As early as 1761 Frederick Post from Pennsylvania, a Moravian missionary to the Indians, built perhaps the first “American’s” house in Ohio on the Tuscarawas River. On May 3, 1772, David Zeisberger and a company of Christian Indians established Moravian villages at Schoenbrunn, Gnadenhutten, and Lichtenau (near present New Philadelphia). Clarksville, now a suburb of Jeffersonville, Indiana, had been established by George Rogers Clark in 1784. Wiseman’s Bottom, four miles above the mouth of the Muskingum, was named after a man who made a clearing as entry right to 400 acres while Virginia still claimed the land north of the Ohio. During the Revolutionary War squatters began to settle northwest of the Ohio. Since these squatters were trespassing on lands reserved by treaty for the Indians, Congress attempted to drive them out. Ensign John Armstrong reported in 1785 that “there are at the falls of the Hawk Hawkin [Hocking River] upwards of 300 families, and at the Muskingum a number equal.” The squatters even elected one William Hogland, governor. These temporary and unlawful settlements would defeat orderly settlement, and deprive the new nation of the income from sale of the lands. To prevent such illegal occupation Fort Harmar was erected on the Ohio at the mouth of the Muskingum. Marietta was the first legal American settlement northwest of the Ohio River under the Ordinance of 1787. The Ohio Company of Associates spoke so enthusiastically in praise of their land that other New Englanders jokingly referred to the purchase as “Putnam’s Paradise” and “Cutler’s Indian Heaven.” Aside from the fact that the land was hilly in some sections, it came up to the expectations of the settlers. In contrast to the cold weather they had experienced in Pennsylvania, the pioneers found that the trees were in leaf at the Muskingum and grass was high enough for pasturing their horses. Over the entire region stretched an almost unbroken forest of great poplar, sycamore, maple, oak, hickory, elm, and other trees. Cutler records that on his visit to Marietta he saw a hollow tree forty-one and a half feet in circumference that would hold 84 men or afford room inside for six horsemen to ride abreast. The circles counted in one tree indicated that it was at least 463 years old. In boasting of the fertility of the land one settler wrote that “the corn has grown nine inches in twenty-four hours, for two or three days past.” Buffalo and elk were found in the woods when the pioneers arrived. A hunter could kill 20 deer in one day near Marietta. Wild turkeys weighing from 16 to 30 pounds were caught in pens and clubbed to death. The woods were alive with foxes, opossum, raccoon, beaver, otter, squirrels, rabbits and other small game. Bears, panthers, wild cats, and wolves were a menace to stock. Schools of fish made so much noise with their flopping against the boats that the men could not sleep on board. The largest fish caught were a black catfish