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marched, in September, 1790, from Cincinnati with thirteen hundred men, less than one-fourth of whom were regulars, to attack their towns on the Maumee. He succeeded in burning their towns; but in an engagement with the Indians, part of his troops met with a severe loss. The next year a larger ariny was assembled at Cincinnati, under Gen. St. Clair, composed of about three thousand men. With this force he commenced his march toward the Indian towns on the Maumee. Early in the morning of the 4th of Nov., 1791, his army, while in camp on what is now the line of Darke and Mercer counties, within three miles of the Indiana line, and about seventy north from Cincinnati, were surprised by a large body of Indians, and defeated with terrible slaughter. A third army, under Gen. Anthony Wayne, was organized. On the 20th of August, 1794, they met and completely defeated the Indians, on the Maumee River, about twelve miles south of the site of Toledo. The Indians at length, becoming convinced of their inability to resist the American arms, sued for peace. On the 3d of August, 1795, Gen. Wayne concluded a treaty at Greenville, sixty miles north of Cincinnati, with eleven of the most powerful northwestern tribes in grand council. This gave peace to the West of several years' duration, during which the settlements progressed with great rapidity. Jay's Treaty, concluded November 19th, 1794, was a most important event to the prosperity of the West. It provided for the withdrawal of all the British troops from the northwestern posts. In 1796, the Northwestern Territory was divided into five counties. Marietta was the seat of justice of Hamilton and Washington counties; Vincennes, of Knox county; Kaskaskia, of St. Clair county; and Detroit, of Wayne county. The settlers, out of the limits of Ohio, were Canadian or Creole French. The headquarters of the northwest army were removed to Detroit, at which point a fort had been built, by De la Motte Cadillac, as early as 1701.

Originally Virginia claimed jurisdiction over a large part of Western Pennsylvania as being within her dominions, yet it was not until after the close of the Revolution that the boundary line was permanently established. Then this tract was divided into two counties. The one, Westmoreland, extended from the mountains west of the Alleghany River, including Pittsburgh and all the country between the Kishkeminitas and the Youghiogheny. The other, Washington, comprised all south and west of Pittsburgh, inclusive of all the country east and west of the Monongahela River. At this period Fort Pitt was a frontier post, around which had sprung up the village of Pittsburgh, which was not regularly laid out into a town until 1784. The settlement on the Monongahela at "Redstone Old Fort," or "Fort Burd," as it originally was called, having become an important point of embarkation for western emigrants, was the next year laid off into a town under the name of Brownsville. Regular forwarding houses were soon established here, by whose lines goods were systematically wagoned

over the mountains, thus superseding the slow and tedious mode of transportation by pack-horses, to which the emigrants had previously been obliged to resort.

In July, 1786, "The Pittsburgh Gazette," the first newspaper issued in the west, was published; the second being the "Kentucky Gazette," established at Lexington, in August of the next year. As late as 1791, the Alleghany River was the frontier limit of the settlements of Pennsylvania, the Indians holding possession of the region around its northwestern tributaries, with the exception of a few scattering settlements, which were all simultaneously broken up and exterminated in one night, in February of this year, by a band of one hundred and fifty Indians. During the campaigns of Harmer, St. Clair and Wayne, Pittsburgh was the great depot for the armies.

By this time agriculture and manufactures had begun to flourish in Western Pennsylvania and Virginia, and an extensive trade was carried on with the settlements on the Ohio and on the Lower Mississippi, with New Orleans and the rich Spanish settlements in its vicinity. Monongahela whisky, horses, cattle, and agricultural and mechanical implements of iron were the principal articles of export. The Spanish government soon after much embarrassed this trade by imposing heavy duties.

The first settlements in Tennessee were made in the vicinity of Fort Loudon, on the Little Tennessee, in what is now Monroe county, East Tennessee, about the year 1758. Forts Loudon and Chissel were built at that time by Colonel Byrd, who marched into the Cherokee country with a regiment from Virginia. The next year war broke out with the Cherokees. In 1760, the Cherokees besieged Fort Loudon, into which the settlers had gathered their families, numbering nearly three hundred persons. The latter were obliged to surrender for want of provisions, but agreeably to the terms of capitulation were to retreat unmolested beyond the Blue Ridge. When they had proceeded about twenty miles on their route, the savages fell upon them and massacred all but nine, not even sparing the women and children.

The only settlements were thus broken up by this war. The next year the celebrated Daniel Boone made an excursion from North Carolina to the waters of the Holston. In 1766, Colonel James Smith, with five others, traversed a great portion of Middle and West Tennessee. At the mouth of the Tennessee, Smith's companions left him to make farther explorations in Illinois, while he, in company with a negro lad, returned home through the wilderness, after an absence of eleven months, during which he saw "neither bread, money, women, nor spirituous liquors."

Other explorations soon succeeded, and permanent settlements first made in 1768 and '69, by emigrants from Virginia and North Carolina, who were scattered along the branches of the Holston, French Broad and Watauga. The jurisdiction of North Carolina was, in 1777, extended over the Western District, which was

organized as the county of Washington, and extending nominally westward to the Mississippi. Soon after, some of the more daring pioneers made a settlement at Bledsoe's Station, in Middle Tennessee, in the heart of the Chickasaw nation, and separated several hundred miles, by the usual traveled route, from their kinsmen on the Holston. A number of French traders had previously established a trading post and erected a few cabins at the "Bluff" near the site of Nashville. To the same vicinity Colonel James Robertson, in the fall of 1780, emigrated with forty families from North Carolina, who were driven from their homes by the marauding incursions of Tarleton's cavalry, and established "Robertson's Station," which formed the nucleus around which gathered the settlements on the Cumberland. The Cherokees having commenced hostilities upon the frontier inhabitants about the commencement of the year 1781, Colonel Campbell, of Virginia, with seven hundred mounted riflemen, invaded their country and defeated them. At the close of the Revolution, settlers moved in in large numbers from Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. Nashville was laid out in the summer of 1784, and named from General Francis Nash, who fell at Brandywine.

The people of this district, in common with those of Kentucky, and on the upper Ohio, were deeply interested in the navigation of the Mississippi, and under the tempting offers of the Spanish governor of Louisiana, many were lured to emigrate to West Florida and become subjects of the Spanish king.

North Carolina having ceded her claims to her western lands, Congress, in May, 1790, erected this into a territory under the name of the "Southwestern Territory," according to the provisions of the ordinance of 1787, excepting the article prohibiting slavery.

The territorial government was organized with a legislature, a legislative council, with William Blount as their first Governor. Knoxville was made the seat of government. A fort was erected to intimidate the Indians, by the United States, in the Indian country, on the site of Kingston. From this period until the final overthrow of the northwestern Indians by Wayne, this territory suffered from the hostilities of the Creeks and Cherokees, who were secretly supplied with arms and ammunition by the Spanish agents, with the hope that they would exterminate the Cumberland settlements. In 1795 the territory contained a population of seventyseven thousand two hundred and sixty-two, of whom about ten thousand were slaves. On the first of June, 1796, it was admitted into the Union as the State of Tennessee.

By the treaty of October 27, 1795, with Spain, the old sore, the right of navigating the Mississippi, was closed, that power ceding to the United States the right of free navigation.

The Territory of Mississippi was organized in 1798, and Winthrop Sargeant appointed Governor. By the ordinance of 1787, the people of the Northwest Territory were entitled to elect Repre

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sentatives to a Territorial Legislature whenever it contained 5000 males of full age. Before the close of the year 1798 the Territory had this number, and members to a Territorial Legislature we e soon after chosen. In the year 1799, William H. Harrison was chosen the first delegate to Congress from the Northwest Territory. In 1800, the Territory of Indiana was formed, and the next year, William H. Harrison appointed Governor. This Territory comprised the present States of Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan, which vast country then had less than 6000 whites, and those mainly of French origin. On the 30th of April, 1802, Congress passed an act authorizing a convention to form a constitution for Ohio. This convention met at Chillicothe in the succeeding November, and on the 29th of that month, a constitution of State Government was ratified and signed, by which act Ohio became one of the States of the Federal Union. In October, 1802, the whole western country was thrown into a ferment by the suspension of the American right of depositing goods and produce at New Orleans, guaranteed by the treaty of 1795, with Spain. The whole commerce of the West was struck at in a vital point, and the treaty evidently violated. On the 25th of February, 1803, the port was opened to provisions, on paying a duty, and in April following, by orders of the King of Spain, the right of deposit was restored.

After the treaty of 1763, Louisiana remained in possession of Spain until 1803, when it was again restored to France by the terms of a secret article in the treaty of St. Ildefonso concluded with Spain in 1800. France held but brief possession; on the 30th of April she sold her claim to the United States for the consideration of fifteen millions of dollars. On the 20th of the succeeding December, General Wilkinson and Claiborne took possession of the country for the United States, and entered New Orleans at the head of the American troops.

On the 11th of January, 1805, Congress established the Territory of Michigan, and appointed William Hull, Governor. This same year Detroit was destroyed by fire. The town occupied only about two acres, completely covered with buildings and cumbustible materials, excepting the narrow intervals of fourteen or fifteen feet used as streets or lanes, and the whole was environed with a very strong and secure defense of tall and solid pickets.

At this period the conspiracy of Aaron Burr began to agitate the western country. In December, 1806, a fleet of boats with arms, provisions, and ammunition, belonging to the confederates of Burr, were seized upon the Muskingum, by agents of the United States, which proved a fatal blow to the project. In 1809, the Territory of Illinois was formed from the western part of the Indiana Territory, and named from the powerful tribe which once had occupied its soil.

The Indians, who, since the treaty of Greenville, had been at peace, about the year 1810, began to commit aggressions upon the inhabitants of the West, under the leadership of Tecumseh. The

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next year they were defeated by General Harrison, at the battle of Tippecanoe, in Indiana. This year was also distinguished by the voyage from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, of the steamboat New Orleans," the first steamer ever launched upon the western waters.

In June, 1812, the United States declared war against Great Britain. Of this war, the West was the principal theater. Its opening scenes were as gloomy and disastrous to the American arms as its close was brilliant and triumphant.

At the close of the war, the population of the Territories of Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan was less than 50,000. But from that time onward, the tide of emigration again went forward with unprecedented rapidity. On the 19th of April, 1816, Indiana was admitted into the Union, and Illinois on the 3d of December, 1818. The remainder of the Northwest Territory, as then organized, was included in the Territory of Michigan, of which that section west of Lake Michigan bore the name of the Huron District. This part of the West increased so slowly that, by the census of 1830, the Territory of Michigan contained, exclusive of the Huron District, but 28,000 souls, while that had only a population of 3,640. Emigration began to set in more strongly to the Territory of Michigan in consequence of steam navigation having been successfully introduced upon the great lakes of the West. The first steamboat upon these immense inland seas was the "Walk-in-the-Water," which, in 1819, went as far as Mackinaw; yet it was not until 1826 that a steamer rode the waters of Lake Michigan, and six years more had elapsed ere one had penetrated as far as Chicago.

The year 1832 was signalized by three important events in the history of the West, viz: the first appearance of the Asiatic Cholera, the Great Flood in the Ohio, and the war with Black Hawk.

The West has suffered serious drawbacks, in its progress, from inefficient systems of banking. One bank frequently was made the basis of another, and that of a third, and so on throughout the country. Some three or four shrewd agents or directors, in establishing a bank, would collect a few thousands in specie, that had been honestly paid in, and then make up the remainder of the capital with the bills or stock from some neighboring bank. Thus so intimate was the connection of each bank with others, that when one or two gave way, they all went down together in one common ruin.

In 1804, the year preceding the purchase of Louisiana, Congress formed, from part of it, the "Territory of Orleans," which was admitted into the Union, in 1812, as the State of Louisiana. In 1805, after the Territory of Orleans was erected, the remaining part of the purchase from the French was formed into the Territory of Louisiana, of which the old French town of St. Louis was the capital. This town, the oldest in the Territory, had been founded in 1764, by M. Laclede, agent for a trading association, to whom had been given, by the French government of Louisiana, a mono

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