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tained its greatest activity and prosperity about the close of the Rev. Finley's superintendency.

At the annual conference of the Methodist Episcopal church held at Cincinnati, in August, 1819, the Indian mission at Upper Sandusky was named as a regular field of labor in the Lebanon district, which then extended from the Ohio river northward including the Michigan territory. At the same time the Rev. James B. Finley was appointed presiding elder of the district, and the Rev. James Montgomery, missionary to assist Stewart. Subsequently, Mr. Montgomery was appointed sub-agent over the Senecas, and Moses Henkle was employed to fill the position vacated by Montgomery.

In August, 1821, in accordance with the suggestions of the Methodist preachers, the Indian chiefs Deunquot, Between-the-logs, John Hicks, Mononcue, and several others signed a petition, which was drawn up and witnessed by William Walker, United States Inspector, and Moses Henkle, Missionary, requesting that a missionary school be established among them at Upper Sandusky, and for that purpose they donated a section of land at Camp Meigs, where there was a fine spring of water and other conveniences. The Indians also requested that the teacher sent them should also be a preacher, thus obviating the necessity of a traveling missionary being continued among them. Thereupon the Rev. James B. Finley was appointed resident missionary and teacher at the Wyandot mission.

In the summer of 1823, the mission school was formally opened. It was conducted according to the manual labor system. The boys were taught farming, and the girls were taught housework, sewing, knitting, spinning, etc. The boys were at first adverse to labor, but they were encouraged by being urged to excel others in their line of work. As many as sixty children were enrolled at one time, a number of them being children sent from Canada by members of the Wyandot tribe there. Bishop McKendree in writing of the mission there in 1823 said in part, that the missionary establishment at Upper Sandusky, in the large national reserve of the Wyandot tribes of Indians contains one hundred and forty-seven thousand acres of land, being in extent more than nineteen miles from east to west, and twelve miles from north to south. Throughout the whole extent of this tract the Sandusky river winds its course, receiving several other beauti

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ful streams. This fine tract, with another reservation of nine miles square at the Big Spring, head of Blanchard creek, is all the soil that remains to the Wyandots.

After the Rev. James B. Finley had been appointed resident missionary and teacher at the Wyandot mission, he says in his history of the mission: "There was no plan of operation furnished me, no provision made for the mission family, no house to shelter them, nor supplies for the winter; and there was only a small sum of money, amounting to $200, appropriated for the benefit of the mission. However, I set about the work of preparation to move. I had a suitable wagon made, bought a yoke of oxen, and other things necessary, took my own furniture and household goods, and by the 8th of October was on my way. I had hired two young men and one young woman, and Sister Harriet Stubbs volunteered to accompany us as a teacher. These, with my wife and self, made the whole mission family. We were eight days making our way out. Sixty miles of the road was almost as bad as it could be. From Markley's, on the Scioto, to Upper Sandusky, there were but two or three cabins. But by the blessing of kind Providence, we arrived safe, and were received by all with the warmest affection. There was no house for us to shelter in on the section of land we were to occupy, but by the kindness of Mr. Lewis, the blacksmith, we were permitted to occupy a new cabin he had built for his family. It was without door, window or chinking. Here we unloaded, and set up our Ebenezer. The Sabbath following, we held meeting in the council house, and had a large congregation. Brother Stewart was present, and aided in the exercises. We had a good meeting, and the prospect of better times.

"We now selected the place for building our mission house. It was on the spot called 'Camp Meigs,' where Governor Meigs had encamped with the Ohio militia in time of the last war, on the west bank of the Sandusky river, about a mile below the post of 'Upper Sandusky.' We commenced getting logs to put us up a shelter for the winter. The first week one of my hands left me. A day or two after, while we were in the woods cutting down timber, a dead limb fell from the tree we were chopping, on the head of the other young man, so that he lay breathless. I placed him on the wagon, drove home half a mile or more, and then bled him, before he recovered his senses. I now began to think it would be hard

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times. Winter was coming on, and my family exposed in an Indian country, without a house to shelter in. For years I had done but little manual labor. But the Lord blessed me

with great peace in my soul. My worthy friend, George Riley, recovered from his hurt, and we worked almost day and night, until the skin came off the inside of my hands. I took oak bark, boiled it, and washed my hands in the decoction, and they soon got well and became hard. We built a cabin house, 20 x 23 feet, and without door, window, or loft. On the very day that snow began to fall, we moved into it. The winter soon became extremely cold. We repaired one of the old block-houses, made a stable thereof for our cattle, and cut, hauled and hewed logs to put up a double house, forty-eight feet long by twenty wide, a story and a half high. We hauled timber to the sawmill, and sawed it ourselves into joists and plank, for the floors and other purposes. I think I can say that neither brother Riley nor myself sat down to eat one meal of victuals that winter but by candle-light, except on Sabbath days. We always went to bed at 9, and rose at 4 o'clock in the morning, and by daylight we were ready to go to work. In addition to this, I preached every Sabbath and met class, attended prayer meeting once every week, and labored to rear up the church. Brother Stewart assisted when he was able to labor, but his pulmonary affliction confined him the most of his time to the house, and I employed him to teach a small school of ten or twelve Indian children at the Big Spring; for these people were so anxious to have their children taught that they could not wait until preparations were made at the mission house, and they wanted to have a separate school by themselves. To this I would not agree; but to accommodate their wishes until we were ready at the mission house to receive their children, I consented that they might be taught at home."

Mr. Finley remained with the Wyandots at Upper Sandusky (assisted meanwhile, at different periods, by Revs. John Stewart, Charles Elliott, Jacob Hooper, John C. Brooke and James Gilruth), about seven years, and his published statements of the proceedings while here, are quite interesting and complete. Yet, except in a few instances, the scope of this work-the great variety of topics to be treated-precludes the practicability of our giving full accounts obtained therefrom, or indeed of doing but little more, while speaking

further of the Wyandot Mission, than to merely make mention of some of the most prominent events.

While the chiefs and head men known as Between-the-logs, Mononcue, John Hicks, Squire Grey Eyes, George Punch, Summundewat, Big-tree, Driver, Washington, Joseph Williams, Two Logs, Mathew Peacock, Harrihoot, Robert Armstrong, Scuteash, Rohnyenness, Little Chief, Big River, Squindatee and others (with a following of about one-half of those on the reservation), professed to have obtained religion and were enrolled as members of the Mission Methodist Episcopal church, Deunquat, who became the head chief of the nation upon the death of Tarhe, together with the other half of the Indians under his control, remained true to the religion. if so it may be called, of their fathers.

After the departure of the Delawares for the West, the Wyandots were the only considerable body of Indians remaining in the State of Ohio. In the meantime the white settlers had encircled their reservations at Upper Sandusky and the Big Spring with towns and cultivated lands, and were anxious that congress should purchase these reservations, and thus open the way for their occupancy by the whites. Acting upon these urgent petitions, agents of the General Government had endeavored to open negotiations with the Wyandots for the purpose of purchasing the lands they claimed as early as 1825. But they firmly resisted all arguments tending to that end for nearly twenty years thereafter. However it became evident, that such a state of affairs could not always exist, as they had sadly degenerated from the prosperous state they were in a few years before. The Rev. Finley, the missionary, had left in 1827, and the majority of the Indians had gone back to their old habits of intemperance and heathenism, they realized that they must yield to the advance of civilization, and they finally consented to give up the narrow possessions they claimed for a large sum of money and thousands of broad acres lying west of the Mississippi river. Col. John Johnston, of Piqua, conducted the negotiations on the part of the United States, and concluded the purchase at Upper Sandusky on the 17th day of March, 1842. In speaking of this transaction and the proceedings which led to it, Colonel Johnston said:

"About the year 1800, this tribe numbered about 2,200, and in March, 1842, when, as commissioner of the United

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