Magazine of western history, illustrated, Vol. I, No. 1, November 1884

by Various

What is designated on the early maps of the United States as the “Territory Northwest of Ohio” embraced all the country east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio River. Great Britain acquired it from France by the treaty of February, 1762, but, having prior claims to it, had before that time granted most of the territory to her several colonies. Probably there were not more than three thousand white people in the territory when this treaty was signed, and these were principally wandering French traders; very few of them cultivators of the soil. In 1778 Virginia conquered the northwest from Great Britain, and erected the entire territory into a county, by the name of Illinois. Soon after the close of the War of the Revolution, in the year 1787, the United States established in the same region its first provincial government, and gave it the above title, which in common parlance was known as the “Northwestern Territory.” Its fixed population did not then exceed five thousand. There are now five States, and the half of a sixth, whose inhabitants number not far from 10,000,000, among whom the French element is scarcely perceptible. The people of these States are intelligent, and take a lively interest in the history of the discoverers of their country, among whom La Salle holds the first place.

Having spent a life of the length usually allotted to man, on the waters of the Ohio, the Upper Mississippi, and the lakes, threading many of the streams on which they floated their canoes, passing over the same trails, coasting along the same shores, those intrepid explorers of two centuries since, have often been, in imagination, vividly near to me.

As early as 1840 I saw evidence of the presence of white men in northeastern Ohio, of whom we had then no historical proof. This evidence is in the form of ancient cuts, made by sharp axes on our oldest forest trees, covered by their subsequent growth. In this climate the native trees are endogenous, and take on one layer of growth annually. There are exceptions, but I have tested the accuracy of this habit, in about forty cases where I have had other proof of the age of the tree, and find it to be a good general rule.

The Jesuit relations contain no account of establishments on the south shore of Lake Erie in the seventeenth century. For many years these wooden records remained an interesting mystery, which I think may possibly be solved by recent documents brought to light in France. We know that La Salle in 1680 returned from the Illinois to Montreal most of the way by land, and it is conjectured that he may have traversed the south shore of Lake Erie; but the passage of a few men hastily through a wilderness did not account for the many marks of axes which we find.

The stump of an oak tree was shown me soon after it had been felled in 1838, which stood in the northwestern part of Canfield, Mahoning County, O. It was two feet ten inches in diameter, and, with the exception of the concealed gashes, was quite sound. When about fourteen inches in diameter, this tree had been cut nearly half through; but the scar had healed over so thoroughly that it did not appear externally. I took a section from the outside to the heart, showing both the old and the recent axe marks, which may be seen in the museum of the Western Reserve Historical Society, at Cleveland. Over the old cuts there had grown one hundred and sixty annual layers of solid wood, and the tree had died of age some years before. This would place the cutting between the years 1670 and 1675. The tree stood a few miles south of the great Indian trail leading from the waters of the Mahoning, a branch of the Ohio, to the waters of the Cuyahoga River and Lake Erie. In 1848 or 1849, Mr. S. Lapham, of Willoughby, Lake County, Ohio, felled a hickory tree, standing a short distance from the ridge, along which was once the main Indian trail parallel to the lake. The diameter of the stump was about two feet. Near the heart there were very distinct cuts of a sharp, broad-bitted axe. Mr. Lapham preserved a piece of this tree, that is now in our museum, donated by Professor J. L. Cassells. The annual layers of growth are very thin, and difficult to count, but are about four hundred in number, outside the ancient chopping. Another tree was found in Newburgh, Cuyahoga County, Ohio, more than thirty years since, with marks of an axe near the centre, represented to have one hundred and fifty to one hundred and sixty layers of growth over it, apparently the work of a sharp, broad-bitted axe.

In the cabinet of the Ashtabula Historical Society, at Jefferson, Ashtabula County, Ohio, there was, some years since, a piece of wood with ancient axe marks of about the same date. I have heard of two others in northeastern Ohio, which I have not seen, and which may have been the work of a dull, narrow-bitted axe in the hands of a savage, and not the work of white men; but the Indians of northern Ohio could not have long been in possession of metal tomahawks or squaw hatchets, in the year 1670. Such cuts, if made by them, could be only a few years more ancient.

The Lake County stump has about twice the number of layers we should expect, and which would carry the chopping to a period before the landing of Columbus. Botanists explain this by the exceptional cases where there is a double layer in a year. If La Salle and his party spent two or three years exploring and trading in furs in the lake country, they might well be the authors of these ancient cuttings. There must have been several hundreds of them, or we should not have met with so many at this late period. Any person examining the pieces in the Western Reserve Historical Society museum will be convinced they are not the work of Indians.

The honor of the first exploration of Ohio has long been claimed by the French for their countryman, Robert Cavalier de La Salle, but the details of this exploration were so meager, its date so doubtful, and the extent of his travels so uncertain, that some historians were not inclined to give credence to his claims.

A romantic mystery still envelopes his movements in the country between Lake Erie and the Ohio River, which it was hoped the papers of M. Pierre Margry would dissipate, and thus place La Salle on record in full and clear terms. If this cannot be effected by the zeal and industry of M. Margry, during a life work in search of manuscripts relating to La Salle, I fear that we must relinquish the hope of a satisfactory solution.

DeCourcelles and Talon, who were respectively governor and intendant in New France, sent out several parties of discovery between 1665 and 1680. They had two principal objects in view: the discovery of copper, and a route to China through the Great Southern Sea.