Waterways of Westward Expansion - The Ohio River and its TributariesHulbert, Archer Butler
History
Waterways of Westward Expansion - The Ohio River and its Tributaries
Hulbert, Archer Butler
Ohio River
The company spent the night of the seventh about three leagues below
"Written Rock," and as Chiningué was but two leagues below the camp they
easily reached this town, which was one of the "most considerable on the
Belle Rivière," the following day. Céloron informs us that this village
consisted of fifty cabins of Loups, Iroquois, and Shawanese, and Father
Bonnécamps records that they called it Chiningué from its close
proximity to a river of that name.[23] This place (a few miles below
the present Economy, Pennsylvania) has figured prominently in later
Indian history as Logstown. Croghan's _Journal_ under date of August,
1749, says that "Monsieur Celaroon with two hundred French soldiers" had
passed through Logstown just before his arrival. Inquiring of the
inhabitants the object of "Celaroon's" expedition, he was told that "it
was to drive the English away, and by burying iron plates, with
inscriptions on them at the mouth of each remarkable creek, to steal
away their country."[24]
Upon reaching Chiningué Céloron compelled several English whom he found
established there to leave and sent by them a letter, similar to the one
previously spoken of, to Governor Hamilton. The Indians were very
suspicious of Céloron, and here his Iroquois and Abenaki allies deserted
him. They treated his speech with contempt and tore down the plates
which had been nailed upon the trees.
Céloron left Chiningué on the eleventh and at noon of the thirteenth
interred a plate of lead "at the entrance of the river and on the south
bank of the Kenawah, which discharges itself to the east of the river
Ohio."[25] According to Bonnécamps's journal, the plate was interred at
the mouth of the Kanonouaora. This third plate was probably buried at
the mouth of Wheeling Creek in West Virginia, though the descriptions of
the place as given by both Céloron and Bonnécamps are so vague that it
is quite impossible to identify positively the site.[26]
At seven o'clock on the morning of the fourteenth, the expedition was
again on its way down the river. They passed two rivers, the entrances
of which, Céloron tells us, were very beautiful. On the fifteenth the
route was continued, and a leaden plate was interred "at the foot of a
maple, which forms a tripod with a red oak and a cone pine, at the
entrance of the river Yenanguekouan, on the west shore of this river ...
and in the same place attached to a tree the arms of the King."[27]
Father Bonnécamps gives, as the name of this river, Jenanguékoua. This,
the fourth plate, was interred at the mouth of the Muskingum River in
Ohio, on the site of old Fort Harmar and within the present city of
Marietta. This plate, found in 1798 by some boys bathing in the
Muskingum, was presented to the Antiquarian Society of Massachusetts in
the library of which it is now preserved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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