Product Description

This book consists of the eyewitness accounts of persons who came into the Tuscarawas Valley in eastern Ohio in the last half of the 18th century. There are 48 journals, each one opening a small window into the past. We can hear, in the words of the traveler himself, of his trip to the Valley, usually starting and ending at Fort Pitt, of the people he met, Indian and white, and of his descriptions of the Indian towns and customs. The journals encompass the entire period between the first detailed account of the Ohio country by an English-speaking person, Christopher Gist in 1750, to the time, in 1797, when the Tuscarawas Valley was being surveyed for settlement by the whites, and the Indian culture was passing from the valley. It is, without doubt, the most comprehensive, first-person look at the valley in Indian days that has ever been published.

There are also 30 maps in the book, most of them dating from the 18th century. When the valley was being surveyed in 1797, the vestiges of six Indian towns were noted on these maps, and they are displayed on the left-hand page of the book. Opposite to them, on the right-hand page, are the modern topographic maps of the same locations, thus enabling the reader to see precisely where the old Indian town was located on the modern map. Other maps are included for the purpose of helping to establish the locations of some towns that were not noted on the 1797 survey, or for some other particular purpose.

By means of these journals and maps, the locations of White Eyes Town and Muskingum are now known. Also the location of Bouquet's 16th Encampment survey point is established. Many other new facts are brought out about the Tuscarawas Valley in Indian Days.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #878904 in Books
• Published on: 1994-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 329 pages

From the Publisher
The book is hardbound with a laminated dustjacket, 424 pages, 8x11, Smyth sewn, and printed on 60#, natural, acid-free paper. It has an extensive bibliography, is indexed and has cataloging in publication data. For a book of this size and quality the price is remarkably low. Praise from readers: One of the most comprehensive and splendidly written books on the early history of Tuscarawas County. should be in the home of every person interested in Tuscarawas County history.

Earl P. Olmstead, author of Blackcoats Among the Delaware and David Zeisberger The finest piece of research I've seen in 50 years. A great book.

Gary Winterburn, author of History of the Great Trail the book is so handsome, so beautifully produced and laid out. I love it.

Carolyn See, author of numerous novels I feel the necessity of congratulating you on the magisterial The Tuscarawas Valley in Indian Days. many thanks for having given us a book that fully does what it set out to do. It gives a real sense of the period.

Richard Baum, Chester, England

From the Author
This book is the culmination of many years of looking for all of the journals that have been published of travel into the eastern Ohio area during the Indian days of the last half of the 1700s. I have put into this book all that I could find, usually starting at Fort Pitt, coming into the Indian country as far as the Muskingum River (the upper part of which is now called the Tuscarawas River) and going back to Fort Pitt. Since most of these trips were made in peacetime the journals consist of the author's descriptions of his travels, his meetings with the Indians, their houses and towns, what they were doing during his visit, etc. Some, however, were made during hostile expeditions to destroy the Indian towns, while others were made by captives from the days of the French & Indian War. It is a unique collection, and furnishes to the reader a realistic, first-hand look at the Indian country as it actually was in those days. It is as though the journalist is talking to you directly, telling you about his trip.

From the Back Cover
Excerpts from the Journals This day a Woman who had been a long Time a Prisoner, and had deserted, & had been retaken, and brought into the Town on Christmass Eve, was put to Death in the following manner: They carried her without the Town, & let her loose, and when she attempted to run away, the Persons appointed for that Purpose pursued her, & struck Her on the Ear, on the right Side of her Head, which beat her flat on her Face on the Ground; they then stuck her several Times, thro the Back with a Dart, to the Heart, scalped Her, & threw the Scalp in the Air, and another cut off her head: There the dismal Spectacle lay till the Evening, & then Barney Curran Desired Leave to bury Her, which He, and his Men, and some of the Indians did just at Dark.

p.7, Christopher Gist, 1750 (execution of prisoner near Coshocton) We had to pass many huts inhabited by the savages, and knew that there were at least sixteen dogs with them. In the merciful providence of God not a single one of these dogs barked. Their barking would at once have betrayed us and frustrated our design.

p. 29, Marie Le Roy, 1759 (escaping from Indians near Coshocton) As long as I had my canoe, I could always procure a plentiful supply of provisions. The wild ducks were so numerous that I frequently brought down five or six at one shot.

p. 53, John Heckewelder, 1762 (near Bolivar) This house is a long building, with two fires in it, at a proper distance from each other, without any chimney or partition. The entry into it is by two doors, one at each end. Over the door a turtle was drawn, which is the ensign of their particular tribe. On each door- post was cut out the face of a grave old man, an emblem I suppose of that gravity and wisdom that every senator there ought to be possessed of. On each side the whole length of the house within is a platform, or bed, five feet wide, raised above the floor one foot and a half, made of broad split pieces of wood, which serves equally for a bed on which to sleep and a place on which to sit down. It is covered with a handsome matt, made of rushes near the end of which the king sat.

p. 83, Charles Beatty, 1766 (description of council house at Newcomerstown) I rose with the appearence of light, & with an Indian trader, whom I met at the door, walked through the village. The noise and uproar continued. In one place sat several on the ground drinking rum, from wooden bowls others lay stretched out in profound sleep some were reeling and tumbling over the green, & one or two companies were fighting, and yelling in the most frightful manner. They fought like dogs, biting scratching and the like.

p. 121 David McClure 1772 (effect of rum upon the Indians, Newcomerstown) Lodged at a Mohawk Indian's house, who offered me his Sister and Mr. Anderson his Daughter to sleep with us, which we were obliged to accept. My bedfellow very fond of me this morning and wants to go with me. Find I must often meet with such encounters as these if I do not take a Squaw to myself.

p. 173, Nicholas Cresswell, 1775 (Along the Walhonding west of Coshocton) The town was burnt Some time last winter and the ruins of the lowest house in town were mixed with the calcined bones of the burnt bodies of the Indians.

p. 210, John Rose, 1782 (Description of Gnadenhutten after the Massacre)

Customer Reviews

A Treasure
From a book such as this I want two things: first, to get to know the historical characters personally and intimately, to achieve empathy with their world view and their values sufficient even to feel that I could engage and interact with them; and second, to find surprises in their use of the English language.

By prudently selecting and meticulously editing the journals included therein and by preferring narratives to inventories, Booth has satisfied what I wanted. (As for the hermeneutics and reconciliation of geography, maps and written descriptions ... well, ok, I'm glad he belabored that material but I'm gladder still that he grouped it such that I could skip over it. It's pretty dry.)

The journal keepers do reveal themselves. They are like us and they are decidedly not like us. The boy who recognizes, matter of factly, his mother's scalp on an Indian's belt ... the Indians who did not kill prisoners except by prolonged torture ... the criminal Indian tracked down by revenge minded tribesmen meekly submitting to execution ... the white man observing captive (from childhood) white women who exhibited the behavior and mannerisms of Indian women and then made the truly giant leap, thinking that perhaps Indian children if raised by white families might grow up to be just like the whites ... the Moravians who cast lots for decision making and interpreted the outcomes as divine intervention. These are just a few.

Having read a history of the OED (The Meaning of Everything by S. Winchester) just before this book, I was on the lookout for surprises (maybe not to another, but to me). From the 1760-1780 time period I wasn't expecting to read the missionaries' complaints about the Indians "boozing." I should have expected to read that lines of march were often "Indian file," but I guess I thought that was a dime novel affectation. It isn't. Then there was the diarist who wrote that provisions could not be had "for love or money." And there are other treats to be had, if you relish this sort of thing.

This is one of those books that should be more than read; it should be savored. When you finish it, snip out the pages and boil them in a kettle and make yourself a tea from it. That is how much you will like this book.

Excellent History of the Ohio Country
This beautiful book is filled with many wonderful maps as well as early western journals desribing the first explorations of the Ohio Country by white settlers and their encounters with the many native tribes that called Ohio home in the mid to late 18th century. Including such important accounts as Christopher Gist, who was the first white man to chronicle his explorations of the Ohio wilderness, John Heckewelder and David Zeisberger, the famous Moravian missionaries who founded a number of Christian Indian towns in eastern Ohio and who help support the American cause during the Revolution in the west, Col. Henry Bouquet, the leader of a military expedition into Ohio in 1764 to help put down Pontiac's Rebellion, as well as many others whose explorations and contact with the Indians proved valuable to posterity. Early maps are compared with modern versions to try to locate a number of vanished Indian villages in a way never done before, thus providing a new perspective on the locations of modern roads and cities to their old Indian counterparts, particularly in the areas around modern Coshocton at the Forks of the Muskingum River. This area was also the site of the ill-fated Fort Laurens, the first American military installation in the Ohio Country. This is a wonderful reference book and is highly recommended to anyone with an interst in Ohio or frontier history.

Interesting reading
Great book, especially if you are from the area the book deals with. You can learn much information about the history of this area of Ohio.