at public or private sale, as they shall judge will be the most advantageous to the company. They shall also direct the application of the one year's interest, and gold and silver, mentioned in the first article, to the purposes mentioned under the second article, in such way and manner as they shall think proper. For these purposes the directors shall draw on the treasurer from time to time, making themselves accountable for the application of the moneys agreeably to this association.

ARTICLE 8th.-That the agents, being accountable to the subscribers for their respective divisions, shall appoint the directors, treasurer and secretary, and fill up all vacancies which may happen in these offices respectively.

ARTICLE 9th. That the agents shall pay all the certificates and moneys received from subscribers into the hands of the treasurer, who shall give bonds to the agents, jointly and severally, for the faithful discharge of his trust; and also, on his receiving certificates or moneys from any particular agent, shall make himself accountable therefor, according to the condition of his bonds.

ARTICLE 10th. That the directors shall give bonds, jointly and severally, to each of the agents, conditioned that the certificates and moneys they shall draw out of the treasury shall be applied to the purposes stipulated in these articles; and that the lands purchased by the company shall be divided among them within three months from the completion of the purchase, by lot, in such manner as the agents or a majority of them shall agree, and that on said division being made, the directors shall execute deeds to the agents, respectively, for the proportions which fall to their divisions, correspondent to those the directors may receive from the commissioners of congress.

ARTICLE 11th.-Provided, that whereas a sufficient number of subscribers may not appear to raise the fund to the sums proposed in the first article, and thereby the number of divisions may not be completed, it is therefore agreed that the agents of divisions of twenty shares each shall, after the seventeenth day of October next, proceed in the same manner as if the whole fund had been raised.

ARTICLE 12th.-Provided, also, that whereas it will be for the common interest of the company to obtain an ordinance of incorporation from the honorable congress, or an act of incorporation from some one of the states in the Union (for which the directors shall make application) it is therefore agreed that in case such incorporation is obtained, the fund of the company (and consequently the shares and divisions thereof) may be extended to any sum, for which provision shall be made in said ordinance or act of incorporation, anything in this association to the contrary notwithstanding.

ARTICLE 13th. That all notes under this association may be given in person or by proxy, and in numbers justly proportionate to the stockholder or interest represented.

These articles of agreement were unamiously adopted and subscription books were immediately opened. A committee was appointed, consisting of three members, to transact necessary businesss, and some other measures taken to advance the project of the association; but in spite of all the exertions made, there was but little progress in the affairs of the Ohio company. When the next meeting was held a little more than a year from the time of the first, that is, upon March 8, 1787—it was found that the total number of shares subscribed for was only two hundred and fifty. And yet, all untoward circumstances considered, that was probably a fair exhibit, and more than was expected. One active friend of the movement, General Tupper, was the greater part of the year in the west. The influence of the others was very largely counteracted by events of an alarming nature-the dissatisfaction which finally culminated in Shay's rebellion. That civil commotion, growing out of the imposition of heavy taxes upon the already impoverished people, threatened for a time exceed

It served as a

Pos

ingly dire results, but unfortunately it was speedily quelled. startling illustration, however, of the great depression in New England, and of the desperation to which men can be driven by ill condition. sibly the outbreak gave a slight impetus to the progress of the Ohio company's project, by way of increasing the disposition of some citizens to seek in the west a new home. General Tupper, whose immediate neighborhood was "deeply infected with the sedition," returned from his second visit to the Ohio country in time to take a prominent part in subduing the revolt. The dawn of 1787 witnessed the pacification of the troubled country, but no marked increase in prosperity.

It was reported at the meeting held on the eight of March at Brackett's tavern in Boston, that "many in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, also in Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, are inclined to become adventurers, who are restrained only by the uncertainty of obtaining a sufficient tract of country, collectively, for a good settlement." It was now decided to make direct and immediate application to congress for the purchase of lands, and General Putnam, Dr. Manasseh Cutler and General Samuel H. Parsons were appointed directors and especially charged with this business. General Parsons had previously been employed to negotiate for a private purchase, had petitioned congress, and a committee of that body had been appointed to confer with him. "To that committee," says Dr. Cutler, "he proposed a purchase on the Scioto river," but as the proprietors in Massachusetts "were generally dissatisfied with the situation and lands on the Scioto, and much preferred the Muskingum," the negotiation was suspended. The directors now employed Dr. Cutler to make a purchase upon the Muskingum. It was considered desirable that the negotiations be commenced and the purchase consummated as soon as possible, as other companies were forming, the spirit of private speculation rapidly increasing, and there was a fear that the lands which the Ohio company wished to possess would be bought by some other organization, or perhaps some part of them by individuals.

Just here the query arises: why were the New Englanders so anxious to purchase lands upon the Muskingum, rather than upon the Scioto, or elsewhere in the territory? To this question there are various answers. In the first place the greater part of the Federal territory was unfitted for settlement by the fact that it was occupied by the Indian tribes. None of these, however, had their residence in the lower Muskingum region, and it was only occasionally resorted to by them, when upon their hunting

expeditions. Then, too, the people who proposed making a settlement beyond the Ohio were very naturally influenced by the proximity of well established stations upon the east and south of the river; they doubtless preferred the Virginians rather than the Kentuckians, as neighbors. The lower Scioto offered no more alluring an aspect than the lower Musk; ingum. The best bodies of lands on each river are fifty miles from their mouth. To penetrate so far into the interior, however, as the site of either Chillicothe or Zanesville would have been, at the time the Marietta settlement was made, was unsafe. The location of Fort Harmar, which we have seen was built in 1785-86, doubtless had its influence upon the Ohio company. Thomas Hutchins, the United States geographer, who had formerly been geographer to the king of Great Britain, and had traveled extensively in the west, had said and written much in favor of the Muskingum country, and strongly advised Dr. Cutler to locate his purchase in this region. Other explorers and travelers had substantiated what Hutchins had said. General Butler and General Parsons, who had descended the Ohio to the Miamis, were deeply impressed with the desirableness of the tract of country now designated as southeastern Ohio, and the latter, writing on the twentieth of December, 1785, from Fort Finney (mouth of the Little Miami) to Captain Jonathan Hart at Fort Harmar, said: "I have seen no place since I left you that pleases me so well for settlement as Muskingum." General Benjamin Tupper doubtless added important testimony supporting that of Hutchins, Parsons, Butler and others. General Parsons, it has been asserted, became most strongly possessed of the belief that the Muskingum region was the best part of the territory, because one of the Zanes, who had been many years in the west, told him that the Scioto or Miami regions offered superior attractions, and he suspected that the old frontiersman artfully designed to divert attention from the Muskingum that he might have the first choice of purchase himself when the lands were put on sale. It is probable, too, that the prospect of establishing a system of communication and commerce between the Ohio and Lake Erie, by way of the Muskingum and Tuscarawas and Cuyahoga, and between the Ohio and the seaboard, by way of the great Kanawha and the Potomac (a plan which Washington had thought feasible before the Revolutionary war), had its weight.

ALFRED MATHEWS,

INDIAN OCCUPATION OF OHIO.

During a long period—one which, perhaps, had its beginning soon after the forced exodus of the semi-civilized, pre-historic people, and which extended down to the era of the white man's actual knowledge-the upper Ohio valley was probably devoid of any permanent population. The river teemed with fish, and the dense, luxuriant wood abounded in game, but no Indian wigwams dotted the shores of the great stream, no camp-fires gleamed along its banks, and no maize fields covered the fertile bottom lands or lent variety to the wild vernal green. An oppressive stillness hung over the land, marked and intensified rather than broken, and only made more weird by the tossing of the water upon the shores and the soft mysterious sounds echoed from the distance through the dim aisles of the forest. Nature was lovely then as now, but with all her beauty the valley was awful in the vastness and solemnity of its solitude, Nowhere was human habitation or indication of human life,

This was the condition of the country when explored by the early French navigators, and when a century later it became the field for British and American adyenturers. There was a reason for this desertion of a region rich in all that was dear to the red man. The river was the warway down which silently and swiftly floated the canoe fleets of a fierce, relentless, and invincible enemy. That the dread devastators of the country, when it was occupied by the ancient race, had made their invasions from the northward by way of the great stream, is suggested by the numerous lookouts or signal mounds which crown the hills on either side of the valley, occupying the most advantageous points of observation. The Indians who dwelt in the territory included in the boundaries of Ohio had, when white men first went among them, traditions of oft repeated and sanguinary incursions made from the same direction, and dating back to their earliest occupation of the country. History corroborates their legends, or at least those relating to less ancient times. The Iroquois or Six Nations were the foes whose frequent forays, made suddenly, swiftly, and with overwhelming strength, had carried dismay into all the Ohio

country, and caused the weaker tribes to abandon the valley, penetrate the interior and locate themselves on the upper waters of the Muskingum, the Scioto, the Miamis, and the tributaries of the lake, where they could live with less fear of molestation. The Six Nations had the rude elements of a confederated republic, and were the only power in this part of North America who deserved the name of a government. They pretentiously claimed to be the conquerors of the whole country from sea to sea, and there is good evidence that they had by 1680 gained a powerful sway in the country between the great lakes, the Ohio and the Mississippi, and were feared by all the tribes within these limits. The upper Ohio was called by the early French the River of the Iroquois, and was for a long time unexplored through fear of their hostility.

But little is definitely known of the Indian occupation of the Ohio country prior to 1750, and scarcely anything anterior to 1650. As far back in American history as the middle of the seventeenth century it is probable that the powerful but doom-destined Eries were in possession of the vast wilderness which is now the thickly settled, well-improved state of Ohio, dotted with villages and cities, and covered with the meshes of a vast net-work of railroads. Most of the villages of this Indian nation, it is supposed, were situated along the shore of the lake which has been given their name. The Andastes are said by the best authorities to have occupied the valleys of the Allegheny and upper Ohio, and the Hurons. or Wyandots held sway in the northern peninsula between the lakes. All were genuinely Iroquois, and the western tribes were stronger than the eastern. The Iroquois proper (the Five Nations, increased afterward to six by the alliance of the Tuscarawas,) formed their confederacy in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and through consolidation of strength, overwhelmed singly and successively the Huron, the Eries, and the Andastes. The time of the massacre of the Erie nation-for the war upon them culminated in a wholesale murder-is usually set down by antiquarians and historians as 1655, and the victory over the Andastes is, on good evidence, placed in the year 1672. About the same time a tribe, supposed to have been the Shawnees, were driven from the Ohio valley and far towards the Gulf of Mexico. And so the territory now Ohio became a land without habitation, and served the victorious Iroquois as a vast hunting ground. Whether the Iroquois conquered the Miamis and their allies, the Illinois, is a question upon which the leading students of In* James R. Albach's Annals of the West,