With this glimpse of this man’s ambitions for the commercial advancement of the Central West, let us not omit his subsequent interest in the military operations for its subjugation, an item which even the far-seeing Washington had not fully anticipated. At the time of Crawford’s campaign, Washington was fully in favor of the advance toward Sandusky, and it was through his influence or suggestion that the command was given to his old friend of Revolutionary days, Colonel William Crawford. True, Crawford was duly elected by the men he led, but his presence in the expedition was due to Washington’s influence. When the immortal ordinance was under discussion, Washington’s attitude was strong in its favor, and it incorporated, as has already been shown, his idea of the value of the portages between the rivers as the future routes of commerce. During the long and bitter war with the western Indians, 1790-1795, Washington had a clearer vision than most of his advisers, and with better judgment and knowledge sought to gain the ends best for the nation. His “search for a man” was nearly as pathetic as was Lincoln’s in another century, but, despite the intense opposition of Kentucky with its seventy thousand inhabitants, he placed Mad Anthony Wayne in command, who, in the tall grass and felled trees of Fallen Timbers, justified his choice, as Appomattox justified Lincoln’s. After the campaign of 1791 under Harmar and the terrible defeat of the brave St. Clair, Washington was the hope of the West. To him the nation looked with that same confidence shown in the darker and more desperate days of the Revolution. He bore the brunt of criticism and carried on his great heart the sorrows of the bleeding frontier. No one knew better than he the real meaning of the situation. No one saw with clearer eyes the despicable affiliation of British interests with Indian in the last hope of limiting the territories of the upstart colonies to the land east of the mountains. And, while Jay was heroically working for the treaty which at once quenched the dreams of certain British leaders in America, Washington wrote him the whole situation as follows: “All the difficulties we encounter with the Indians, their hostilities, the murder of helpless women and children along all our frontiers result from the conduct of the agents of Great Britain in this country.”
Truly, Washington was in a special sense the father of the Central West. It is impossible to tell what might have been its history had it not been championed from the earliest day by this great, far-seeing man in whom the people of the nation, as a people, believed and trusted as perhaps no leader in history, with the possible exception of William the Silent, has ever been trusted by his countrymen. Many of Washington’s plans seem strange to us, much as the times and customs of his day are strange to our eyes. But his eye was clear; he saw greater possibilities than his advisers; his great heart warmed toward the new West, which in his day was sounding with axes, ringing a pioneer’s welcome to a new land. In his heart of hearts Washington was led foresee and to believe in the dispensation of Providence which has become the wonder of our time. And this belief appeared not in theorizing alone. What could he do toward creating right conceptions concerning the future of the Mississippi basin, Washington did; and if he had not so done and so believed, it is sure that the progress of these great empires between the Allegheny and the Mississippi, the Great Lakes and the Blue Ridge would not have been what it is.
Has this been sufficiently realized? Have we remembered and appreciated our debt to Washington? And when our united appreciation of the fact influences these imperial commonwealths to put on record in lasting form the gratitude which should be felt, let the monument rise tall and stately from whatever site may seem appropriate, but let it show at the summit the young man Washington, as he was when he came to know the West best. Clothe him in the ranger’s costume that he first wore on Nemacolin’s Path to the Ohio. Place in his hand the old-time musket he bore to Fort La Bœuf, or carried in his canoe down the Ohio to the Great Kanawha. That is the WASHINGTON OF THE WEST—the fearless, dutiful, thoughtful youth, who came from his mother’s knee to the West that gave him a fame which he never could outgrow.
CHAPTER II
THE HUNTING-GROUND OF THE IROQUOIS
It must be next to impossible for one in this day to realize what a tangled wilderness this West was a century and a half ago. “The thing which puzzles us,” writes W. H. H. Murray, “is not the past but the future; not the door which has been shut, but the strange door which has never been opened.... For who, though knocking with reddened knuckles against it may start even an echo?” True words indeed; yet were the task put to us, it is to be seriously doubted if we of untrained imagination could not draw a truer picture of this land as it will appear a century hence than we could conjure up of the land as it appeared a century ago. Suppose the latter picture could be true to the dense growth of bush and tree, the wallowings of the plunging buffalo, the ways of the wild animals tunneled through the tangled maze of bush and vine—true, in short, to the groundwork—would it faithfully picture the tangled tops of the giant trees, where a more intricate network of Nature’s handiwork might have been seen than on the ground? Who but one acquainted with primeval forests can picture the straggling branches of the giant trees reaching out into the etherial battle ground to a last death grapple with its hoary rivals, both weighed down by luxuriant masses of moss and tangled vine? Records of early pioneers affirm that when this forest was first invaded by the woodman’s ax it was found to be one thing to cut a tree’s trunk but quite another thing to dislodge its top from the network of forest overgrowth, from which giant trees have been known to hang suspended in mid-air after their trunks had been severed. Felling of trees often began at the top; boys were sent up to strip the branches before the trunk was cut. Where are the trees the like of which Washington found on the Ohio near the Great Kanawha with a diameter of over fourteen feet?
What a sight the woodland rivers must have presented! Think of the plunder of the forests which the Wabash and Kentucky at flood-tide must have carried on their boiling bosoms. Picture the gigantic gorges of forest trees, blocked in their wild course down the Allegheny and piled in monstrous and grotesque confusion from bank to bank, forcing even the river itself to find a new course through the forests. And so the vistas seen on our rivers today could not have been so beautiful in the old days; perhaps they were never visible on the lesser streams. For the continuous falling of the solid walls of trees which lined both banks must have well-nigh roofed our smaller streams completely over, and the venturous trapper in his canoe must have found the fear of falling trees added to his other fears. When General Moses Cleaveland attempted to ascend the Cuyahoga in a boat from Lake Erie, the great quantity of fallen trees compelled him to desist from the undertaking. An early Kentucky pioneer, in giving directions to prospective voyagers down the Ohio river, warns them against rowing at night as the noise of the oars would prevent their hearing the “riffling” of the water about the rocks and sunken logs which made river traveling, especially on swift streams, difficult and dangerous.
Nor have our rivers always held the position in respect to size which they relatively hold today. It is doubtful if one who knew the old Monongahela would recognize the placid, turbid, faithful river which bears that name today. As though these streams of ours recognize in some way that they must needs conform to the state of civilization which they see about them, and may not run wild and free as when amenable only to the caprice of savage aborigines! Of course the greater difference would be discoverable in such rivers as have been bound in locks and dams, and deepened by the dredge. Such was the rapidity of the current of many of our streams that the time now made by swift packets is more than double the time taken by canoes before slack-water navigation was introduced. With the damming of these streams, local history, in all our states, has lost many landmarks well known in the earliest days of navigation. On the Allegheny river, as on the Susquehanna on the eastern side of the mountains, rocks, upon which the Indians inscribed their hieroglyphics, are now under water, so that these inscriptions are visible only at low tide, and indeed in some cases are never seen above the surface of the water. Of all streams the majestic Ohio, alone, moves on much as of old; and, though many islands have passed from sight, there is hardly a mile in all her course which does not recall, in name, the days when that river was the great highway through the hunting-ground of the Iroquois and of the race of “men who wore hats” who came upon its tide to found the empires which today exist along its sweeping shores. And yet the Ohio is soon to undergo great changes which will materially alter its aspect. Surveys for dams are being made, which, when completed, will give a minimum depth of six feet between locks.