By Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager
A citizen, by definition, is a person is a “recognized subject” of a country, either by his or her native status or having been naturalized. Most Midwesterners, Ohioans, and Seneca County residents have ancestors who became naturalized citizens after emigrating.
However, the American Indians who inhabited the land that we now call the United States, had been native in every sense of the word for centuries before our ancestors’ arrival and yet, were not recognized citizens by the U.S. government until 1924.
While it didn’t provide many of the opportunities that United States earn with a citizenship, the Indian Citizenship Act passed on June 2, 1924 was at least a small step in the right direction.
Artifacts – tools from Paleo-Indian peoples – that were found in the “Sandusky Valley” area have been dated back to 10,000 B.C., a time when the area was much more densely covered with evergreen forests.
These tools, commonly referred to as “arrowheads,” were once a more common find in Seneca County – finding one these days is a treasure. Most found date from 8000-5000 B.C., or the Early Archaic Period, when the evergreen trees gave way to deciduous forests that are more recognizable to us today.
Early inhabitants of Ohio evolved into the Woodland tribes over the course of several thousand years. Woodland tribes, later referred to as the Seneca-Sandusky tribes, would have been completely free to roam this area, with no interference from European transplants. These include the Delaware, Erie, Huron, and many Iroquois and Algonquian tribes, such as the Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onodaga, Seneca, and Tuscarawas (Iroquois) and the Miami, and Shawnee (Algonguian).
The Native Americans who lived in Seneca County Ohio in the early 1800s had adapted to inhabiting log cabins like this one, before they were forcibly moved west.
Additionally, other tribes who inhabited the area that is now known as Seneca County includes the Chippewa, Mingoes, Ottawa, Otchipwes, Pottawattomies, and Wyandot. Over time, especially after the War of 1812, more and more tribes were transplanting further north from the Ohio River Valley as they continued to be pushed out by arriving whites.
Because the area was very swampy, most tribes would pass through Seneca County, setting up temporary hunting camps during seasonable periods.
In 1900, a local farmer contacted the anthropology department at Heidelberg College after accidentally uncovering a burial site near Old Fort, Ohio which dated to the “Western Basin Late Woodland” period (1000-1200 A.D). Later in the 1970s, the professor’s grandson resumed excavations.
The Wyandot Mission Church, built in 1824, is near Upper Sandusky, Ohio (Wyandot County) and on the National Register of Historic Places. It depicts missionary James B. Findley and Chief Mononcue conversing with members of the Wyandot tribe. The original painting can be seen at the Wyandot County Historical Society. The digital image was taken from the Ohio Memory website with permission from the Wyandot County Historical Society.
The more recent natives of this area lived in cabins and grew their own food in gardens of corn, beans and squash. They were peaceful (maybe a few bad apples just like all other cultures) and often traded ginseng and cranberries with the early pioneers. They wore tall hats over their long, straight hair, and wrapped themselves in blankets to stay warm.
By the time Seneca County and its county seat of Tiffin were established, these people’s homes had been diminished to local reservations after a treaty was developed in 1817 between newly appointed local government officials and almost 100 tribal leaders. They gathered at Fort Meigs and several sub-treaties were signed (some sources claim “willingly” by the natives, but most contemporaries know better). Three of those sub-treaties directly affected the native residents in Seneca County.
A depiction of Native Americans leaving Ohio for Indian reservations in Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas by way of the Miami/Erie Canal. This photo is owned by the Ohio Historical Connection and is taken from the Ohio Memory Project.
Through the “Treaty of Maumee Rapids,” the largest reservation in Seneca County (unsurprisingly, known as the “Seneca Reservation”) was a 40,000 acre site east of the Sandusky River covering Clinton, Scipio and Adams Townships (the south boundary closely matches what is now State Route 101 today). It stretched slightly into Sandusky County near Green Springs, Ohio. An Indian agent, Methodist preacher, James Montgomery, had been assigned to the reservation and its Six Nation Indians in 1819 and lived nearby in Fort Seneca.
Only about 500 Senecas remained by 1831 when President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act forcibly removed these remaining few west to join hundreds (if not thousands) of other disbanded tribes to a 67,000-acre reservation in the Neosha River area of southeast Missouri/northwest Arkansas.
While not a reservation, Mohawk Village was once a 1,000-acre area.
A smaller reservation of 640 acres, granted through the “Treaty of Miami”, was located near Fort Ball on the west side of the Sandusky River (“conveniently” close to the Fort Ball Military reservation as the source of this information states – sans the quotations).
The Big Spring Reservation was 12 square miles in Big Spring Township for the Wyandots under the “Treaty of McCutchenville”. This land was ceded in the early months of 1832 and the Wyandots joined the 500 Senecas being pushed out. Ironically, after either walking by foot or traveling along the Ohio River to catch the Missouri River, only 352 of the original 510 adults and children –after nine months of traveling in extremely harsh conditions and falling prey to measles and frostbite, just to name a few--arrived at their new “home” on July 4, 1832. Let that settle in.
Not surprisingly, the Indian Agent assigned to this task, Henry C. Brish, promptly turned in his resignation immediately after he returned to Ohio.
Works cited:
Klopfenstein, Carl G. Toward the Setting Sun. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/39946
Dildine, Frank. From Wilderness to City. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/22177
Bowen, J.E. Sandusky Site Near Old Fort. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29790
Weller, Donald Jr. Early Archaic Points of Seneca County, Ohio. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/39817
Scipio-Republic History Society. History of Republic. 1989. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33668
Gibson, Martha. Reminiscenes of Early Days of Tiffin. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/12997
Baughman, A.J. Seneca County History Volume 1. 1911. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/17316
Durrett, John E. History of Bettsville. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29643
Original Land Entries of Seneca County. 1992. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/44916
Jett, Katherine Griffin. History of West Lodi. 1988. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/30110
Barnes, Myron. Seneca Sentinel Bicentennial Sketches. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/33781
Seneca County Ohio History and Families. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/28803
Seneca County Digital Library.