler was utterly fascinated by the Mound and loved conversing with others at length on the subject.

  In the middle of one night, he was called on to visit the seriously ill child of one of the couples with whom he had traveled down the Ohio. But by the time he arrived, the child, thirteen-month-old Nabby Cushing, had died. Hers was the first death among the settlers of Marietta. The parents had six remaining children with them, and the mother was expecting another later in the winter.

  The conspicuous presence of the natives of different tribes in the daily life of the community pleased Cutler no end. “We have had Indians to dine with us almost every day principally Delawares, Wyandots, one or two Shawnees, Mingos, Seneca, or Six Nations. No other nations come in.” The Chippewas and Ottawas, he was told, appeared to be inclined for war. At one point he did complain that when he returned to his quarters at night, he found numerous Indians standing about, “the squaws mostly drunk.”

  On Sunday, August 24, the Reverend Cutler preached a powerful sermon before a large gathering at Campus Martius. He spoke at length, clearly having given it much thought. God and the Gospel figured prominently. So also did religious freedom and learning and the new nation at hand.

  It may be emphatically said that a new Empire has sprung into existence, and that there is a new thing under the sun. By the Constitution now established in the United States, religious as well as civil liberty is secured.

  Some serious Christians may possibly tremble for the Ark, and think the Christian religion in danger when divested of the patronage of civil power. They may fear inroads from licentiousness and infidelity, on the one hand, and from sectaries and party divisions on the other. But we may dismiss our fears, when we consider that truth can never be in real hazard, where there is a sufficiency of light and knowledge, and full liberty to vindicate it.

  He was patriotic, high-minded, unmistakably brimming with pride and confidence in the community under way and its values, and optimistic about the future.

  Such is the present state of things in this country, that we have just ground to hope that religion and learning, the useful and ornamental branches of science, will meet with encouragement, and that they will be extended to the remotest parts of the American empire. . . . Here we behold a country vast in extent, mild in its climate, exuberant in its soil, and favorable to the enjoyment of life. . . . Here may the Gospel be preached to the latest period of time; the arts and sciences be planted; the seeds of virtue, happiness, and glory be firmly rooted and grow up to full maturity.

  Traffic on the river grew steadily, with by far the greater part of it heading farther downstream to Virginia and Kentucky. The Kentucky-bound boats numbered ten or twelve a day. It was said that before the year was out more than 900 boats carrying more than 18,000 people had passed by the “New England settlement,” as Marietta was sometimes called.

  The variety in the shapes and sizes of the means of transportation on the river was a spectacle in itself—flatboats, rafts, barges of all sizes, and keelboats. The flatboat was a heavy, flat-bottomed, rectangular box eight to ten feet wide and thirty or forty feet long. It would be described “a mixture of log-cabin, fort, floating barnyard and country grocery” and was how the vast majority of the “floating pilgrims” traveled. John James Audubon, who embarked on the Ohio on his wedding journey, described passengers huddled together with their animals and poultry.

  The roof or deck of the boat was not unlike a farmyard, being covered with hay, ploughs, carts, wagons . . . [and] spinning-wheels of the matrons were conspicuous. Even the sides of the floating-mass were loaded with the wheels of the different vehicles which themselves lay on the roof.

  At the end of their journey the flatboats would be broken apart, the lumber used for a variety of purposes.

  The keelboat, on the other hand, was intended for travel both downstream and back up against the current. The keelboat, as said, “heralded a new era.” It was a long, narrow craft, from fifty to seventy feet in length and had a fifteen- to eighteen-foot beam, shallow draft, was pointed at both prow and stern, and had a narrow running board from prow to stern on either side. The crew consisted of many men, a number of whom on the running boards, using long poles, would walk from bow to stern pushing the boat upstream. Or if not that, they would pull on oars.

  Under certain circumstances it made sense to grab hold of the bushes and trees on the river’s banks and pull the boat forward upstream. This was known as “bushwhacking.”

  There was no more grueling work in the new west than that of the keelboatmen and they were to become a long-standing, colorful element of life on the river, “a distinct class,” with their red flannel shirts and wool hats set off with a feather. More often than not seasoned keelboat hands also carried one or two signs of their way of life after hours, a damaged nose or ear or face scars, of which they were quite proud. As one Ohio River historian was to write in understatement, “If a town had a really malodorous repute, it was to them, then, an excellent place to lie over and relax a bit. Their relaxing, of course, did nothing to quiet the scene of their repose.”

  On September 9, after a stay of three weeks, Manasseh Cutler started for home back up the Ohio. It wa
s a sparkling, clear day and he was on a “fine, large” keelboat with ten boatmen pulling on oars. It was a boat belonging to a merchant from Pittsburgh returning from a trip to New Orleans who invited Cutler to be his guest. No sooner had they left shore than around Kerr’s Island came a barge carrying more than fifty soldiers from Fort Pitt and some forty Indians in canoes lashed together. The soldiers were standing ramrod straight in immaculate uniforms and the Indians were in full dress. Among them was the celebrated Cornplanter, chief of the Senecas. The Indians, on their way to a treaty gathering, were carrying two small American flags. It was a spectacle Cutler was never to forget.

  Plans were changed temporarily. Cutler’s boat turned back to stop at Fort Harmar for several hours, during which Cutler had the chance to talk with Cornplanter. The chief was in his eighties, the son of a white Indian trader and a Seneca woman, and known as a strong leader and great orator. Cutler, as he later wrote, was “surprised to see a man of that age with so much sprightliness about him—his body erect, and countenance rather florid; and yet marks of senility were more evident on his body than in his mind.” When Cutler asked Cornplanter about the origins of the Mound, Cornplanter said he did not know who made them, nor for what purpose. It was a mystery.

  At about mid-afternoon, Cutler’s journey upriver resumed. Any desire such as he had earlier expressed of becoming part of the settlement appears to have subsided. How soon he might return to Marietta for another visit, or possibly even to stay, was impossible to predict, given all he had to attend to at home.

  With the passage of autumn and the days growing shorter, the work to be done was greater still. Winter was coming, winter in the wilderness, and much needed seeing to. Darkness fell earlier, but with the leaves gone from the trees, the stars and moon blazed in the night sky.

  In mid-December some 200 members of different native tribes marched down the western shore of the Muskingum to Fort Harmar, a great number on horseback and those out front carrying the flag of the United States. As they approached the fort, they fired their rifles as a sign of friendship, and the salute was returned by several minutes of cannon and rifle fire from the fort. A guard of soldiers, with music, then escorted them into the garrison.

  Thus commenced the procedures of a new treaty. The Delawares, Wyandots, and Ottawas had formed a loose confederacy. They had come in earnest and all “spirituous liquors” were prohibited on both sides. But the most important members of the confederacy, the Shawnees and the Miamis, had refused to attend the council. The leaders of the confederacy wanted rescinding of the cessions north of the Ohio River. The American government hoped that by a modest payment for the cessions, settlement could continue north of the Ohio without violence.

  As the days passed, the Indians were slaughtering great quantities of game for their own subsistence, but as the chances of their getting what they wanted from the treaty seemed increasingly unlikely, they began killing all the game they could within a radius of twenty miles or more. Rarely could a deer now be seen where before a good hunter could kill from ten to fifteen a day. A settler later wrote that the natives said they meant to kill all the game and thus, “Destroy and starve out every white face north of the Ohio.”

  Captain Pipe and others of the tribes had become alarmed by the size of what was being built by the settlers and the numbers that kept arriving. The native people did not believe land was something to be owned. In the words of a Wyandot named Turk, “No one in particular can justly claim this [land]; it belongs in common to us all; no earthly being has an exclusive right to it. The Great Spirit above is the true and only owner of this soil; and He has given us all an equal right to it.”

  The treaty that was finally signed on January 9, 1789, would bring little change for the better. It was, as said, an “insincere and hollow affair.” Rufus Putnam, who had kept closer watch than anyone on all that went on, wrote, “This treaty under all circumstances gave us no real security, or reason to relax in our precautions against a surprise.”

  The day following, on January 10, General Varnum, who had been suffering with consumption from the time of his arrival and had grown quite feeble, died at age forty.

  From the start he had taken his responsibilities at Marietta quite seriously and, much to his credit, played an active part in promoting a resolution for the preservation of the ancient ruins of the Mound. But with the advance of his illness he had become a “very unhappy” man, and proved increasingly hard to deal with, taking issue with Rufus Putnam’s land distribution policies and making life difficult for others. To Manasseh Cutler, who confessed that Varnum had given him “much uneasiness,” it was as if his death had been an intervention of divine providence.

  Meanwhile two notable advances had been made in the life of the settlement. A first school was established in one of the blockhouses at Campus Martius, and a first general store opened on the Point, the enterprise of the affluent young James Backus from Connecticut, in partnership with another young man from Connecticut, Dudley Woodbridge. In their inventory of stock at hand, the first thing listed was fifty-seven gallons of whiskey.

  As the year’s end approached the population of Marietta numbered 132 people, including fifteen families, and, it may be said, nearly all were still optimistic.

  Winter “set in cold,” in mid-December. One cold day after another was followed by “very cold days” or “still very cold” days. The Ohio River became choked with ice to the point that no boats moved up or downstream and the settlers, who had so recently enjoyed such a wondrous abundance of food, now found themselves hard pressed for enough to eat.

  Jediah Bagley was an itinerant fiddler who moved about among the settlements playing for parties, weddings, and funerals. Trudging through the snow along the Muskingum one freezing afternoon, he was chased by wolves and just barely succeeded in climbing a willow on the riverbank. Gripping the tree with his legs, he managed to get the fiddle off his back and out of its case and began to play for the wolves on into the night, until they finally “saw fit” to leave him.

  The next morning, it was said, he continued on through the snow playing one tune after another until at last he reached Marietta. True or not, the story would help a great many get through much that was to come.

   CHAPTER THREE

  Difficult Times

  Spit on your hands and take a fresh holt.

  —EARLY SAYING

  I.

  “The little provisions which the settlers had provided was soon spent. Their flour entirely,” remembered Ichabod Nye. “Very few had laid in any salted meat of any description, the season for venison was gone by. Turkeys scarce, beef and cattle there was none.”

  Ichabod Nye from the Bay State had been among those settlers who arrived the first summer. The son-in-law of General Benjamin Tupper, he had made the overland journey with the general and the rest of the family, including his wife, Minerva, and their children, and had had an extremely hard time almost from the start. He wished he had never agreed to go west, “for the long and unknown adventure to a wilderness among savages and prowlers of the forest.” But of this he said nothing. “I never made one word of complaint. The die was cast and I made the best of it.”

  At Sumerill’s Ferry, where the others “tarried” ten days, while a boat was made ready, he was charged with driving a stock of twenty worn-out horses through the wilderness on the Virginia shore of the Ohio to Marietta, a task such as he had never before undertaken or even imagined.

  On arrival he had been appropriately greeted by Rufus Putnam. But he would not have gotten by until the arrival of the family had it not been for a new acquaintance named Dean Tyler, who had a cabin on the east side of Campus Martius, which he offered to share in return for help with his patch of corn and cucumbers.

  Tyler, too, was from Massachusetts, a Harvard graduate who had come west as a way of coping with the death of a young lady with whom he had been much in love. If most agreeable in manner and known to be brilliant of mind, he was also thought a
bit eccentric, the sort who had been “exclusively confined to handling books and found it difficult to become familiar with the axe handle and the hoe.” And as Ichabod Nye soon learned, he and Tyler were to subsist mainly on their meager corn and cucumber production. With the arrival of Nye’s wife and children, they, too, moved into the Tyler cabin.

  When, in November, the shortage of food had become all too apparent, Tyler, with funds provided by the Ohio Company, acquired a flatboat and set off upstream to Pittsburgh for a supply of flour. But then the river froze. Tyler was stranded at Pittsburgh, and at Marietta, as Nye wrote, “We were all starving for bread.”

  The fortunes and fate of the settlement, it had become increasingly clear, were much at the sufferance of la Belle Rivière.

  General Tupper and his family, meanwhile, established themselves in one of the houses within Campus Martius, or the stockade, as it was commonly known, and were making do as best they could. The general became actively engaged with Rufus Putnam in the management and interests of the Ohio Company, but had suffered severely from the economic depression back home and was consequently “without funds.”

  Among the others also residing at the stockade was Winthrop Sargent, who had earlier made a concerted effort to introduce himself to Ichabod Nye, when Ichabod first arrived, and who did no less now in welcoming the Tupper family.

  Sargent was impressive if not altogether likable. Tall and slender, always elegant in attire, he had the erect military stance of a high-ranking officer that seemed a bit out of place on the frontier and a voice that could turn somewhat harsh even when discussing matters pleasing to him. Particularly to those not from New England, he seemed the perfect stiff-necked Yankee and would doubtless remain so. But then, like Manasseh Cutler, he was an avid botanist and took serious interest in Marietta’s prehistoric mound. As a gardener he surpassed everyone in the settlement.