- At a time when the United States ended at the Ohio River, a group of men brought to the frontier a standard of social organization that would influence the entire nation.

This is the story of the first organized legal American settlement in the Northwest Territory, the story of an unknown chapter in American history and the story of Ohio.

This program is made possible by the Ohio Bicentennial Commission, helping to create lasting memorials to celebrate a milestone anniversary, and by Ohio University, Ohio's first university opening doors through education since 1804.

Additional funding provided by the following.

- In the 1780s, the land lying north and west of the Ohio River, known as the Northwest Territory, was nearly virgin wilderness and was home to many thousands of Native American Indians.

A remarkably unique group of men from New England organized a company in 1786 to begin the first legal American settlement of the Northwest Territory.

They call themselves the Ohio Company of Associates on one and a half million acres.

They intended to create an ideally organized community that would serve as a model for the new country's westward expansion.

They even hoped their new town might one day become the nation's capital.

But in the third year of the settlement, a horrifying event would threaten the Ohio Company's very existence.

It happened on a frozen winter evening at a place on the Muskingum River called Big Bottom Inside, an unfinished blockhouse.

10 men, one woman and her two children were preparing an evening meal as their watchdogs warm themselves.

The settlers were totally unaware that danger was approaching.

They believed the nearby Delaware and Wyandot Indians were peaceable and friendly.

The attack was a total surprise.

Within seconds, 12 settlers in the Black House laid dead, and five more were taken prisoner.

It was an event that sent shockwaves across the frontier and challenged the viability of the New nation.

President Washington received this appeal from the Ohio Company's superintendent.

- Our situation is truly critical.

If we do not fall prey to the savages, we shall be so reduced and discouraged as to give up the settlement.

Rufuss Putnam, - The massacre at Big Bottom, launched all out warfare on the frontier with the four long bloody years that followed ruin, the Ohio company's grandiose plans, would the Natives struggle to protect their homeland actually doom the company's settlement.

The struggle, of course, was over the land, and the Ohio company's story begins with the promise of those fabled lands beyond the Ohio.

- It's been written probably with truth that when the pilgrims landed in 1690, a squirrel could have traveled from Plymouth to the Mississippi River and never touched the ground because it was all forest.

- In the mid 1780s, the Ohio River formed the northwestern boundary of the new United States.

Beyond it, lay the vast northwest territory filled with gigantic trees, exotic wildlife, and home to Native American Indians.

- The Ohio River became the boundary between the whites and the Indians.

The Ohio River was called Laal Riviera by the French, which was an interpretation, meaning the beautiful river, because it was a very beautiful river, surprisingly enough because it was nestled where it was, it was not on the trade routes of any kind.

Thus, other rivers and other areas were discovered much earlier than the Ohio River Valley.

The settlement here started actually quite late, - Virtually undisturbed by European saddlers.

The forest still teamed with wildlife, including bear elk, panthers and woodland, buffalo - And birds.

Marvelous, marvelous flocks of birds, pigeons, passenger pigeons would fly over the Ohio Valley in a flock at one time.

So huge that this one flock, and this is recorded by Audubon In 1813, in one flock that would blot out the sun for three days, - The enormous trees ranged up to 150 feet in height.

One was so large, it prompted an early river traveler to measure it, - And it was 19 and a half feet in diameter.

Not circumference, but diameter.

It was a hollow sycamore.

The hollow sycamore was the largest tree in the Ohio Valley frontier Forest.

So this was a jungle, it was a perfumed jungle from the pea vines and the wild grape blossoms, the honeysuckle vines, the herbs, and the flowers.

There are times in the spring where the air was literally perfumed.

The wild grapevine.

These wild grapevines were also centuries old, but over the years, they had formed what the botanists call a crown canopy.

We would just say an interwoven roof over the treetops.

And this made the forests the large sections of the forest dark all day long.

The year rail, - The Ohio River was not only a boundary, it was the highway travelers passed through a deep canyon of high river banks topped by towering trees, - And all around them were beautiful sandy beaches.

One traveler wrote that the water was so clear that you could look down through six to seven feet and see a pin on the pedley bottom.

- It was a wild country.

There were very few trails and very, very little river traffic of any kind.

What there was was usually just canoe traffic, and so it, it was pristine and wild filled with bear and cougar and, and just a variety of wildlife.

- These bountiful lands beyond the Ohio River were also home to thousands of Native American Indians.

- The major tribes here in the Ohio country in the 18th century were the Delawares and the Shaw, east Miami, the Potawatomi and Ottawas.

Further up in northwest part of the state or what is now the state of Ohio.

Ohio was a melting pot because of the domino effect from the previous decades of removals from further east.

- The Indians living in this country lived in great harmony with nature.

They revered it.

They used it wisely and well.

But the Indians had a culture and a system, a society that was far more beautiful and and interwoven than most whites realized.

They had a a strong religion.

They believed in Monto as the great God, and they believed that he watched over everything and protected them.

- Native people are just everyday people and always have been and just love their families and, and try to make a living for their families.

Hunting, raising crops, gathering roots and nuts.

Fishing, the part that gets portrayed is the, the military part of the native heart where yeah, when pushed into a corner, we will fight like a panther.

- They were a handsome race of people and much, much more intelligent than most whites gave them credit for being.

They were not the savage out that, that some so many whites seemed to think Indians were and simply a fighting machine.

That was not the case at all.

They were very sensitive people.

They told stories.

They had, they had their traditions that went back for many, many, many years.

- They had a different concept of land ownership.

Everybody owned the land was given to them by the Great Spirit.

- It was given to all freely by the creator to be taken care of, but never owned to use, but never owned.

In 1763, the King of England signed a proclamation that no colonials should ever cross the peaks of the Allegheny to the West into Indian country.

- The Allegheny's, of course, were a barrier, which kept the whites eastward of it, but once having come over the mountains into the Allegheny and seen the beauty of the land, the whites wanted to possess it.

And so this is where all the trouble began.

- Well, the Ohio Company of Associates was kind of a quintessential American corporation and what we call a joint stock company, which means that people bought shares in it.

And the idea was to buy land in the Ohio country and establish a place for your family, a better life to west.

What was unique about it was that it was made up primarily of men who had been participants in the American Revolutionary War, veterans of the continental Army, and they were interested in doing something more than simply making money or providing for their, their families.

They had a pretty strong vision of what they hoped the United States would be like, and they thought of their move to the West as being a a part of this larger plan.

- The American officers who had won the Revolutionary War found themselves impoverished after eight years of fighting.

- They were issued certificates of payment at the end of the war, which in effect were valueless.

And so the idea came up well, could they be exchanged for land in the Northwest Territory?

- Within a year of the war's end General Rufuss Putnam Washington's trusted engineer, wrote to his old mentor, - We are growing quite impatient, and the general inquiry now is when are we going to the Ohio Rufuss Putnam?

- On March the first, 1786, their patients came to an end.

A group of officers met in Boston at the bunch of Grapes Tavern, and formed the Ohio Company of Associates.

Rufuss Putnam became the company's leader.

- Putnam was an important figure of the superintendent of the company.

He was chosen for that because he had several important skills.

He was somebody who was respected by nearly everyone, which is important in this kind of undertaking because they knew it was gonna be difficult.

He was a surveyor.

He also was an engineer, and so he was particularly well suited for designing and building a, a new town in the West.

- Putnam really regards Washington as his, you know, Washington was very trusting of Putnam, and Putnam believed that Washington was his friend and and referred to him as his friend.

- General Washington could not authorize the land sale, however, it would take an act of the continental Congress.

So Putnam sent another Ohio company, man, Manassa Cutler, to push things along.

He lobbied and guided Congress into producing a most remarkable document, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.

- If you are going into a territory where there is absolutely no provision made for settling it, you've no backbone, you've nothing to tie onto.

But the ordinance of 1787 was the document that gave them that necessary - Framework.

Then they had to course set up the, the form of government that was going to govern the Northwest Territory.

And Manassas Cutler became a party in, you know, writing the language.

He was a very educated man, incidentally, and they leaned on him to write the language for the ordinance of 1787.

In particular, the compromise that allowed for Article six and Article six prohibited slavery in the Northwest Territory.

- In the ordinance of 1787, you have the first time that you have what later became the Bill of Rights, put down in one centralized document - Along with outlawing slavery.

The ordinance guaranteed freedom of religion, trial by jury and due process of law.

It also funded public education through Grants of Land.

- Some of that writing certainly became part of the constitutions, but a lot of that language, particularly of those six articles of compact, were the language of Manasses Cutler, who was the representative of the Ohio company.

- Most people wrote about him in the 20th century as a, a shady speculator who goes down to Congress in 1787 in New York and, and makes all kinds of deals and back rooms, and that his primary interest was in making money.

And look, there's no doubt, but that Cutler and the other people involved wanted to to profit from this.

But Manasa Cutler was also a kind of renaissance man.

He envisioned and a vision shared by, by Parsons and Barnum and Putnam and others, Marietta as not only a prosperous settlement, but as a real model for the United States as it expanded across the the North American continent.

- These officers were very instrumental in the passage of that land or the ordinance of 1787.

And that not only applied to Ohio, but to Indiana, to Illinois, to Michigan, to Wisconsin, Minnesota, and about 30 other states that were later came into the United States.

- The Ohio Company men now had the legal framework not only to survey and sell their land in the Northwest Territory, but to govern it afterwards, A new vision of American democracy was being born.

- Northwest Territory was really the first official act in a, in a large scale act of the United States government.

In a way the English colonies had founded in the laws and everything in the, the states.

The original states were influenced by English, colonial colonial law.

When they settled in Northwest Territory, that was the first really significant government action taken by the United States government.

- The 1787 ordinance was probably the first ordinance of any kind in the Western hemisphere, and perhaps worldwide, in which matters were directed toward the ending of slavery.

- But the Northwest Ordinance was just a kind of ordinary piece of legislation, and yet it has tremendous significance, not only in the history of the United States, but in the, the history of the world.

- I often tell the school kids that most of the time, the forts that you read about were to protect the settlers from the Indians.

And in the case of Fort Harm, it was to protect the Indians from the settlers.

- In 1785, the United States Army constructed a fort at the confluence of the Ohioan Musk King rivers, largely because of the fort's protection, the Ohio company purchased their lands nearby the Ohio Company.

Men were about to start the first legal American settlement in the Northwest Territory, but they would not be the first settlers.

The Indians had long complained of squatters.

- Federal government really didn't believe them at first, and they sent a couple expeditions in along the Musk, Kingham River and up the Scioto River, and discovered that there were literally thousands of people living within the present state of Ohio at that time.

- Remember that the United States government owned this land, wanted to sell this land.

And so if they have squatters or bandi as they referred to them, just coming across the Ohio River and taking up land, the government's not only losing authority, it's losing money.

- First, they needed to get it surveyed, sold, get people on the land who would pay taxes and support the government.

Well, these squatters weren't going to do any of that.

- In the fall of 17 five, a detachment of soldiers under the command of Captain John Dowdy marched from Pittsburgh evicting squatters and burning cabins along the way.

When they reached the Miss Kingdom, they began building Fort Harmer.

- Colonel Harmer, Josiah Harmer, who the fort was named after, was one of the most prominent members of the United States Army.

This was a major place.

- The fort was a Pentagon shape with Pentagon Bastions.

At each corner, the design of the fort is credited to Captain Dowdy.

- His designs, his fort designs were considered some of the best ever.

And the designs he made for forts were used throughout the development of the frontier.

Throughout all of North America.

- Building the fort was hard work, but evicting the squatters would be even harder.

- Forays were made out from the fort to look for squatters cabins in this whole hack purchase or what would become the Ohio Company purchase, basically all lands west of the Ohio River.

When they found them, they re physically removed the people basically burnt the buildings.

- Part of their job was to simply count the people going down river and, and look for squatters and, and so on.

- Life of the frontier soldier was hard, lonely, dangerous, and boring work.

Drinking was the only relief, and sometimes discipline suffered.

- The worst case discipline problem would be that of an attempting a desertion, making a run for it, because you didn't like the military life of Fort Harmer.

- Before arriving at Fort Harmar, Sergeant Mule's company witnessed three frontier deserters pay the ultimate price.

When caught, - January 25th, 1786, wait, ready?

Major Willis.

Without waiting for the formality of a court's marshal ordered out a file of men and directed them to be shot within one hour after their return.

Joseph Buell, orderly Sergeant.

- While executions were extremely rare, other forms of severe punishment were not.

- The treatment of the private soldiers was excessively severe and flogging the men to the extent of one in 200 lashes was an almost daily occurrence.

Their offenses were chiefly drunkenness and desertion.

Sam Hildreth - To major Doughty's credit, he did keep discipline under the most adverse possible conditions, and he did a very, very good job of it.

- The soldiers had other jobs besides evicting squatters from the north side of the river.

They also tried to protect the settlers who stayed south of the river.

- July 17th, 1786, our men took up a stray canoe on the river.

It contained a pair of shoes, two axes and some corn.

We suppose the owners were killed by the Indians, Joseph Buell, orderly sergeant.

- The other job that they had, which, which was very important, was to protect the surveyors.

This land west of the Ohio had never been formally surveyed, and Congress divided up an area which would be called to seven ranges.

- Although surveying had already begun in the Ohio country, it would be one of the primary tasks for the Ohio Company men.

The moment they arrived from the east, - Many of the settlers who were coming over the mountains are immigrating from the east.

The long settled east to the Ohio Valley were regarded as going quote outta the world, and this was the phrase that was used.

They were going so far beyond what anyone else, a distance anyone else had covered from the east, that their neighbors and their family members who had stayed back east regard them as going to a land that was as remote as the moon.

It was out of the world, and that was the phrase that was used.

- After the ordinance of 1787 was passed in July, the Ohio company went right to work and got everybody organized.

- And so Rufuss Putnam, he is able to handpick 47 men very carefully handpick them.

And he wants them not only because they are savvy in the wilderness, but because once they get to their destination, he is going to use the skills that these men have to build a civilization here.

And so he wants carpenters, he wants mill rights, he wants blacksmiths, he wants people with skills and he can use after he gets here.

- The first party left Ipswich, Massachusetts on December 3rd and 1787, crossing the mountains in the dead of winter.

They had to cross the mountains in the wintertime so they could arrive here early in the spring and do their best to get their crops in and planted them, get the land cleared so they'll have food for next year.

- The first party were the boat builders.

The surveyors led by Rufuss Putnam followed a month later, - Both parties hit bad weather, as you might expect, crossing Allegheny in January and February, and they would travel until the wagons couldn't make it any longer.

And when the wagons couldn't make it any longer, they tore the wagons apart and made drags out of them to drag their equipment.

Because this precious equipment, whether it was the surveying equipment or the boat building equipment, had to be kept safe.

The men would wade out into those February waters with the axes and cut away the ice with their axes so that they could lead the horses and the wagons through the water.

- When Putnam's group arrived at SummerHill's Ferry in Western Pennsylvania, they discovered that the first party had arrived sick and no boats had been built.

- A fellow by the name of Jonathan Deval was Master Boat Builder, a real, real renaissance man.

He was just, could do anything.

And so when he got there, he got things up and going, and they got the boats built.

They built one big boat.

It was a covered flat boat, and they named it the Adventure Galley, - A smaller flat boat and three canoes were also constructed.

On April 1st, the adventure galley Flotilla pushed off into the headwaters of the Ohio River, - And they looked up in this virgin forest on both sides of them, and they saw deer unafraid because they hadn't been hunted, you know, come down to the water to drink.

And, and they even glimpsed buffalo.

And they thought this Shirley was a rich, rich land, one of the most beautiful countries they had ever seen.

- By the morning of April the seventh, rufuss Putnam knew they were approaching the Muskingum River.

John Matthews, a young surveyor, had been here before they strained to see the mouth of the river through the rain and fog.

- It was so foggy, and the trees were so huge and overgrown that they went right on by and missed it.

But of course, the fellows at Fort Harbor, those soldiers that were stationed there, they knew they were coming, - But the the soldiers came out towed the flat boat, the Mayflower and the Adventure Gala, their two principal boats up the muskingum where they made their landing - Around noon on April the seventh, Jervis Cutler, 16-year-old son of the Reverend Manasa Cutler lept ashore before anyone else.

He quickly chopped down the first tree so that he could claim that he began the settlement of Ohio.

As General Putnam stepped as shore, he was met by a large group of Delaware and Wyandot Indians, a prominent Delaware chief called Captain Pipe, greeted Putnam.

- But we can only imagine what Captain Pipe was really thinking as he watched those men come ashore, because it would've been very obvious to anyone, white man or Indian, that these people were coming to stay.

- He bore a strong grudge against the whites.

His wife and son had been murdered in an incident that had occurred some years before, and he had never forgiven the whites or or forgotten about it.

- I doubt very seriously if Captain's pipe's anger had subsided very much.

- And I suspect pipe is practical enough a man to understand that what is happening is probably inevitable.

But they're worried just as the Shawnee to the West are worried, and the wyandots are worried because the river has been crossed, - The people under pipe p lost.

We some of those old leaders, they were extremely anti-American because of the fact they kept seeing that constant eating away of their land base.

- Rufuss Putnam wrote in his journal later, he said, pipe appeared friendly, and you could almost sense his little bit of, you know, apprehension coming up off the pages of the man's journal.

And pipe appeared friendly, but we can only imagine how friendly pipe felt as he watched those people come ashore.

- Behind Putnam, the tallest of the 48 men, Ebenezer Spro stepped ashore, his great size, impressed the Indians.

- One of the Indians looked at the other Indian and kind of nudged him and said, in the Delaware tongue, something like Houk, which means the big buck or big Buckeye.

And so therefore, ever after, the men who come ashore from the flat boats down the river were called Buckeyes.

It settled on the Ohio Shore.

Captain Pipe, I think, is one of the great tragic figures because he was the chief of the Delaware, and he, I think he had the big picture.

He knew that a way of life was inevitably coming to an end.

- But life for the Ohio company was just beginning.

They wasted no time in starting the work of building a settlement.

- They had brought lumber to build basically shelters.

They brought Tentage marquees and large wedge tents and various canvas shelters to, to stay in.

- And they went a short distance up the Muskingum River and pitched some tents along the shore.

And in fact, Putnam's tent happened to be a marquee of gentleman Johnny Burgo, which he captured during the Revolutionary War.

- They began immediately to clear the land and to survey it.

The vision of Putnam.

In the Ohio company, men called for wide boulevards and spacious lots.

Green parks and public spaces were set aside preserving the prehistoric Indian mounds, Latin place names like Cap Quadra.

Now, Savia and Tiber Creek would add classical grace.

- These guys were ambitious.

They were, their plans were grandiose.

They were absolutely convinced that this town was going to set the tone, as they would call it, for the American nation, the Republic, as it spread across the continent.

So what they're talking about doing in 1788 was building a city that would rival any city in North America.

And for that matter would rival cities in Europe, - Along with clearing and surveying.

Temporary shelter was a high priority.

One temporary shelter, however, would turn out to be a grand edifice inspiring awe and wonder in every wilderness traveler who saw it.

- Campus Marshes is a name of a plane outside the ancient city of Rome.

That's where the Roman legions did their military exercises prior to getting them, getting themselves in shape for battle.

Following the Revolutionary War, the Americans wanted to make sure that the French and the English knew we were just as well educated as they were.

So campus martius actually means field of Mars or plane of war - Campus.

Martius is the handsomest pile of buildings.

This site of the Allegheny Mountains and in a few days will be the strongest fortification in the territory of the United States.

Rufuss put - About a mile up the Muskingham River on a high plane work progressed quickly on the headquarters of the Ohio company, built of thick wooden planks.

This sturdy structure would serve as a protective fortification with homes and temporary dwellings for incoming pioneers.

- Because the immigrants thinking anyway that they needed protection from the Indians, while at least initially they were, they were given a aade in which to live while they negotiated their purchase of land from the land office of the company - Campus Marshes was not only magnificent in appearance, it was remarkable in many ways.

- It was a regular square, 144 feet long on each inside wall of the fort.

The block houses were owned by the Ohio company, but the individual shareholders, which were selected by lot, got to build these curtain wall houses.

They called 'em that they were actually walls between the block houses, but they were also the houses of the people.

- Jonathan Deval set up two saw pits beside the river.

In each pit, two Sawyers laboriously hand cut, the four inch thick planks that would form the walls.

- The building was so constructed that the corner posts that you had had a channel in them, and the plank was cut with tenons at each end, kind of a little, oh, an indented spot with a, a, like a tab.

If you're building something and you put that into that slot and you just slide them down, one after the other.

- Residents of the fort were required to have the outer wall of their house erected within 30 days.

The walls were efficiently prefabricated in sections at the saw pit.

- Each wall was laid out on the ground.

After you cut the wood out, the holes for the windows would be put in the windows and the hardware and everything would be cut fitted to it, the doorway, everything would be fitted there on the ground, and then that would be disassembled and brought to the site and, and put up vertically.

- So, once again, a rather tedious form of building, but you could make a very tight wall by doing so.

It was not an unusual technique though, because it, it was well known in Europe, particularly, you know, down southern Germany, Bavaria and Switzerland, Northern Italy, they used these plank wall houses.

And then they were very common for military installations in Europe as well.

And also in this country, - Plank wall construction was familiar to Rufuss Putnam who'd served as general Washington's engineer during the Revolutionary War.

He was instrumental in the construction of many fortifications, including West Point, but it's not known if Putnam designed campus marshes.

There are many other men who could have had a hand in it.

The company's secretary, Winthrop sergeant is known to have drawn up a set of plans.

- Griffin Green, who was known as an architect, and matter of fact, did work down at Bell Pri on that fortification.

And it's entirely possible that he had something to do with it.

If, if you have this one in ingenious individual at work, there are probably several more, because they certainly were quite well educated men among this group, graduates of Yale and Harvard, and plus, having all the experience of wartime or revolutionary war.

- Most of the Ohio company men had been officers and were highly trained and experienced in the arts and sciences of the day.

Whoever designed campus marshes, it was an extraordinary building.

Perhaps the country's first prefabricated condominium.

- To a certain extent, you might compare it to a condominium because while this was your house, it was connected with a lot of others, and there were gardens that you had and, and kept just outside the fort itself.

It's another thing about the fort and the manner in which it was constructed.

It was easy to take apart.

So in essence, a an owner who bought this house, who when the fort was no longer needed, he could take that house apart and move it over to where his property was and set it up there.

- So it, it had to be a very imposing building, and it stood up fairly high from the musk Kinga river.

And so it certainly anybody going by canoe up the river.

Why?

Yes, you have this really large building standing there looking at you, and very finely built - Campus marshes provided the Ohio Company men with a comfortable and even grand abode in the frontier wilderness.

There were many pioneer settlers, however, who found they did not fit into campus marshes, neither the space nor the society.

- Marietta quickly sort of devolved into three different areas, and they were kind of distinct.

And almost from the beginning, one was the fort, which was on the west side of the Musk, king River, Fort Harmer.

And then about, well, about a mile or so up the Musk King River on the East Bank was the official Ohio company settlement of campus marshes.

But down near the point where the Ohio and Muskingum meet on the east side became kind of the commercial center of, of, of the, - Of the place.

The first business at the point was the Ohio Company's temporary land office.

It was quickly followed by more permanent cabins, stores, and taverns.

The town's official name was Adelphi.

On the 26th of May, 1788.

Another 27 men arrived, including company officers, general SH Parsons, newly appointed judge of the Northwest Territory, and Colonel John May, Colonel May had dinner that evening with Colonel Harmer at the Fort - John, a toast to the territorial government.

- They enjoyed as sumptuous feast of wild meats and vegetables from the fort's garden.

Tuesday, May 27th, slept on board last night, and Rose early this morning have spent the day in Reitering, the spot where the city is to be laid out and find it.

To answer the best descriptions I have ever heard of it.

The situation delightfully agreeable and well calculated for an elegant city, Connell John May soon, 132 acres of corn had been planted under the towering trees too big to remove quickly.

The settlers tried to kill the trees by cutting a band around the trunk, known as girdling.

- But the great misfortune was that the leaves of the beach and poplar trees, which formed a considerable portion of the growth, did not wither by the girdling and associated the corn as to injure the crop very considerably.

Rufuss Putnam, - Getting rid of all these humongous trees and the roots and everything, made a great deal of hard work for these people to get their land cleared to where they could plant a crop.

But once you got your crop in the, they said corn grew nine inches overnight.

So this was very fertile land and very, very rich and desirable.

- On June the fifth, another 40 settlers arrived on board, was company director James Varnum, also a newly appointed territorial judge.

He was suffering from tuberculosis and had brought a woman, Mary Gardner Owen, as his nurse, - Mary Gardner.

Owen has a distinction of being the first woman settler of the Ohio Company in the Northwest Territory because she was the nurse of Judge Barnum.

He needed to get here early for a meeting of the directors of the Ohio Company in early July.

None of the other families were coming until August, but he needed to get here.

And then she had these nursing skills, and so she ended up coming ahead of everyone else.

- You know, a lot of what went on in the first few months in her, they're cutting down trees, they're setting up buildings, they're surveying, they're laying out lots, they're doing the kind of thing that was hard backbreaking work.

- And the company itself hired workers to come out.

So you had your regular day laborers and so forth.

General Putnam, for example, made $40 a month.

A superintendent of the Ohio Company, a laborer, made $7 a month working for 'em.

They built bridges, you know, cleared the land.

- At least a few settlers found the frontier life a bit too much.

Sunday, June 15th, a number of poor Devils Five and all took their departure homeward this morning.

They came from home, moneyless and brainless, and have returned as they came.

Colonel John May, on July the first, an unsettling message shook the company Tuesday, July 1st.

We were alarmed today by a letter from Major Doughty that two parties of Indian warriors, about 40 in each party, were started on a hostile expedition against our settlement.

Colonel John May.

Workers were called in from the fields.

Extra guards were posted, and a large scouting party was sent to scour the woods, - No chance whatsoever - Shooting, - But not even Indian hostilities would stop the Ohio company from holding.

The next day its first directors meeting.

In the new settlement, they set up a police department and passed some laws to ensure good conduct.

They also selected a new name for the town, - And they talked for a while, some of about calling it Trois Latin.

Basically being a military city associated with their Revolutionary War experience.

And as kind of the advanced guard of the United States empire, a Delphi struck them as being a nice name because it meant brotherhood, but it was too much like Philadelphia friendship.

Basically, the Queen of France, Maria Antoinette sent them a bell as a sign of, of friendship and goodwill.

And in response to her gift, they chose to name the town.

After her shortening Marie Antoinette to to Marietta, - They knew that we would not have won the war if had not been for French intervention.

And so they, these leaders of the Ohio company were very grateful to Marie Antoinette and her husband.

- The town's new name Marietta, was announced two days later at the Grand 4th of July - Celebration.

- They celebrated a lot, but it's interesting.

One of the things they liked to celebrate were national events.

So the 4th of July in 1788 was one of the first great fest occasions in Marietta.

This was not just a kind of party because hey, it's the 4th of July.

A lot of them had fought together for the achievement of this goal - On son Judge Gilbert.

Deval took a pike from the muss kingdom, which weighed 96 pounds.

This fish was cooked for the 4th of July dinner.

Joseph Barker - At half past 12 General Harbor with the ladies, officers and other gentlemen of the garrison arrived.

Sam - Hildreth, our long Bowery is built on the East Bank of the Muskingum.

A table laid 60 feet long.

We had a handsome dinner, Colonel John May, - The Ohio Company was like a strong but loving parent to the settlers under his care.

It even oversaw their lives to the point of the first 4th of July celebration in 1788, providing a half pint of whiskey for every male settler so that he could celebrate the occasion properly.

- Gentlemen to the federal Constitution, - Gentlemen to his Excellency, general Washington and the Society of Cincinnati.

Hi - Again.

Feasting and and drinking.

And the biggest part of the party was the toast that they had.

They had 13 toast given to oh to the, to George Washington and, and different people, particularly the Queen of France, - A toast captain pipe chief of the Delawares.

And a happy treaty with the natives.

Za.

- This anniversary, my friends, is sacred to the independence of the United States.

Every heart must exude.

Every citizen must feel himself exalted upon this happy occasion - When Barnum stands up to give his oration on, on the 4th of July in 1788, he summarizes the major themes of the town.

He talks about how Marietta has to be an exam.

It has to be a model.

It has to demonstrate to all these people floating down the river, that this is the way the United States should be - With the nobles rewards of virtue.

The Memorial 4th of July will ever be celebrated with gratitude to the supreme - Team.

They had to confiscate some of the liquor because some of the guys are getting too drunk and it, they drank an inordinate amount of liquor at at that time.

But after that, then they had a grand illumination at the, at the fort.

It was just fireworks were shot off at the fort.

- The celebrations had barely died down.

When five days later, the new territorial governor Arthur St. Clair arrived to establish the new government.

- Three cheers for Governor Arthur St. Claire.

Hip, hip, hip hip, us hip, hip usah.

- He was planning to hold a treaty council with the Indians at Duncan Falls the following week.

- And somebody got a little bit trigger happy, and nobody ever really decided who was to blame.

The Indians blamed the white people.

The white people blamed the Indians.

But bottom line was that treaty never, never happened.

So at that point, they decided the only thing to do.

The settlers here in Marietta decided the only thing to do was to have yet another treaty.

And this time we would not go out there.

We would have the Indians come in here to fort harm.

- The settlement continued to grow.

Eight families, including women and children, arrived in late August.

The strenuous journey in difficult frontier life was even harder for women and children.

Major Cushing's wife, Elizabeth, would bear the settlement's.

First tragedy, - Her daughter Naby died three days after they got here.

So all that trip she made the journey with a child that she knew was right at death's door.

We know that Elizabeth was also pregnant because a few months after that, she gave birth to her sixth child.

- Governor St. Clair took up residence in campus, marshes and established the territorial government there On September the second, the first civil court in the territory was convened in the northwest.

Blockhouse officers from Fort Harmar escorted the territorial governor and new judges in a grand parade, followed by citizens of the town.

- The procession was preceded by the sheriff with his drawn sword and wand of office.

The whole making quite an imposing appearance and exciting the admiration of the friendly savages.

A number of whom were loitering about the new city.

Sam Hildreth.

- Oh, - Indians had already begun arriving for the Treaty Council at Fort Harmar.

- So all during that fall, more Indians kept arriving every day, and they would just build campfires out around the periphery of the settlements there.

But every night when these settlers looked out, there would be more Indian campfires.

They were afraid they had about 200 people in Marietta, and about a hundred of those 132, I think the exact figure were men of fighting age.

And so they were definitely outmanned by the number of Indians that were coming in every day.

- Thank you, Ms. Stephanie.

- Well, rufuss Putnam took the additional precaution of having all liquor supplies and campus marshes.

In the point confiscated.

He said Ebenezer sprouted and his deputies around to the different houses and confiscated all the liquor supplies.

They didn't want any gambling.

They didn't want any drinking.

They wanted things to stay on a level keel here, because it was a tender box, - The holidays brought some relief, even though Christmas was not celebrated by the mostly Puritan New Englanders of the Ohio company.

- So by the 25th of December, only had just another week to go until it was the first of the year time for the treaty.

And so General St. Clair decided that it was time to thank Almighty God that they were still alive, I guess.

And so he proclaimed December the 25th as a day of Thanksgiving.

So there's no record that they had any Christmas celebration as such as a Christmas celebration.

But they did have a day of Thanksgiving on December the 25th.

- The next day the weather turned bitterly cold.

- There come a big cold spell.

Really?

A vicious cold spell that last week in December.

I mean, the rivers were frozen over and the snow was deep and the wind was blowing off of that river.

You know, it was only a can.

- A young surveyor named Jim Bku reported watching the Indians huddled around their campfires.

- He writes in his journal after he's looking out at those Indians, and I can just sense the astonishment in his voice.

And he says, you know, I think the savages feel the cold even as other men.

And you know, when I read that, it just, it gave me cold chills because I thought, what chance has any treaty got between people who are so far apart in understanding one another?

Honestly, in his heart, he didn't realize that the savages were human beings just like him - Survive.

That - The treaty talks made progress, even though General Harmer was suffering terribly from the gout.

His feet were painfully swollen and he could not walk.

- And so he had his soldiers carry him seated at a chair, and the soldiers carried the chair to the council house.

And the Indians, of course, did not realize that this was because the leader was sick.

They believed that the great White General was so great that he didn't intend to put his feet on the ground.

- Would you be so kind as to come forward and make your mark at this place?

At this place?

Thank you most kindly.

- By the 9th of January, 1789, a treaty had been signed.

- Yes, - They celebrated.

They had a big dinner across the river at campus.

Marshes where the officers near wives and selected Indian chiefs came over.

- Gentlemen, the success of the tree.

The tree.

- I don't know whether Rufuss Putnam and Harmer and David Ziglar and Dowdy and all those fellows, I imagine they still had their doubts, but the average settler felt really good - The next day.

General James Varnum, a director of the company, and one of three territorial judges died of consumption of campus marshes.

But for most Ohio companies, settlers the first year had been a good one.

The Indian Treaty brought hope for the future, but that hope, sadly, was not to be fulfilled - To the plan.

Early adopted of employing rangers may be attributed the general safety and success of the first settlement of this county.

Joseph Parker - Today, sir, - The Ohio Company, men were mostly officers and cultured gentlemen from New England.

- These early Yankee settlers were considered to have duplicated.

New England.

Early traveler says it's just New England.

Miniature - Just across the Ohio River lay a quite different land.

Virginia was part of the old South.

Settlement had begun there years earlier.

- They came from the tide waters, regions with their slaves, their mahogany sideboards, their family silver, and their ingrained habits of living in the old dominion.

They were very proud to be Virginians.

- Many of these Virginians were men, who by now had vast experience on the frontier.

- We need this.

- The Ohio company men had little - About public - School.

They understood New England, they understood government, they understood Greek and Latin.

What they didn't understand was the frontier.

So they needed help on the frontier.

They needed somebody who could shoot straight with a long rifle.

They needed somebody who had a better grasp of the Indian situation and the hardships involved.

So they hired scouts and rangers.

- Their job was to, - On daily basis, go out and do a circumnavigation of the area, always working a different section.

Each day they would always be on alert, looking for any kind of sign they might find, be it a bent twig or a sign of a campfire from the night previous, or moccasin tracks, just any kind of sign.

And they would bring these reports back to the settlements, and that way those people would be relatively safe.

- Spies and rangers were highly skilled in frontier lore.

Many like Frontiersman, Louis Wetzel could reload their muzzle loading musket on the run while being chased by Indians.

They were often illiterate and ill mannered.

Like most Virginians or long knives, they were hated by the Indians.

- There must have been.

- They regard most frontier sellers as Virginians.

That's not a nice word to Native Americans.

A Virginian is the representation of the person who will bowl you over, run you over, kill you, destroy your village, and take your land.

And that's how the Ohio country Indians see the frontier.

Settler, - The Ohio Company wanted peaceful relations with the Native Americans, but the refined New Englanders, even with their great military experience, had to depend heavily upon the Frontiersmen and the Virginians for their protection.

- They hoped to avoid an Indian war.

They did not want to antagonize these Indians.

Well, when you hire these border scouts who have grown up on the frontier, they hate Indians.

They don't wanna sign a treaty with Indians.

They wanna kill 'em all.

- One Frontiersman hated Indians so much.

He could not be employed by the Ohio company.

- Louis Wetzel, of course, was, was an absolute Indian hater.

At one point when a treaty was being made by Colonel Harmer at Fort Harmer with the Indians of the area, the Indians were to come in the next day, and they had camped several miles outside of Marietta the night before.

And Louis Wetzel got wind of this.

So he found a good place to set up an ambush and did so.

And when the Indians came into view, he shot their leader full of the chest and killed him.

- It's kind of like a powder keg.

You never know when the wrong word, the wrong temper.

Somebody's going to get drunk, somebody's going to gamble, somebody's going to white or somebody, something's going to blow up.

And so that just kept things at a constant level of tension all the time.

- On the 1st of May, captain Zein King was chopping a log a few miles down river when he was killed.

And scalped by two Indians barely four months had passed since the signing of the Harmer Treaty, and already it was not working.

- By that time, the Indians had begun kind of a subtle campaign against the whites by driving the game away and killing the game needlessly, slaughtering it, leaving it late, even in order to cut down on what the settlers had access to - On the day before Captain King was killed, general George Washington was sworn in as the first president of the United States, a high priority for the new government would be quieting the unrest on the frontier.

- This government can't demonstrate its ability to protect its own citizens, then who's gonna care about it at all.

And so the whole enterprise of Marietta rests really upon the ability of these soldiers at Fort Harm or in Fort Washington at what is now Cincinnati, to be able to, to demonstrate the power of the United States government.

- The Indian did not have a concept of absolute ownership in the sense that the white man did.

And so of course, this led to continued skirmishes, people being taken prisoner, flat boats going up and down the river being fired upon surveyors being shot while they were surveying, hunters being ambushed, cattle being stolen.

- Yesterday - On the 7th of August, 1789, an Ohio company surveying party led by John Matthews was attacked by Sean.

E one surveyor and six soldiers were killed.

Indian hostilities were on the minds of everyone in the Ohio Company settlements that year.

But soon, a natural disaster would pose yet another great danger.

And help would come again from a Virginian.

- Many of our revolutionary settlers had been practiced to watchfulness and aured to danger and disciplined to the use of the sword and the gun who were not familiar with the plow and the side and the sickle.

But by the examples of those better skilled, they soon became good farmers.

Joseph Barker, - In the spring of 1789, having secured the harm treaty with the Indians.

The Ohio company expanded its settlements 15 miles up the Muskingum River.

They established a village called Waterford, 12 miles down the Ohio River.

They founded Bell Prairie.

- Rie was considered the premier of the offshoot settlements of Marietta.

And by that I mean it was the lush farming settlement.

That's where your most successful farmers were because it had the most flat land.

In fact, the name Berry is a contraction of Bell Prairie, meaning beautiful prairie or meadow.

It's French.

- The first settlement in Bell Prairie was in the center of six miles of rich bottomland, - And much of it had, or part of it had been burnt over by the Indians.

So the settlers did not have so much onerous clearing of the land to do the big business.

At the time, the only business, the only livelihood was agriculture until industry started to take over in the 19th century.

Rie for this reason was called the Garden of the Purchase.

- The Waterford settlement on the Muskingum was made near a good mill site on Wolf Creek.

The first water powered grist mill was built there in 1789 by Major White Colonel Oliver and Captain Dodge, - The Wolf Creek Mill.

It was interesting in that it had a water powered saw mill built at the same time.

They claimed they brought the Pitman gear for it, which had been forged iron all the way from New England, I suppose, Massachusetts a pack horse and, and riverboats.

So, and that it weighed several hundred pounds.

- Grinding grain by hand was tedious and time consuming.

The building of water powered mills was given the highest priority.

They benefited everyone while making a good business for the settlement's.

New England entrepreneurs, RIE resident, Jonathan Deval, a master builder, constructed an innovative floating mill.

His partner, Griffin Green, had once seen one on a trip to Holland.

- They made a, a small boat to put the machinery on, and then they hauled out a large apparently Sycamore log to rest the end of the water wheel on.

So you had a water wheel turning with the current of the river balance between these two makeshift boats.

- Duvall operated his mill in the swift currents of the Ohio River.

In front of the main settlement of Rie, he hired another resident of the Garrison to help run the mill.

Christopher Putnam, known as Kit, was a young black man who was the personal servant of General Israel Putnam.

He came to the frontier with Putnam's son.

The General Soon died and Kit lived on as a free man in Rie.

- Kit was a great favorite with the boys.

He was their chosen leader in all their athletic sports for his wonderful activity, and much beloved for his kind and cheerful disposition when abroad in the fields cultivating or planting their crops, he was one of their best hands either for work or to stand as a century.

Sam Hildreth.

- Samuel Hildreth was a pioneer historian who actually knew many of the Ohio Company men.

30 years later, he gave this perspective on kit's importance in history - At the election for delegates under the territory to form a constitution for Ohio.

Kit was a voter and was probably the first and only black who ever exercised the elective franchise in Washington County.

Thank you, sir.

As after the adoption of that article, all colored men were disenfranchised.

Sam Hildreth, - One vote for you sir.

- Life for Blacks in the Northwest Territory stands in contrast to that of the black slaves living just across the Ohio River.

- It seems to have been a pattern that the early settlers into Western Virginia brought slaves with them and attempted to establish the same slave ocracy that existed in the Eastern or Tidewater parts of Virginia.

- And there's some evidence that there were black people in Marietta from the very beginning, and then they were there primarily as servants, which was usually a kind of code word for, for an enslaved African.

There - Was trouble from the 1780s on over slavery between the Yankees and the Tuckahoe.

The Virginians.

The first record instance is when a tavern owner named Mixer in Marietta sold a slave in 1789.

His neighbors got all excited about this.

- A, a child was sold in Marietta and the man was prosecuted.

A man by the name of Mixer was prosecuted for selling a slave in the Northwest Territory where slavery was prohibited and got got jail time for - While life was better for blacks in the Ohio Company purchase, many found true freedom only by becoming an Indian - In some cases.

In fact, in most of the cases, these were blacks who had escaped from servitude in the South and came northward for some degree of freedom.

When they encountered the Indians, if they were not immediately killed, which was sometimes the case, they were often adopted into the tribes and treated no differently than anyone else.

- When the Delawares adopted somebody, they were considered Delaware.

They were no longer white, black.

They were ceremonially cleansed of any of their previous blood and memory.

- There was a black warrior, unnamed, but he appeared in so many battles that he, he truly fought with the Indians.

- Many white captives as well lived and fought beside the Native Americans.

The object of their attacks was often the surveyors.

Congress had established a new method of surveying based not upon rivers and terrain features, but upon a square grid pattern.

Rectangular ranges were laid out from east to west.

- Each survey crew was given a range to, to measure and, and map, which started by laying out the boundaries of that range and then, then basically going inside it and finding out what the geography of the land was and dividing it up into the sections.

They were many things to fear in the frontier wilderness at that time.

Indians being one of the more important ones.

Those surveyors that went into the heavily forested area where you had a canopy forest where virtually little light got through to the ground.

A lot of the animals, or a lot of the snakes lived up in the trees instead of on the ground.

So you, you didn't know when a rattlesnake might drop out of a tree on you, you know, and it was just, just a major, major problem.

- But the whole idea of putting what they called regularity or order onto the land through these, these right angles throughout the region were, you know, part and parcel of what the Ohio company hoped to do with their settlement at Marietta, which was again, to kind of model system and order as the United States expanded westward - Beyond the surveyors, the millers and the builders, the universal occupation was farming at Beri.

The premier farming settlement.

The leading farmer was major Nathan Gooda.

- And he had a marvelous, really a unbelievable record as far as the Revolutionary War was concerned.

He had just, he was just a real hero - Major.

Nathan Gooda was considered one of the most industrious, successful, and well bred farmers in the county.

Joseph Parker, - Belle Prairie was home to many of the company's best farmers.

When the stockade was completed, it was appropriately known as Farmer's Castle.

But even major good ale made a serious mistake that spring.

He got his crops into the ground late.

It was a very common mistake, but one that would soon turn into the hardest trial.

Yet - Body, Frankie must be - The course hunting shirt and rough, bare skin cap, often enclosed, a tender, benevolent heart and covered a wise, thoughtful head.

Sam Mildreth.

- Late in 1789, it became obvious that the third year of the settlement was not going to be an easy one.

An early frost in October, totally unexpected, ruined most of the crops.

Widespread hunger seemed certain.

By January, 1790, an epidemic of measles was underway.

Several children had already died from the disease when the settlement was visited by a worse killer.

Smallpox.

- Clearly the early part of 1790 was a very rough time in the settlement of Marietta.

- Who, Owen, - There was a family by the name of Welch on the river heading for Kentucky.

The, the father became very ill and was put ashore when Mr. Welch was brought into the Marietta community and it was determined that he had smallpox.

The, I think the phrase was general panic.

Prouse - Welsh was taken to Nurse Mary Gardner.

Owen, even though she had never had smallpox.

- Mary contracted a very mild case.

Mr. Welch died and Mary was then able to assist with caring for all of the victims they had.

They, they separated the people and were able to inoculate in the community.

They were obviously not afraid of these advances in medicine that they thought that it made sense to, to, to go with this new procedure of inoculation - Eight people died, but Mary Gardner, Owen helped save many more.

The Ohio Company recognized her brave service, - Why she nursed the people through and did such a service that she is the only woman who was given donation lands.

A hundred acres they said she had was as good a frontiers person as any that ever lived.

And the enemy against which she had fought was as fearsome as any man ever faced.

- No sooner had the smallpox epidemic subsided than other problems were upon them.

- Probably the biggest problem they had was flood flooding.

The Delaware and other Indians tried to warn them about this, but they thought they knew better.

- The first flood after I came was in March, 1790.

It was about six feet in my house.

Joseph Barker, - By March, hunger had also reached epidemic proportions.

Their crops had failed.

The wild game had been destroyed by angry Indians, many settlers faced starvation.

- A small circle of elderly ladies discussing the collapsing times over a cup of spice, bush tea, and a piece of dry Johnny cake without meat.

Butter mutually agreed that should they live to see the return of bear comfortable plenty.

They would never find fault or ever complain of their living.

Joseph Parker - To get through what they called the starving year.

They turned for help again to a Virginian.

- They were saved that winter of 1790 by Isaac Williams, who lived across the river on the Williamstown shore.

- He knew what was that you could have an early frost, and he had all his crops in, but he sold his corn just for the same price they had sold it for the last year.

And he also saw to it that everybody in the settlement in Marietta got their share.

So that didn't make any difference how much money you had.

You had enough to maintain your family way.

By the middle of May, a majority of the people were outta bread, meat, and milk.

Yet genuine hospitality prevailed those who had dealt out freely but sparingly without money or price to those who had not, which soon brought on a general scarcity.

Nettles were the first herbs up in the spring and were freely used next pigweed and poke sprouts.

Joseph Barker, - The sap of the sugar tree boiled down with meal, made a rich nourishing food.

Great quantities of sugar could have been made, but for the want of kettles, the river afforded an abundance supply of fish.

But only a few of the inhabitants were skilled in the art of taking them, Sam Hildreth.

- So that particular time, not only was the crops failing, but the the game was kind of getting scarce too.

That would've been a low point for everybody.

Now, they had faced famine before.

I'll bet they were worried, seriously worried.

- As the crops began to mature that summer, the famine slowly abated.

Then in September, an event of biblical proportions occurred, even though there'd been no game in the woods For two years, the fields of ripening corn suddenly attracted a plague of wild turkeys.

- One man killed 40 with a rifle in one day.

They were trapped, killed with clubs and dogs, and until a Turkey would not sell for a pip, because a barker, - Because they were so many turkeys, thousands and thousands of turkeys, and they couldn't stand Turkey meat.

Finally - Then in October six flat boats landed in the night and disgorged 500 French immigrants.

They purchased land from the Scio company, but discovered they were victims of a ruthless swindler.

- But he took their money and instead of purchasing the land for them what he was supposed to do, he just took the money and disappeared.

So you have approximately 500 settlers from France arriving here to this land of milk and honey.

It had been sold to them as that, you know, you can go and pick the fruit right off the trees.

You don't have to work at all.

You can sit there on your porch, swing back and forth, and the food drops in your lap.

- 500 of these French people who had never probably been off the streets of Paris in their life, who had never seen an Indian, who had never been in a wilderness, who couldn't shoot, who couldn't chop with an ax, who couldn't do any of these necessary survival skills, and there they were.

- A lot of these Frenchmen were people accustomed to working for royalty.

So you have wig makers and, and coachmen and that sort of thing, skills, which are totally useless on the frontier.

- Rufus Putnam sent his soldiers to build them some cabins, and they settled down there in a place they called the city of the Galls or Gallis, but many of them stayed here in Marietta.

- One who stayed was Francois Theory, a Paris baker.

He moved his family into an empty ammunition hole outside Fort Harmar.

- The thi family spent their first winter in the new country in that hole in the ground with boards over their head for a roof.

- Francois found an oven nearby, built for the soldiers, and quickly borrowed some coarse flour.

- He persuaded somebody else to loan him some real flour, some ground flour courses that would've been, and do you know the first thing you know?

He has a fairly decent loaf of bread baking right here in Marietta.

I think Marietta settlement may have been one of the few settlements on the frontier to have their own French bakery.

- Things were finally looking up.

The hardships of 1790 seemed almost over when, in late October.

Word came that Colonel Harmer had marched his army into the heart of the Shawnee and Miami country.

- Harmer led quite a substantial force out of Fort Harmer for that area.

And unfortunately, he was not a very good officer at that time, and not a very good commander, a colonel.

And when the Indians attacked him near the Fort Wayne area, after he had sent out detachments against them, his cowardice came to the surface and he fled despite the, the cries of dismay from his own troops.

- That is a disaster.

And the reason it's a disaster is lack of planning, lack of supplies, and the presence of the militia.

We're out here on the frontier.

People volunteer to go a minute.

They're hit by the Indians.

Were gone, headed the other way, headed for Kentucky or wherever it is they came from.

- The whites realized that the Indians were a force to be reckoned with, that these were not just a bunch of brutal savages who, who did not know how to fight.

- When word of the defeat reached Marietta, work began immediately to strengthen the settlement's defenses.

General Putnam warned people not to move out to new settlements for a while.

But despite the years disease, famine, and the ravages of nature, Marietta had grown and prospered.

Many settlers were encouraged and confident in their ability to protect themselves.

That confidence, though would soon lead to disaster - Is the norm.

Try to - Now, at this point, harm's expedition has failed.

The treaty obviously didn't do what they hoped it would.

So they know there's danger.

And Rufuss Putnam has conscious, cautioned people not to leave the major forts, to stay put around Fort Harmer, to stay put around campus marshes to be very careful.

But you see, these young people were not foolhardy, but they had land set aside up the King River.

And the agreement was you had to claim your land, you had to cultivate so many acres, and you had to build a building or you lost it.

You forfeited your land.

- About 20 people decided not to wait to begin their settlement, believing the Delaware and Wyandot Indians who lived to the north were friendly.

They moved into an unfinished blockhouse in two cabins, 40 miles up the Muskingham River on the evening of January the second, 10 men, one woman, and her two children were fixing a meal while their watchdogs laed by the fire.

No guards had been posted.

- The general business of fortification and security had been suspended, stopping the cracks between the logs of the house and picketing and a century had been neglected.

No system of defense and discipline was introduced.

Their guns were lying in different places without order.

Joseph Parker.

- These people had been warned over and over and over again.

Get yourself some good buildings.

Get yourself some guards out at night.

They built a blockhouse, which was by some description, no better off than a poorly built log house.

There were two small cabins, distant somewhat from the blockhouse - On this night in January.

It's very, very bitterly cold, and there's a heavy snow on the ground and the wind's blowing.

Meanwhile, there's a war party coming down the Miss Kingdom on the ice eyes.

Their intention is to go down to the belt resettlement and attack a farmer's castle.

They look this direction and they see smoke.

They hadn't realized that the settlements had proceeded that far north, and when they saw the smoke, they became more angry than ever because this is another sign that they're breaking the treaty.

They're moving farther north and they decide to stop and wipe out that settlement.

First, - When it began to grow dusk, the Indians slipped across the river, surrounded the blockhouse, and each had a deliberate aim at the inmates through the door and the cracks between the logs.

Joseph Barker - Kicked open the door.

They all pointed their guns in through the door.

Fired a blast, killed several people in that first attack, charged in with their Tommy Hawks and, and just went to butchering everybody they could find.

- The only blow that was struck was by Mrs. Meeks, the wife of the hunter, Isaac Meeks, who picked up an ax that was laying in the corner.

After she saw her two children killed, she picked up the ax and hit one of the Indians with it.

That was the only blow that was struck, and the entire settlement was wiped out.

- The Bullard brothers had put their log cabin a little way distant, and the Indians didn't realize that it was there until after the Bulls heard the gunshots of the attack on the blockhouse, and they took off and made their way back to, to Fort Fright.

- Warned by the bollards, the residents of Waterford and Wolf Creek, mostly women and children gathered into Colonel Oliver's blockhouse.

- They spent a long night there in Oliver's cabin after the Ballard Brothers and Captain Rogers left.

And their hearts must have been in their throat.

Literally, they heard the Indians prowling around later that night.

But for some reason or other, the Indians didn't attack.

They probably didn't know the men were all at Marietta or they might have attacked.

But when daylight came, they said about building Fort Fry.

- The next morning, Delaware and Wyandot footprints were discovered nearby.

- And now the one remaining tribe group of tribesmen that they have thought were not their enemies are.

And so at this point, the settlers know they are completely surrounded by hostile Indians and they don't know how many of them there are.

- Work began that very day to fortify the settlements.

- They got the word back at campus marshes about that event.

And so they heard, they tried to finish the stockade, the interior, and the exterior wall, and they put up more defenses around it.

- Within days of the massacre, Putnam sent an appeal to President Washington.

- The garrison at Fort Harmer consisting at this time of little more than 20 men can afford no protection to our settlements.

We are in the utmost danger of being swallowed up unless governments speedily send a body of troops for our protection.

We are a ruined people.

Your obedient servant, general Rufuss Putnam - Fire locks.

- Immediately the trustees of the Ohio company passed a resolution establishing Mark a militia for the defense of the Ohio Company purchase.

What it said was, anyone between the ages of 16 and 60, more or less of an advanced age at that time, was in the militia.

- The village at the point immediately began building fortifications.

- They had a stock aid fence with block houses that went around their area there.

Because of those stock aid fence, it was called Picketed Point.

- Fort Fry was completed at Waterford with only three sides.

Since it would be quicker to build that way, it was not quite completed when it was attacked by a war party.

On March 11th, warnings from a friendly Indian saved the settlers and no one was killed.

But just two days later, the same war party sent the biggest shockwave yet through the entire settlement, the last man anyone thought could be surprised by Indians was the company's most experienced ranger captain Joseph Rogers, - And certainly Captain Joseph Rogers was one who understood the Indians and understood the wilderness.

The night before this happened, he had had a dream and he said, I had a dream last night.

And he said, I know today I'll either lose this scalp or take one.

And they said, if you feel that way, why go out?

And he said, that's my job.

That's what I do.

And so he went.

- He had almost completed his patrol through the woods north of campus.

Marshes, when he was ambushed - Without any warning at all, get out of the bushes quicker than you could bat your eye.

Three or four Indians stepped and fired, all right.

At the same time, Joseph Rogers was in head, and he took pretty much a full shot right to the front of him.

- Word of Rogers' death set off alarm shots.

And near panic in Marietta, settlers rushed to the dearest Aade carrying their dearest belongings.

- Ebenezer Sprott, for example, came with a great chief of some kind of official papers.

You know, he was marietta's sheriff and entrusted with various bookkeeping duties.

So he had all his valuable papers.

But one young woman came into the fort dragging her screaming child by the hand, and her feathered under her arm, old Edmund Moten, the Goldsmith, who was the oldest man to come with the Ohio company.

Man, they sat as he came running up the path to the fort, they could hear clank, clank, clank, clank, because he had his goldsmiths apron with all his tools tied around him.

That was the dearest thing he had.

And he risked his life to bring them with him.

Mother Molten came a few minutes later and she said that she had to tidy up the house.

She couldn't leave it looking.

So - The message of Roger's death was quite clear.

No one on the frontier was safe.

- You know, I talk about it as a great cultural tragedy of two groups of people, white and Indian, both very sure that they're right, and both very sure that the other person is dangerous and terrible and out to get 'em.

And that you have two groups of people fighting for their lives against each other.

It was - Total warfare.

Of course, there there's the huge threat of, of violence, of people being killed, of the settlement, possibly being wiped out.

- During the continuance of the war, the inhabitants were obliged to work in their fields.

Every man with his weapon in his hand, all their food was procured at the risk of life.

Sam Hildreth.

- And they're fearful for their own lives.

So just going out in the fields to work, just, you know, going for a walk became dangerous.

I mean, they, they were frightened, not really because there were that many incidents, but because all it requires is one or two incidents, and then people changed their behavior.

And that's exactly what happened after January of 91 through the duration of the Indian War up through 94, 95.

You're talking about people are pretty much confined to these stockade.

- The larger fortified posts provided protection, but venturing out of the stockades could mean death or capture.

At the end of April, Daniel converse was captured outside of Fort Frye and taken north to Sandusky.

Two months later, Matthew Kerr, who had moved into fort harm, was killed while tending the animals, he'd left on his island farm.

Every few months, more people were killed.

Governor St. Clair took command of the army, and in October led another campaign against the Indians.

- When they got up to the headwaters of the Wabash River, the Indians who had assembled under Blue Jacket and Tecumsah and other Indians, little turtle and so on, numbered well over 3000 Indians.

And they attacked with great savagery and virtually wiped out St. Clair's army.

- His army was defeated and one of the worst military defeats ever inflicted upon a United States army by the combined group of Miami Shawnee Wyandot and other Indians.

But what this did to Marietta, of course, was scare them to death.

- Isolated attacks on people and livestock continued into 1792 return.

Jonathan Megs Jr.

Encountered two Indians on the riverbank in front of campus.

Marshes, a hired man with him escaped.

But a 12-year-old black boy did not - With him was a little Afro-American boy that he had brought from Connecticut as a servant.

And the boy had got to the water's edge ahead of one of the Indians and but couldn't swim and sort of sort of stalled right there on the water's edge.

And the, the Indian killed him - As MIGS fled the other Indian through his tomahawk, MIGS felt it strike him in the back, but it was only the handle return.

Jonathan migs Jr. Would live to become the fourth governor of the state of Ohio.

The the next spring residents of Farmers Castle were shocked when their leader, major Nathan Goodell disappeared while plowing his field.

He'd been taken silently by the Indians and was never seen again.

Soon after John Armstrong wanted to move from the for to his own cabin.

His wife strongly objected.

- They said that poor Nancy was so reluctant to leave the security of Farmer's Castle, that her husband had to forcibly remove her hands from the door jamb in order to get her across in the canoe and across the river.

And indeed, about three or four months after she moved across the river, her worst nightmare came true.

And she and her and several of her children were killed by the Indians.

And three of her children taken prisoner.

- The Ohio Company settlers would have to endure four and a half years of warfare with the Native American Indians, four and a half years of confinement, terror, and lost opportunity.

- The aftermath of the big bottom attack would be that the Ohio Company would be hard pressed to recruit people to come to settle in this area.

- The last four and a half years were terrible.

And the Marietta settlement, we, we judged from letters of the Woodbridge family and other sources was near to breaking.

A few of the families did flee to Virginia where it was considered safer, wasn't so much on the edge.

I say Western Virginia, as Marietta was and Rie, - The Marietta settlement was on the edge of disaster, but it would not crumble.

The old Revolutionary War officers were too tough and wily to let that happen.

But it was perhaps gratifying to their Yankee Federalist hearts that they would have to wait to be rescued by the federal government.

- And so Congress, president Washington and Congress create what's called the Legion of the United States, which comes west under the command of Anthony Wayne, who was another friend and colleague of many of the men involved in Marietta, the Legion of the United States, literally with, you know, blue uniforms, eagles out in front like Roman legions or something.

- This time the government succeeded in August of 1794 at a place where the wind had blown down many trees called fallen timbers.

General Mad Anthony Wayne's 3,500 troops defeated 2000 Indians.

- But after the, the battle was over, the, the Indians ran to the, to the fort occupied by the British, outside of what is now Toledo, Ohio.

And the British commander wouldn't let him in.

And the reason he wouldn't let him in was he wasn't willing to go to war with the Americans.

This realization among the Native Americans that they're on their own, essentially, that the British are sort of Fairweather friends, is hugely deflating to them.

I mean, their morale is essentially destroyed.

- The result of the defeat at Fallen Timbers was that the Treaty of Greenville was established, which effectively split the state almost in half, giving half of it to the whites and half of it to, to the Indians.

The Greenville Treaty line - Fall and Timbers, and then followed by the Treaty of Greenville in 95 changed things drastically.

And one of the most amazing things that happened was how quickly people escaped that kind of garrison mentality that they were in for those early years of the nineties - When the Treaty of Greenville put an end to the, so-called Indian War period in Ohio, and the officers of the Ohio company decided that Campus Marshes really had no further use.

And in 1796, why they were going to offer the entire structure for sale, - Following the signing of the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, the campus marshes was taken apart.

I remember talking about how it was put together there, the board just sliding in there.

Well, all you have to do is knock the pegs out, which is not an easy task by any means.

But you knock them out and you lift the boards out and take the doors and everything, load 'em on a wagon and cart 'em to wherever you want to.

- I think the speed with which they took down campus marshes shows how eager they were to enter a life of what they would consider to be normalcy, a kind of stability, the sense that the fear was gone.

- George Washington made a comment that is in his papers, that no settlement had a better chance of success than the Ohio Company settlements centered at Marietta in the Northwest Territory because he knew many of his leaders and he knew their high caliber of character, their determination, their intelligence, their sense of duty.

And it was this exalted character that carried the settlers through the last four and a half years before 1795.

- Marietta was the first organized settlement.

It opened the door, it got people here, it got the idea of the West going, but then it sort of falls on hard times.

And I think this Indian hiatus is, is one of the things that contributes to its hard times.

- Four and a half years of warfare on the frontier had destroyed many of the plans and aspirations of the Ohio Company men - Now, by this time it's too late for them to say, save all their land, recoup their investments.

They haven't been able to sell it.

And they've had to reneg on a lot of their deal, but at least they knew that the town was gonna continue to be there.

- By 1797, the company was out of business.

Investors would continue to sell their lands, but most of their hopes and dreams had passed them by just like the many new settlers that were passing by Marietta on their way down the Ohio to richer pastors.

- Unfortunately, by the time they began to recruit people, the the exciting place to go is not the Ohio company anymore.

The exciting place to go is, is down the river and then out into Indiana and Illinois where there's more fresh land.

'cause that's what these people are looking for.

- The Ohio company's settlement had been a grand experiment in capitalism and democracy that would have far reaching effects as the nation expanded westward to the Pacific.

- But on the other hand, their whole scheme to come out here, you know, hundreds of miles away from home to go to Ohio and build this elaborate city and model for the world and make a killing for themselves and their family has the kind of utopian quality to it, almost a kind of head in the clouds kind of thing.

- They came as a community.

They brought their church with them, they brought their school with them, all the professions.

Marietta, as small as it was from 1788 on was the urban center between Wheeling and Cincinnati.

- Marietta didn't become what its founders hoped it would become.

It didn't become the political headquarters of the United States, but it did become, in many ways the model for the development of the Midwestern region of the United States.

- The Ohio Company is to me like the, like the pathfinder, like the trail breaker, like the boons who, who are, are the Simon kittens who go out and pave the way, but they never really realize the profit from the potential of where they go.

But Marietta sort of sets the, the, the path westward and Marietta is the opening of the West as far as the United States goes.

- The Ohio company investors did not become wealthy yet their enterprise had been anything but a failure.

They secured for themselves a place in history and for the country they put forward their vision for its future.

- So they have this vision, but the Ohio company put the vision into motion.

They devised a practical way of actually setting it up and making it happen.

They took the ordinance of 1787 and they made it work.

They took the situation as they found it, and they made a way for education, for religion, for life, for daily life to be carried on.

And I think maybe that was their, their greatest contribution because it's one thing to have a mighty vision.

But as we all knew, mighty visions aren't easily put into motion.

And that's what they did in the, with the Ohio country.

They were able to take the vision and give it legs as it were.

And heart.

- Rufuss Putnam and his Ohio company men sowed the seeds of order, justice and honor that would eventually spread across the continent and grow into the American nation.

We know today.