This road in Jackson Township, Shelby County, Ohio, follows the Greenville Treaty line to the east.

And here’s looking the other way, toward Fort Loramie. The Greenville Treaty of 1795 left lots of marks like this on the landscape. Most of them make excellent bicycle routes. They are quiet roads with little traffic. I stopped for several photos like this on my ride to Fort Loramie on August 30.

I’ve been looking for similar marks on the landscape in Iowa, in preparation for some riding there this summer. My wife is from Iowa, and it has been a few years since we’ve gone back for a visit. I’ve started to mark my maps with places in Iowa where we can say, “Black Hawk Slept Here.” But so far I have not found a single place where property lines or highways seem to follow one of the old treaty boundaries. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any such places, but the county atlases I’ve looked at so far give no sign of any. (If you click on the map above, you’ll go to the web site from which I got it.)

I’ve visited quite a few treaty boundaries in Ohio and Indiana, and I see there are some in Illinois, too. There are county atlases for Michigan that show treaty boundaries, and I’ve also seen them marked on USGS maps for Michigan. But in Iowa, not a trace.

Some treaty boundaries were never surveyed, so those would not be expected to have left a trace. I don’t happen to know which Iowa boundaries, if any, were ever surveyed.

(From August 30.) The road stops at the Greenville Treaty line. I spent a good part of the day following parts of the line to Fort Loramie, where the line turns north toward Fort Recovery. These were all parts of the line I had never seen before. I did skip a few places where it left marks on the landscape, though, so as to save some for another time.

googlemap

The Greenville line is shown as a thin, violet line. My route for the day is the blue line. I came from the north until I met the line, and then followed it to Fort Recovery where there were public roads that let me do it. The red line is from a few weeks later, when I followed some of it again, in the reverse direction.

Late last December I learned that roadside memorials like the one shown here are somewhat controversial. I weighed in on the topic here and here, saying I encountered them often but didn’t have a photo of one. But just tonight I found out that I do. This one is almost a mile south of where I took the photo in the last post. (I see nothing wrong with stopping every mile to take a photo.)

There is even a wikipedia article about roadside memorials. It has links to more articles about the controversy.

I’m on the side of letting them be. They are a part of life that is not standardized, bureaucratized, and regulated. At least in Ohio, people just put them up. They don’t ask anybody’s permission. They don’t fill out any paperwork. They just do it. In some other states there are attempts to regulate them.

In some extreme cases there can be safety issues. But I suspect that for some people, there is simply an urge to reach out and regulate that which isn’t yet regulated.

The urge to regulate is not just a feature of modern society. Back in the winter of 1996-1997 before this project of bicycling to history sites took shape, I was spending evenings in the library looking for reminiscences about the Black Hawk war in Michigan. I encountered two anecdotes that I wish I could find again. But at the time they weren’t what I was looking for, so I didn’t record anything about them. I’ve gone back many times, checking and re-reading many of the materials I thought I had looked at back then, but without being able to find them.

One of them was someone’s recollection of a young and vigorous Winfield Scott at the Dearborn armory, shirt-sleeves rolled up, selecting weapons and equipment by lantern-light for the troops that were on their way to fight Black Hawk. The author noted the contrast with the image of “Old Fuss and Feathers,” as Scott came to be known later in life.

The other is about the urge to regulate. It was about an early township meeting in Jackson County, Michigan. Someone at the meeting wanted to enact an ordinance to prohibit the selling of whiskey to Indians. When it was pointed out to him that that meant the Indians would take their business elsewhere, he then wanted to enact an ordinance requiring people doing business with Indians to have whiskey available for sale. That episode epitomizes the urge to regulate. But I have not been able to find the anecdote again, despite much searching. I don’t know if the name of the person was given, but if it was, I’d look hard for more information about him and some way to make a Sunday afternoon bicycle ride out of it.

Back to the photo. The land on the right side of the road is Section 4 of Township 7S, Range 7E. That on the left is Section 5. A Shelby County history says this about the settlement of Jackson Township, of which this land is a part:

So far as we have been able to ascertain, but one family, that of James McCormick, came here as early as 1831, from Greene County, and entered land in section 34. The year 1832 shows no accessions, so far as we can learn, while the following year it appears Andrew Nogle came from Fairfield County and occupied land in section 30. Again, the year 1834 only shows the arrival of Thomas Cathcart, who came here in March from Montgomery County and entered land in the northwest corner of section 33. The next year it appears David Snider came from Montgomery County, and William Johnston, who settled in section 20. In 1837 John W. Knight entered land in section 17, Jeptha M. Davis in section 4…

The land across the road, on the right, was the land purchased by this Jeptha M. Davis. (I looked it up online at the GLO land patent database.) The land patent certificate says he was from Clark County. In checking the records for Section 5, the section where the memorial is placed, I learned that the land directly in front of the camera was also purchased by a man from Clark County, a James Elliott. It looks like that purchase was made a couple of years after Davis’s.

It could very well be that Elliott and Davis had also been neighbors back in Clark County.

In the last post I wondered why some of the land patents for some of the places just outside the Wapakoneta Reservation were issued a couple of years after those for the lands inside.

The above photo is of some more of those lands outside. It was taken as I rode south from the old boundary towards the Auglaize-Shelby county line, which is where the road in the photo ends. I had to jog to the east to go south into Shelby county.

This scene is in Jackson County Township, about a mile south of the county line.

In re-reading some of the history of Shelby County, I came to realize I should not have been surprised by the sequence of Issue Dates on the land patents. This part of Shelby County, just north of the Greenville Treaty Line, was not settled until the 1830s. Settlement proceeded mostly from the south to the north, and this was north — about the last part of Shelby county to be settled.

In a way that seems strange. Settlement of southern Michigan was well underway by that time — the very best lands were already taken, and there was a fairly sizeable population by the time the Black Hawk war broke out in 1832. Much of Ohio had been settled a generation earlier. Not far from here were places that already had settlers by the time of the War of 1812. But this part of Ohio around Wapakoneta did not get settled until the 1830s — relatively late in Ohio settlement history.

So it’s not the case that the land around the reservation had all been sold and settled, after which pressure was put on the Shawnee people to sell out and leave. Something like that is what happened to the Wyandot reserve around Upper Sandusky, but it was not the pattern that was followed here.

Why that is, I haven’t yet learned. Did it have to do with geography and the suitability of the land for farming? Or were there political considerations that kept this land off the market until the early 1830s? For now I’ll have to put it in the “wish I knew” category.

After having done a late ride to this site the evening before, I rode here again the next morning. It was a bit out of my way and added extra miles for the ride to Piqua. I sort of regretted this detour by the end of the day. But it worked out OK in the end.

The road here follows the south boundary of the Wapakoneta Reservation. The land on the other side of the road had been ceded to the United States in the 1817 Treaty of St Mary’s. The land on the near side was a reservation that was “owned” by Shawnee people until 1832.

Both sides of the road are in Section 20, Clay Township, Auglaize County. Tonight I went to the Land Patent database at www.glorecords.blm.gov to see who the original purchasers were. I specified Auglaize County, Township 6 South, Range 7 East, Section 20. The result is shown above.

I didn’t find anything particularly interesting about any of the persons listed. The name Helmlenger is still shown as a landowner in the 1880 atlas, except it’s spelled Helminger there (as well as in the 1905 county history).

One point that surprised me a little is the Issue Dates on the patents. The lands that were purchased at the Lima land office were the lands outside the reservation. I would have expected those purchases to have been made well before those inside the reservation. But the patents for those lands were actually issued a couple of years later.

I don’t know the explanation, but one possibility is that the lands outside the reservation actually were purchased earlier, but that the General Land Office took a lot longer to process them than it did the ones from the Wapakoneta Reservation. It’s hard to say.

There are many times when I’ve wished the data on the purchase dates were easily available. This is one, though it’s not a matter of any great significance.

Freyburg, OH has a big German catholic cemetery. I was looking for an excuse to post the photos I took of it on my August 29 starter ride, but haven’t found any good connections to the settlement-era stories, other than to note that this place was part of the Wapakoneta Reservation before 1832.

This is looking south of the town. The 1905 county history tells about a John Lenox who supposedly lived about a mile down this road.

John Lenox, one of the early pioneer of Pusheta township, was born in Fairfield county, Ohio, October 18, 1809. When he was two years old his father moved to Shelby county, Ohio, and settled near Sidney. The family suffered all the privations and dangers peculiar to that turbulent time. Six thousand Indians were encamped around the Indian agency at Piqua from 1812 to 1814. It was not until after the battle of the Thames that any pioneer north of Dayton could consider himself safe from marauding Indians.

February 14, 1833, Mr. Lenox, having accumulated one hundred dollars, attended the public land sale at Wapakoneta. Having made a memorandum of a number of desirable tracts of land, he bid on each one in succession, as it was presented by Van Horn, the auctioneer, and was over-bid in each instance, until the last tract on his list was reached. He bid one hundred dollars for the east half of the southeast quarter of section twenty-three. and was again overbid; at that moment his father-in-law, Ebenezer Stevens, tapped him on the shoulder and told him to bid higher, that he would be responsible for the additional cost. After a few more bids Mr. Lenox was declared the purchaser. It would be difficult to convince any person of the present day that the purchase was not the best one that he could have made. He afterward became the owner of two hundred acres of land. Immediately after the purchase of his land he moved into an Indian cabin, that was so small that it became necessary when he had company to move the chairs and table out of the building to make room for beds on the floor.

The road shown ahove will take one to that 80-acre parcel. But there is a problem. The 1880 atlas doesn’t show that southeast quarter of section 23 as belonging to anyone named Lenox. And that 80 acres is just south of the old reservation. The land that Lenox was bidding on was a part of land that Shawnee people had been pressured into ceding to the United States just the year before. The south part of section 23 lies outside that.

I then checked the GLO database. It shows John Lenox as having purchased 80 acres all right, but it was in section 8, not section 23. And it was the west half of the southwest quarter, not the east half of the southeast quarter. And the 1880 atlas does show Lenox as owning 200 acres there.

I’m guessing a typo. Maybe the writer or printer made a mistake in reading a handwritten information. But how someone could get 23 out of an 8 is not so clear, even in a case of bad handwriting.

Whatever the case, sometime I’ll need to make a visit to section 8 to see if there are any clues as to what made is so valuable a property for a farm.

The driveway shown in this photo is part of the old boundary of the Wapakoneta reserve. The land on the far side was in the reserve, which existed from 1817 to 1832.

Before the War of 1812, before this reserve existed, the Shawnee leader Black Hoof was caught between the United States and the Shawnee brothers, Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa, who opposed the United States. He threw in his lot with the U.S.

According to R. David Edmunds

Black Hoof’s people reaffirmed their loyalty to the United States, increased their acreage of corn and potatoes, and sent repeated petitions to the Quakers asking for missionaries to return and ‘assist us as soon as possible’ so that Shawnee children could become educated and both Indians and whites ‘will be more united until we all land in heaven together.’

(This is from “The Loyal Shawnees and the War of 1812,” by R. David Edmunds. It’s a chapter in the book, “The Sixty Years’ War for the Great Lakes, 1754-1814″, edited by David Curtis Skaggs and Larry L. Nelson (2001). Some of the information might have been from Indian agent John Johnston, but I’m not sure about that. (Johnston’s place was the destination for my ride that day.) )

After the war the Shawnees were made to cede more land, and Black Hoof got this Wapakoneta Reserve.

At Wapakoneta Black Hoof’s people continued to walk a path of accommodation. But they still selected what they needed and rejected what they could not accept. They raised cattle and pigs to help offset the decline in hunting off their reservations. The Quakers established another reservation at Wapakoneta and sent missionary Henry Harvey, who later wrote a history of the Shawnees. The Quakers also opened a school. But, John Johnston wrote, they did not yet try to instruct the Shawnees in the principles of Christianity, believing that they were ‘not yet sufficiently acquainted with the arts of civilized life.’ They remained ‘bitterly opposed to Christianity,’ arguing that God had given Shawnees their own religion, just as he had given white people theirs.”

(This quote is from Colin G. Calloway’s book, “The Shawnees and the war for America.” (2007). Page 157).

We checked into a motel in Wapakoneta late on August 29. There was just enough time for me to get in a brief starter ride, shown in green on the above Google map.

I decided that a reachable destination before dark was a small piece of road that follows the old boundary of the Wapakoneta Reservation. This was a Shawnee reservation that was in existence from 1817 to 1831. The place is marked with a green marker.

The reservation boundary forms a rectangle that is shown by a thin violet line. I drew it with the help of this 1880 atlas map at HistoricMapWorks.com . If you examine that map, you’ll see that although it’s rectangular in shape, the boundary doesn’t quite align with the section lines of the rectangular survey system.

Just to the south of the old reservation, almost adjoining it, is St Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church. The cornerstone says the congregation (though not the building) dates back to 1835. That was just three years after the Shawnee people were forced to leave.

This view is to the north of the church, where the road makes a turn to the right, i.e. to the east, where it follows the old reservation boundary for all of a quarter mile.

The most prominent leader of the Shawnee people at Wapakoneta was Black Hoof. There is at least one street in the town that’s named after him, and there are monuments and markers about him at St Johns, which I visited on a ride in July 2007.

Black Hoof was a Shawnee who allied himself with the United States during the War of 1812, much to the displeasure of Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa, who were allied with the British and who wanted to drive the Americans out.

The reservation was sort-of a reward for Black Hoof’s service during the war, though I suppose it’s not everyone’s idea of a reward. The result of the war was that the Shawnee people had to cede land north of the old boundary, the Greenville Treaty Line. The Wapakoneta Reserve was a part of that land that the Shawnee were allowed to keep — for a while.

I thought I had read elsewhere that Black Hoof had wanted to own land in fee simple so it could not be taken away from him, but that the United States was not willing to let Indians hold land under those terms. (This despite the fact that the U.S. kept telling Indians that they needed to settle down and farm, and use their land like the white people did.)

I just now read the relevant parts of the treaty document by which the Wapakoneta reserve was granted and the treaty document by which it was taken away. I was somewhat surprised at what I found. The treaty that “granted” the reserve was the 1817 Treaty of St. Mary’s. It says:

The United States also agree to grant, by patent, in fee simple, to Catewekesa or Black Hoof, Byaseka or Wolf, Pomthe or Walker, Shemenetoo or Big Snake, Othawakeseka or Yellow Feather, Chakalowah or the Tail’s End, Pemthala or John Perry, Wabepee or White Colour, chiefs of the Shawnese tribe, residing at Wapaghkonetta, and their successors in office, chiefs of the said tribe, residing there, for the use of the persons mentioned in the annexed schedule, a tract of land ten miles square, the centre of which shall be the council-house at Wapaghkonetta.

That sounds just like what Black Hoof wanted: “by patent, in fee simple.”

Black Hoof refused to sign the 1831 treaty by which the land was taken away. That document also refers to the “fee simple” ownership.

The tribe or band of Shawnee Indians residing at Wapaghkonnetta and on Hog Creek in the State of Ohio, in consideration of the stipulations herein made, on the part of the United States, do for ever cede, release and quit claim to the United States the lands granted to them by patent in fee simple by the sixth section of the treaty made at the foot of the Rapids of the Miami river of Lake Erie on the 29th day of September in the year of our Lord 1817, containing one hundred and twenty-five sections or square miles, and granted in two reservations and described in the said sixth section of the aforesaid treaty as follows:—“A tract of land ten miles square, the centre of which shall be the council house at Wahpaghkonnetta;” and “a tract of land containing twenty-five square miles, which is to join the tract granted at Wapaghkonnetta, and to include the Shawnee settlement on Hog creek, and to be laid off as nearly as possible in a square form,” which said two tracts or reservations of land were granted as aforesaid to the said Shawnee Indians by the patents signed by the Commissioner of the General Land Office and certified by the Secretary of War dated the 20th day of April 1821. Also, one other tract of land, granted to the said Shawnees by the second article of the treaty made at St. Mary’s in the state of Ohio, on the 17th day of September in the year 1818, and described therein as follows: “Twelve thousand eight hundred acres of land to be laid off adjoining the east line of their reserve of ten miles square at Wapaghkonnetta,” making in the whole of the aforesaid cessions to the United States by the aforesaid Shawnees, one hundred and forty-five sections or square miles, which includes all the land now owned or claimed by the said band or tribe of Shawnees in the State of Ohio.

Now I am not a lawyer, but that sounds to me like a special definition of “fee simple.” Land patents certified by the Secretary of War? I haven’t seen any other land patents at the GLO database like that. The one that includes the small acreage we own in Michigan is not like that. I just now did a search in the database for all the land patents in Township 5S, Range 6E, in Auglaize County, to see if there were any for Black Hoof or any Algonquian-sounding names. I didn’t see any.

If the chiefs owned the land in fee simple, they should have been allowed to sell or not sell, as they saw fit, using the ordinary legal system for land transactions. That would have had its own dangers for the Shawnee people, but the process by which they ceded the land was not anything like it is when most of us sell property.

It must have been a very special definition of “fee simple” by which Black Hoof and the other chiefs owned this land — and not at all what he had in mind. I wonder if he brought up that point when he refused to sign. Maybe it was considered an eminent domain proceeding — a very eminent domain.

Edit:  Here is a link to the googlemap that’s not constrained by the dimensions of my WordPress blog.

]]> http://www.spokesrider.com/2009/01/22/fee-simple/feed/ 2 http://www.spokesrider.com/2009/01/21/ohio-routes-2008/ http://www.spokesrider.com/2009/01/21/ohio-routes-2008/#comments Wed, 21 Jan 2009 08:18:48 +0000 Spokesrider http://www.spokesrider.com/2009/01/21/ohio-routes-2008/ googlemap

I had a zillion things to blog about, but instead of doing that tonight I finished tracing all of my Ohio bicycle rides from this past August and September onto a Google map that I had started some time back.

Why trace, you might ask? Why not import my GPS waypoints into the Google map? There are two reasons:

1. It’s just too time consuming that way to import. On my rides I stop a lot, and especially at those places the GPS creates a whole bunch of points in the general vicinity that need to get cleaned up. It’s faster just to trace the route by hand, referring to the GPS data in another window to help me remember just which roads I took.

2. Tracing my route, road by road and turn by turn, helps me to re-live the rides. Doing it brought to my memory things I had started to forget. I have my photos to help me, but there are also things I never photographed. I’ve now captured them for a little while longer.

Here is a link to the full google map, which might be easier to use than trying to use the little window above. Just in case anyone cares. Maybe it will help someone find good places to ride. I can’t recommend against any of the roads I took, but so many of the roads in this part of Ohio are good for riding — a lot more than those I’ve tried personally.

I still have lots of blog entries and photos to post, and most of those aren’t shown yet, or even written.

I enjoy point-to-point touring, but I also enjoy this kind of riding in which I recross and revisit old routes and get to know a particular area well.