CHAPTER I.
IN WHICH THE READER WILL FIND A SKETCH OF A VILLAGE IN THE WEST, AND WILL BE INTRODUCED TO SOME OF THE DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.
There is, perhaps, no country in the world more favoured, in respect to natural advantages, than the state of Ohio in North America: the soil is of inexhaustible fertility; the climate temperate; the rivers, flowing into Lake Erie to the north, and through the Ohio into the Mississippi to the south–west, are navigable for many hundreds of miles; the forests abound with the finest timber, and even the bowels of the earth pay, in various kinds of mineral, abundant contribution to the general wealth: the southern frontier of the state is bounded by the noble river from which she derives her name, and which obtained from the early French traders and missionaries the well–deserved appellation of “La Belle Rivière.”
Towns and cities are now multiplying upon its banks; the axe has laid low vast tracts of its forest; the plough has passed over many thousand acres of the prairies which it fertilised; and crowds of steam–boats, laden with goods, manufactures, and passengers, from every part of the world, urge their busy way through its waters.
Far different was the appearance and condition of that region at the period when the events detailed in the following narrative occurred. The reader must bear in mind that, at the close of the last century, the vast tracts of forest and prairie now forming the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, were all included in what was then called the North–west Territory; it was still inhabited by numerous bands of Indian tribes, of which the most powerful were the Lenapé, or Delawares, the Shawanons, the Miamies, and the Wyandotes, or Hurons.
Here and there, at favourable positions on the navigable rivers, were trading–posts, defended by small forts, to which the Indians brought their skins of bear, deer, bison, and beaver; receiving in exchange powder, rifles, paint, hatchets, knives, blankets, and other articles, which, although unknown to their forefathers, had become to them, through their intercourse with the whites, numbered among the necessaries of life. But the above–mentioned animals, especially the two last, were already scarce in this region; and the more enterprising of the hunters, Indian as well as white men, made annual excursions to the wild and boundless hunting–ground, westward of the Mississippi.
At the close of the eighteenth century, the villages and settlements on the north bank of the Ohio, being scarce and far apart, were built rather for the purpose of trading with the Indians than for agriculture or civilised industry; and their inhabitants were as bold and hardy, sometimes as wild and lawless, as the red men, with whom they were beginning to dispute the soil.
Numerous quarrels arose between these western settlers and their Indian neighbours; blood was frequently shed, and fierce retaliation ensued, which ended in open hostility. The half–disciplined militia, aided sometimes by regular troops, invaded and burnt the Indian villages; while the red men, seldom able to cope with their enemy in the open field, cut off detached parties, massacred unprotected families; and so swift and indiscriminate was their revenge, that settlements, at some distance from the scene of war, were often aroused at midnight by the unexpected alarm of the war–whoop and the fire–brand. There were occasions, however, when the Indians boldly attacked and defeated the troops sent against them; but General Wayne, having taken the command of the western forces (about four years before the commencement of our tale), routed them at the battle of the Miamies with great slaughter; after which many of them went off to the Missain plains, and those who remained no more ventured to appear in the field against the United States.