Monument to and History of the Mingo Indians1

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Monument to and History of the MingoIndians

ADDRESSES AND ARTICLES BY

WILLIAM H. COBBANDREW PRICEHU MAXWELL


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Library of Congress Cataloguing Information

E99M64.M8

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Table of Contents:

Who were the Mingos? Muhammed al-AhariBiographic Sketches of the authorsArticle IArticle IIArticle IIIArticle IVArticle VArticle VIArticle VIIBibliography

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Hu Maxwell

Hu Maxwell (22 September 1860, Saint George, WestVirginia - 1927) was a local historian, novelist, editor, andauthor of several histories of West Virginia counties.Maxwell was born on a farm near Horse Shoe Run in TuckerCounty, West Virginia, USA. He attended county schools fora few months only and showed an early talent forversification, even before learning to write at age 14 years.His interest in geography led his father to take him and hisbrothers to the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.After four years at the Weston Academy, he was appointed

(1880) a cadet in the U.S. Naval Academy. He reportedlypassed his matriculation exams but had a nervousbreakdown owing to over strenuous studying and neverentered.

Back in West Virginia, he went into the lumberbusiness and wrote two novels, "Rich Mountain" and"Llewellyn". He later taught school and wrote a never-completed manuscript, "The Conquest of the Ohio Valley".

He toured the southern and southwestern States andMexico (1882-83) and later resided, successively, inMorgantown, Chicago, Illinois, and Washington, D.C.

In 1884, Maxwell published his "History of TuckerCounty, West Virginia" at Kingwood, West Virginia, the firstwork presenting the early history of the Cheat River Valley.

As a member of the Forest Service of the UnitedStates Department of Agriculture, Maxwell preparedseveral publications dealing with forestry.

Maxwell died in 1927.

Maxwell's books and articles

Maxwell, Hu (1884), "History of Tucker County, WestVirginia, From the Earliest Explorations and

Settlements to the Present Time", Kingwood, W.Va:Preston Publishing Company. (Reprinted, McClainPrinting Company, Parsons, W.Va., 1971).

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Maxwell, Hu, and H.L. Swisher (1897), "History of Hampshire County, West Virginia: from its EarliestSettlement to the Present", Morgantown, WV: A.Brown Boughner, (Reprinted, Parsons, West Virginia:McClain Printing Co., 1972)

Maxwell, Hu (1898), "The History of Randolph County, WestVirginia, From its Earliest Settlement to the Present",The Acme Publishing Company, Morgantown, W.Va.(Reprinted, McClain Printing Company, Parsons,W.Va., 1961).

Maxwell, Hu (1899), "The History of Barbour County, Fromits Earliest Exploration and Settlement to the Present

Time", The Acme Publishing Company, Morgantown,W.Va. (Reprinted, McClain Printing Company,Parsons, W.Va., 1968).

Hill, A.F. (1900), "The White Rocks, or: The Robber's Den, aTragedy of the Mountains", Morgantown, WV: AcmePress, Illustrated by H.L. Swisher and Hu Maxwell.

Maxwell, Hu (1902), "Jonathan Fish and His Neighbors",Mogantown, W. Va.: Acme Publishing.

Maxwell, Hu, The Use and Abuse of Forests by the VirginiaIndians, "William and Mary College QuarterlyHistorical Magazine" 19 (October 1910): 73-103.

Fast, Richard Ellsworth and Hu Maxwell, "The History andGovernment of West Virginia", Morgantown, WV: TheAcme Publishing Company.

Maxwell, Hu, "Evans and Sontag, the Famous Bandits of California"; Supplemental material by Charles W.Clough.

Miller, Thomas C. and Hu Maxwell (1913), "West Virginiaand its People", Lewis Hist. Pub. Co.

Cobb, William H., Andrew Price and Hu Maxwell (1921),"History of the Mingo Indians", Cumberland, Md.: F.B.Jenvy, printer.

ReferencesMaxwell, Hu (1884), "History of Tucker County, West

Virginia, From the Earliest Explorations and6


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Settlements to the Present Time", Kingwood, W.Va:Preston Publishing Company. (Pages 511 - 531 are a"Biographical Sketch of the Author".)

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William Henry Cobb (1859-?)

Monument to and history of the Mingo Indians; facts andtraditions about this tribe, their wars, chiefs, camps,villages and trails. Monument dedicated to theirmemory near the village of Mingo, in Tygarts RiverValley of West Virginia.

History, the Chenoweth family: address of Captain WilliamH. Cobb , 8 th reunion of the family held near Elkins onthe first Saturday in September, 1922. Arthur L.Keith's article on the Chenoweths by William HenryCobb.

Indian trails, frontier forts, Revolutionary soldiers and pioneers of Randolph County, West Virginia. Address[at the] 9 th annual reunion, Chenoweth Society, nearElkins, West Virginia, September 1 st , 1923 by WilliamHenry Cobb.

A Criticism of Systems of Hebrew Meter: An Elementary Treatise (1905).

Cobb, William H. "Haddan Fort." Randolph County Historical

Society. Magazine of History and Biography 4 (Apr1927): 51-59.

Cobb, William H. "Roney's Fort." Randolph CountyHistorical Society. Magazine of History and Biography3 (1926): 75-79.

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Andrew Price (1871-1930)

Mr. Price is a son of the Rev. William T. Price, D.D.,and Annie L. Price, his wife. He was born in PocahontasCounty, West Virginia, January 29, 1871, and was educatedin the public and private schools of the Greenbrier Valley,notably the Academy at Lewisburg, Greenbrier County,which offered a liberal education in the higher branches of studies, including the Latin language and the sciences;later he attended the West Virginia University atMorgantown, from which he graduated in 1892 with thedegree of Bachelor of Laws. He was in the same year

admitted to membership of the Pocahontas Bar, and hassince practiced his profession uninterrputedly atMarlington, the seat of justice of his native county. Hemarried Miss Grace Leigh Clark, February 10, 1897, andhas two daughters -- Agnes and Margaret -- who aregraduates of the Lewisburgh Seminary, and [went on toattend] West Virginia University. He also served as mayorof Marlinton, WV and as editor of the Pochahontas Times. A

gifted lawyer, respected citizen, and editor of thePocahontas Times, Andrew Price bridged the gap betweenthe rural, tradition-bound mountaineers and the captains of industry who came to dominate this development. Price,and hundreds of other local elites of similar backgroundand accomplishments, expedited the transfer of Appalachia's wealth from the region, putting it at thedisposal of the national economy. In so doing, localmodernizers helped establish patterns of dependencywhich survive in West Virginia, and institutionalized thestructure of economic and social inequality whichimpoverished the state's people.

On November 14, 1892, control of the PocahontasTimes passed from John E. Campbell to the ReverendWilliam Price and two of his sons, James and Andrew. The

elder Price, one of the county's most respected citizens,was a Presbyterian clergyman for sixty-three years. Hiswife Anna Randolph Price, of the Virginia Randolphs, was apoet of genteel background who, according to a son, never

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successfully adapted to the mountain life or culture. ThePrice family had been established in the Pocahontas areafor several generations.

Andrew Price earned a law degree from West VirginiaUniversity and began practicing in Pocahontas in 1892, thesame year he became part-owner and editor of thePocahontas Times. He served as editor until 1900,relinquishing his duties to his younger brother Calvin, whenhis prospering law practice demanded his completeattention. Price retained his partnership in the paper until1906, and was a contributing editor until his death at age

fifty-nine. He married Grace Clark in 1897, and themarriage produced two daughters.

In 1900, Price was elected the first mayor of Marlinton. Hewas the attorney for the Bank of Marlinton, as well as forseveral timber companies, railroads, and the PocahontasTanning Company. Described in a 1930 memorial as aCalvinist, Price was a deacon in the Marlinton Presbyterian

Church, displaying a firm belief in the teachings of theBible, but with an aversion to the "spectacular." He was anaccomplished poet and geologist, and a "clever writer"whose columns were often carried by newspapers aroundthe state. A lifelong Democrat, Price was nominated for theUnited States House of Representatives in 1908, andappointed postmaster at Marlinton by Woodrow Wilson in1913, serving until 1922. He was a founder of the WestVirginia Fish and Game Protective Association, and atvarious times served as president of the Pocahontas BarAssociation and the Board of Education of the EdrayDistrict. He was an organizer of the West Virginia HistoricalSociety and its president until shortly before his deat

Poetry

Andrew Price, Dreams (Marlington, West Virginia: TimesBook Co., 1923).

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__________, Vexation; a Diatribe (Marlinton, West Virginia:Times Book Co., 1924)

WritingsMonument to and history of the Mingo Indians; facts and

traditions about this tribe, their wars, chiefs, camps,villages and trails. Monument dedicated to theirmemory near the village of Mingo, in Tygarts RiverValley of West Virginia (1921).

Andrew Price, The Princess Pocahontas (Marlinton, WestVirginia: Times Book Co., 1924).

Andrew Price, The Seneca Trail. The Great North Road

(Marlinton, West Virginia: Times Book Co., 1924).___________, Selim, the Algerine; Adventures of a Prisoner of Spain, France, and Shawnees, Rescued in PocahontasCounty in 1759 (Marlinton, West Virginia: Times BookCo., 1924).

___________, West Virginia Anthology ([Charleston: WestVirginia Historiacal Society], 1926).

___________, The Grave Creek Mound: A Monograph

(Marlinton, West Virginia: Times Book Co., 1928).

References:

Vito J. Brenni, West Virginia Authors: A Biobibliography (Morgantown: West Virginia University Library, WestVirginia Library Association, 1968): pages 73-74.

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Monument to and History of the MingoIndians: Facts and traditions about thistribe, their wars, chiefs, camps, villagesand trails. Monument dedicated to their

memory near the village of Mingo, inTygarts River Valley of West Virginia.

ADDRESSES AND ARTICLES BY

WILLIAM H. COBBANDREW PRICEHU MAXWELL

COPYRIGHTED 1921

BY

WILLIAM H. COBB

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ARTICLE IBY CAPTAIN WILLIAM H. COBB

Vice President of the National Historical SocietyMember Virginia Historical Society

The request that I prepare an article on the subject of the Mingo Indians in connection with the proposal to builda monument or marker to this tribe of the "wild man" to belocated on the Huttonsville and Marlinton Pike near themouth of Mingo Run, in Mingo district of this county, andnear the old Indian village site, has been complied with and

here it is well to state that it is with difficulty that actualfacts concerning any Indian tribe are obtained for any longperiod of years, and when a period of a few centuries areto becovered it means that most of the information istraditional.

The Indian "village site" at Mingo has been regardedas the habitat of this tribe, but it is with no certainty that

this is at all correct, but on the other hand it would appearthat this village was the abode of some other tribe, for wehave no account which would make this a Mingo home,and 'for the reason that the Mingoes were on the upperwaters of the Susquehanna river in Pennsylvania and NewYork even before the founding of Jamestown, and from thatdate or little later, made a settlement on the waters of theOhio and still later further west.

That there was a village once occupied by Indians atMingo, I take it that no one doubts; we have it handeddown from the ancestors of those now living in that sectionthat such a site existed when settlement was begun soonafter the Revolution; not a site of recent occupancy, butlong decaying, yet retaining all the marks of such a village,and at this date evidences in way of flints, pottery and

Indian relics are to be found on Mingo Run, and we are toldthat mounds on the Mingo Flats are still to be found,making it certain that in that elevated and beautiful

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section, overlooking the country for miles and miles, thatsuch a village existed.

The Indian trails, over which both public roads andrailroads have since followed, passed through Mingo Flats,the scenery from which appeals to the white and probablyto the tribes that followed the routes, covering passes fromone stream to another, some of which at this point leadNorthward, another Southward and still another Westward.The principal route it would appear led from the North fromSaint George in Tucker county by way of Leading Creek, upthe Tygart's Valley River and thence to the Greenbrier, andnear those Flats, one trail branched to the East and down

Clover Lick to Greenbrier river, the other to the S. W. anddown Williams & Gauley rivers, and just west of Mingo, atnow Brady gate, the path divided, one going down ValleyFork of Elks to Elk river, the other by Point Mountain andwestward to the head of the Little Kanawha; on the Valleyriver between Huttonsville and Mingo, other trails reachedthe Valley; one from the head of the two forks of theGreenbrier, and across the Cheat river and Cheat Mountain

near the head of Becca's Creek; and still another from theCheat River up Fishinghawk and down Files Creek atBeverly, and still another of these paths came to the ValleyRiver from the Buckhannon waters, across the Middle Forkand down the Mill Creek to the Valley below Huttonsville.

These several trails converging around Mingo, makesthis point one of rendezvous, and with the traditions wehave and the relics found renders it fairly conclusive thatsuch village existed, but with any certainty of which tribebuilt or occupied It, we have no positive proof and can onlyconjecture; most probably not the Mingo tribe.

Among the earliest history we have of the MingoIndian is recited by Thomas Jefferson in his "Notes" and Indiscussing the Five Nations of Indians, and referring to theMohicans, he says:

"This nation had a close alliance with the Shawanese,who lived on the Susquehanna and to the west of thatriver, as far as the Allegheny Mountains, and carried on along war with another powerful nation or confederacy of

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Indians, which lived to the north of them betweenKittatinnery Mountains or highlands, and the Lake Ontario,and who called themselves Mingoes, and are called by thepresent writers Iroquois, by the English the Five Nations,and by the Indians to the southward, with whom they wereat war, Massawemacs. This war was carrying on in itsgreatest fury, when Captain Smith first arrived in Virginia.The Mingo warriors had penetrated the Susquehanna downto the mouth of it In one of his excursions up the bay, atthe mouth of the Susquehanna, in 1608, Captain Smithmet six or seven of their canoes full of warriors, who werecoming to attack their enemies in the rear. In an excursion

which he had made a few weeks before, up theRappahannock and in which he had a skirmish with a partyof the Manaheads, and had taken a brother of one of theirchiefs prisoner, he first heard of this nation. For when heasked the prisoner why his nation attacked the English, theprisoner said, because his nation had heard that theEnglish came from under the world to take their world fromthem."

At the period that Jefferson was writing, the Mtngowas in a confederacy with the Senecas in western NewYork; the Mohawks to the eastward, and Onendageesbetween the two, and the Cayugas and Oneidas, the twolatter being younger and weaker tribes, but all theconfederacy having the same common language, andJointly waged war on the tribes to the south, and nodefinite decisive battle in their favor having been won, andfinding the enemy resourceful, they took into the allianceother tribes and by this means overcame the formerenemy, who asked for peace and put themselves under theprotection of the Mingoes, who required the subjugated toraise corn, hunt the game for the joint use of all, and in thiscondition William Penn found the defeated tribe in 1682.

The Mingo may be taken as typical of all the Indians

in this, that they were in war daring, cunning, ruthless andwicked; and in peace generous, hospitable, superstitious,revengeful and usually were on the chase, and while thisdoes not characterize all Indians, it is the general rule

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among them, and from their own view point, they werereligious and fairly faithful to their teachings, taking theirmetaphors from the sun, the clouds, the seasons, the birds,the beast and the vegetable kingdom. It is not understoodnor agreed the soqrce from which the Indian came;whether from the East or indigenous to America, and it isequally uncertain about the language, whether all tribeshad the same original language, or by reason of separationand non-intercourse, each tribe originated his ownlanguage.

The name Mingo is significant in its meaning,carrying the idea of the despised, contemptible and

unworthy and that mark was put upon them by the Indian,not the white man, and from their conduct on manyoccasions, it was not inappropriate, but just and due them.

The advent of the white man along the AtlanticCoast, of itself, drove by degrees the Indian westward, andthe Mingoes began actively to migrate before 1750,locating at first on the upper Ohio river and by the time of the war of the Revolution were on the west of the Ohio

near where the city of Steubenville now stands; later wasabout Sandusky, and as time passed, so the Mingo onfurther west till now only a small band have habitation inOklahoma.

It is said that a nation without wars is a nationwithout history, and of course the same is true of theIndian, but the Mingo is not without his full participation inwar and all the cruelty of it. Prom 1750 to 1790 he playedhis wicked part in the tragedy of warfare and what he andhis alliance did not do was no mark of indisposition not todo it, for they left destruction from Port Seibert and theSouth Branch country westward as far as the white manhad dared advance, but in this they were not alone for thewhite man at times as the leader was the instigator of theoutrageous warfare, and Simon Girty at the head of the

Shawnee was an example participant.The honors of war are usually reflected through thecommanding general, but with the Indian it was the Chief,and what mighty ones the Mingoes may have had at

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different periods, we cannot ever know, but history hasgiven us the name of Little Eagle (Kisopila) who in anunexpected fight with a few men under Captain Gibsonnear Fort Pitt in 1763, the Mingoes gave fight with theresult of Captain Gibson completely taking off the head of Little Eagle, and it is probable that this combat gave moreimpetus to the Big Knife, of the Nation of Big Knife (thedesignation the Indians gave the Virginians ever after) thanany other thing; but it is not known whether it was thesword of the saber kind or an actual long knife which theVirginian used In close contact, but this weapon was a"night-mare" to an Indian, whether awake or asleep.

It was about this period that Kentucky was first beingexplored, and at which time no tribe claimed exclusiverights to the hunting ground, probably the richest gamecountry ever trod by Indians east of the Mississipi, and asthis developed we see our Mingo along with the Cherokee,Shawnees, Catawbas and Delawares and otherscontending for the exclusive rights and such bloodyconflicts resulted that it in time became known as the

"dark and bloody ground."The Chief of the Mingoes to whom more notice has

been given than all their other leaders, was John Logan,whose education, character and traits have made hisancestry uncertain, but his father was probablyEhilkellamy, a celebrated chief of the Cayugus, and bornabout 1725 at Shamokin, Pennsylvania; another impressionis that he was the son of a French Canadian, and adoptedby the Oneidas, the allied tribe to Mingo; be that as it may,he took the name of Logan from James Logan who wasColonial Secretary and later Governor of Pennsylvania andresided in the Susquehanna River country until about 1770,when he went with others to the Mingo Town of that tribein Ohio.

In his new home for a time he appears to have not

shared in the spirit of his tribemen and allied tribes, butwas disposed to live peacefully with the whites.The continued advance of the white man westward

and his conflict with the Indian here and there and now and18


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then, and in these conflicts Indians killed and destroyedwhite settlements, and occasionally inoffensive Indianswere killed with the view that the deader the Indian is thebetter he is, brought on the conflict known as the Frenchand Indian war and later brought about the great battle atthe Mouth of the Kanawha, which was in a way to settle theownership of the Ohio valley, especially the portion to theeast, but in this contest, probably the most decisive battleever fought between the whites and the Indians, and wonfor the former both banks of the Ohio.

Preceding the battle at Point Pleasant, Logan's familywas living near Chillicothe, but being at the time at the

mouth of Yellow Creek in 1774 an Indian massacreoccurred in which Logan's family, probably having only asister but possibly a wife, but no children, and this inflamedthe allied tribes of Indians to such an extent that Loganbecame the leader not only of his own people, but any whowould follow, and crossing to the east and on both sides of the Ohio, he and his people destroyed the whites and theirsettlements, leaving neither woman or child in their wake,

and this led the Virginians to take up arms and bring aboutthe battle of Point Pleasant, and generally known asDunmore's war he being then Colonial Governor of Virginia.

This massacre of the Indians was by Logan attributedto Captain Michael Cresap, a Marylander, but history is nowconvincing that Cresap was not present at this shamefulmassacre, but probably took part in other "killings" wherehe felt that justice was only being meted out to thedeserving ones.

When the Dunmore war was concluded by a peace ortreaty at Chillicothe, the Chiefs of all the tribes taking partin the battle of the Mouth of Kanawha, appeared exceptJohn Logan, the Mingo head; he being sent for, refused toappear, but sent that famous message that school boysmany years were required to recite on Friday afternoon

before the country school closed for the week; this speechreads:"I appeal to any white man to say, if he ever entered

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ever came cold and naked and he clothed him not. Duringthe course of the last long and bloody war Logan remainedidle in his cabin, an advocate of peace. Such was my lovefor the whites, which my countrymen pointed as theypassed and said, 'Logan is the friend of the white men.' Ihad even thought to have lived with you, but for the injuryof one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood,and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, noteven sparing my women and children. There runs not adrop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. Thiscalled on me for revenge. I have sought it; I have killedmany; I have fully glutted my vengeance; for my country I

rejoice at the beams of peace. But I do not harbor athought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear.He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there tomourn for Logan? Not one."

Logan was killed in 1780 on his return from Detroitby his nephew, with whom Logan had brought on adifficulty which the nephew could not avoid.

It would appear that West Virginians have done their

full duty to the end that the Mingo tribe and its last bigChief may be duly and properly preserved in the State'shistory, not so much so by monuments, but by naming acounty Mingo, and naming another for the Chief of thetribe, and still not satisfied, also called the seat of thecounty by the name.

Especially is this true when we contemplate thatneither Chief Logan nor his tribe ever temporarily orpermanently had their abode within the territory of Loganor Mingo counties, and it was only the speech or supposedspeech of Logan that brought fame to himself or his tribe.

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ARTICLE IIBY ANDREW PRICE

Attention is called to the article reproduced In thisissue prepared by Capt. Cobb, of Randolph County, aboutour pet Indians, the Mlngos. There is much valuablehistorical matter in the article and it is well worth yourattention.

But we must enter a vigorous protest against two of the historian's conclusions first that the Mingos did not liveat Mingo Flats, and second, that Mingo ought to be speltwith a little m, as it means outlaw or some such name.

We know exactly how the Captain's mind waspoisoned on this subject. He is echoing conclusionsreached by historians who lived in other states and whohave cast doubts on the identity of the tribe. It all goes toshow that the only way to preserve the history of your ownpeople is to do it yourself and not depend on some persona thousand miles away to do you justice. Such men do notknow and they do not care.

To doubt that the Mingo Indians once had their tribalcenter at Mingo Flats is equivalent to what would be thecase if some historian would arise a hundred years henceand deny that there were ever any catfish in Green-brierRiver, and then cap the climax by adding that he had hisdoubts if there ever was such a fish anyway.

An old man told us thirty years ago that the Indiansthat last lived In this section were Mingos and he couldremember when there were traces of their camps in theperiwinkle shell piles along the river. We never doubtedthat until we began to read all the histories that came tohand and then for a season we doubted that there everwas such an animal as the Mingo. But as time went on wegathered a great mass of information and got to the timewhen we could weigh evidence better, we saw that

tradition is true and that the last Indian residents of thesehills and valleys were Mingos and that they had their cityat Mingo Flats, where they raised their winter corn.

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Washington made his way to the French Forts on theOhio and reported the Mingos living on the waters of thatriver. Robert Files and David Tygart settled in TygartsValley in 1754. This was the year after Washington hadbeen at the forks of the Ohio. Files and Tygart found anIndian town at Mingo Flats and determined to abandon thecountry on account of the contiguity of an Indian village.Before Files could move, he and his whole family werekilled by the Indians.

Just about this time Greenbrier, the site of the townof Marlinton was made a fortified place to watch theWarrior's Road, known generally as the Seneca Trail. In

1755, Braddock took a big army into the woods Just northof us and there met the Shawnees, the Delawares, and theMingos, and other Indians allied with the French and left800 dead men on the field whose bones whitened in thesun for three years.

After that the only place held by the whites for threeyears west of the Alleghany was the Greenbrier Valleycentering around Marlinton.

But vengeance overtook the slayers of Braddock'smen. The Iroquols, with headquarters in what is now theState of New York, had at that time kept unbroken acontract with the New York settlers made 138 years before,with the Dutch of New Amsterdam. Corlear was the"Dutchman's name who made that treaty and for 170years the Indians called the governors of New York,respectively, The Corlear. This bond endured and wasstronger than death, for when the colonies declared theirindependence, these Indians adhered to Great Britain, andthe Americans for that literally wiped them off of the faceof the earth.

After Braddock's defeat, the Iroquois, with that as anexcuse, or without one, swept the whole State of WestVirginia clear of every French Indian ally, and passed a law

that no strange Indian should live in the territory east of the Ohio River. Therefore the Mingos abandoned their townat Mingo Flats and moved to the west bank of the Ohio,just above Wheeling, at the place called Mingo Bottom, and

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from that time forth they raided West Virginia, and killedmore white people than all the other tribes combined. Afteran outrage, it was often hard to tell what tribe of Indianswas to blame, but the Mingos were most often identified.Among the occasions the Mingos were identified as beingpresent were: Deckers Creek, New River foray, Muskingum,Simpson Creek, Kelly raid, Muddy Creek, Big Lick, PointPleasant, Fort Pitt, Fort Laurens, Piqua, Tuscarawa River,and Bryants Station.

In the seventeen seventies when the permanentsettlers came to the Tygarts Valley they found abandonedhouses of the Mingos at Mingo Flats. Let it be known that

the Mingos were our private scourge and that the reasonthat they are being lost in obscurity is because the localWest Virginian historians have let northern people do theirwriting for them. Roosevelt calls the Mingos a mongrelbanditti like the renegade Cherokees. Just because theMingos were making it hot for the settlers who possessedthemselves of their ancient domain around the extremeheadwaters of the Ohio, and attending strictly to their own

territory the northern historian has slighted them. But theywere very real to our ancestors.

Simon Girty was a Mingo Chief, but the great chief was the literary Logan. Logan also had a slogan: "Ten forone." Meaning ten white scalps for every red scalp lost.Captain Cobb says his name was John Logan. We deem itimpossible to have been fed on Logan since we were in thefirst reader and not to have heard him called John. WhyJohn?

It was well known that his name was Tah-gah-jute,but then as now white men were impatient of strangenames. "You say your name Is Grabtiswistisky? Its Grahamfrom now on." So it was Logan, and now John Logan. Somedoubt has been cast on the authenticity of the speech of Logan, but there need not be. It was delivered in the Mingo

language to Col. Gibson who wrote it down and thentranslated it. Still we wonder what It would have soundedlike if Logan had had a less eminent secretary.

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A great many historians think until Col. Gibson editedthe speech that it was in the following words, to-wit: "TellDunmore to go to hell!" And that the speech then wastranslated into English by the gifted Colonel.

It is a pretty good speech. It makes a good orationfor a schoolboy. Maybe you have noticed that weoccasionally quote from other authors. One of the earliestthat we remember stealing was when the world was young.We were playing Indian. Our name was Bear Track and wewere supposed to be an extra bad Indian. We werecaptured. We were told that we were to be burned at thestake after each separate hair was pulled out. Our reply

was firm and dignified. "Bear Track never felt fear. Hewould not turn upon his heel to save his life." We canremember it as if it was yesterday, including a stone-bruiseon the aforesaid heel.

Bear Track appeals to Captain Cobb to restore theMingos and to set them down on Mingo Flats where theyproperly belong, and keep away from all of that trash thatforeigners are writing. Bear Track appeals to him to know

why he has taken his pen in his hand and massacred allthe Mingos, so that not one remains. Bear track has killedmany, but Captain Cobb has killed them all.

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ARTICLE IIIBY Hu MAXWELL

I have read with interest in some late West Virginiapapers that a movement is on foot in Randolph county toerect a monument on the site of a former Indian village atMingo near the head of Valley river. This is a commendablemovement in the cause of history, but I take it that inerecting this monument, it is not the intention to mark theformer home of any particular tribe of Indians. It is notknown, and in all human probability, never can be known,what tribe occupied the town which was once there.

Authentic history is absolutely silent on the subject. Thename indicates that somebody, at some time, supposedthat it had been a Mingo village. When I was collectingmaterial for my history of Randolph County, I was not ableto find out when, by whom, or for what reason, the namewas first given, though I was quite sure that Indians of theMingo tribe never lived there.

The broad fact may be accepted as certain that when

the portion of West Virginia lying between the Ohio Riverand the Alleghany mountains first became known toEnglish-speaking people, it had no Indian inhabitants otherthan roaming hunters who occasionally wandered throughit. There were no towns or permanent camps.

It had an Indian population at an earlier time, as isproved by remains of towns and camps. The remains of thevillage of Mingo belonged, no doubt, to that earlier period,as also did the sites of camps at Horse Shoe on Cheat river,at Crooked run near Point Pleasant, and at many otherplaces in the state.

It is known, within a reasonable degree of certainty,but not with absolute certainty, when and why the Indianpopulation between the Ohio River and the mountainsceased to exist. It was about one hundred years before the

first permanent settlers located on Tygarts River and CheatRiver.The great historical store house of information,

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The Jesuit Relations," which records were written byCatholic missionaries between the years 1610 and 1750,for the most part. Those missionaries lived among theIndians from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, and fromNova Scotia to the Black Hills. The collection of reports,mostly in French and Latin, has been published in sixty-fivevolumes, aggregating more than 30,000 pages. They dealwith geography, natural history, travel, religion,martyrdom, work, famine, exploration, and almost everyother topic that could interest a missionary. The recordsthrow a great deal of light on the Indians of the wholeregion, but do not deal particularly with those who then

lived or had lived in West Virginia. However, passages hereand there throw light on that matter.From this information, supplemented by information

from other sources, it is inferred that the extermination of the Indians of West Virginia was completed about the year1672 or a full century before the first permanentsettlement in Tygart's valley. The work of exterminatingthose Indians probably extended over several years, and a

precise date cannot be claimed, and details of the affairare meagre.

The annihilation was the work of Indians. That Is onesin that does not rest on the white man's head, except thatit might be indirectly imputed to Dutch traders along theHudson river who supplied the guns with which It wasdone. In the western part of the state of New York livedtribes of superior Indians, Including Mohawks, Senecas, andothers, known collectively as Iroquois or Five Nations.

After they procured firearms by barter from theDutch, they became irresistible to their Indian enemies,who still fought with bows and clubs. Remarkableconquests followed. West Virginia was swept clean of ItsIndian population, and the Iroquois penetrated as far southas Georgia and west to the Black Hills.

It Is not unlikely that the village at Mingo was wipedout at that time, as well as that In the Horse Shoe In Tuckercounty, but we do not know that such was the case.

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about 1768, but it lasted only four or five years, and wasdestroyed by frontiersmen from Lewis county.

If the monument which it is proposed to build atMingo shall be dedicated to "the memory of a vanishedrace," which once lived there, it will be an act of justice andwill commemorate a fact in history; but if it shall bededicated specifically to the Mingo tribe, it will, in myopinion, fall short of historic accuracy. I am not aware of any fact warranting the conclusion that any Mingo Indiansever lived in West Virginia.

It is my opinion that if one would go back far enough,he would find Sioux relatives of Sitting Bull hunting and

fishing in West Virginia; but at any event, if they werethere, it must have been long before the time of theIroquois irruption that depopulated the region. It is of secondary importance as to what particular tribe may haveoccupied Mingo last, as all Indians, throughout the whole of North and South America, were of one race.

Chicago, April 6, 1920.

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ARTICLE IVBY ANDREW PPICE

We are aggravated by an article in the RandolphEnterprise, from the pen of Hu Maxwell, in which he castsdoubts upon the identity of the Indians who last inhabitedthe West Virginia territory. He says that he is "not aware of any fact warranting the conclusion that any Mingo Indiansever lived in West Virginia."

In other words, he prides himself upon what he doesnot know. Prom the vast sea of human knowledge no oneman is ever able to dip up more than a bucketful of facts,

so it is easy for the wisest to make a boast of what they donot know.We are getting out of patience with the historians

who will neither admit that the Mingoes lived at Mingo Flatsprior to their well known habitat at Mingo Bottom six milesfrom Wheeling, nor account for the site of their town priorto that move. If they did not come from Mingo Flats fromwhence did they come?

We are ready to do this. We will take the position of the affirmative on whom must fall the burden of proof anddebate before a body of intelligent men any place at anytime the proposition: That about the middle of the 18thcentury, to-wit, 1750, the Mingo Indians lived at MingoFlats and that in numbers they did not then or at any timeprior to their westward emigration exceed more than onehundred families.

We would bar as judges those who have committedthemselves to the statements that there are no suchanimals as the Mingoes. Just because the northernhistorians failed to note that a small and insignificant tribefought a thirty years' war to keep back the tide of whiteimmigration that broke over the crest of the Alleghany,many have said in their haste that there were no Mingoes,

and the first rule of the historian is to stick to his publishedstatements however mistaken he may be in the facts.All we would ask would be men who are able to

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circumstances. We feel that the poison of the doubter isabout to wipe out the memory and even the identity of thewarriors who terrorized our Immediate ancestors for a fullgeneration, fighting from the Ohio River to the height of land, knowing every by path and trail, and taking toll fortheir lost heritage. That it is time for those of us who areliving to fix the fact that the Mingo was a peculiar WestVirginia aborigine, and the one we are bound to perpetuateand preserve in the interest of truth and history.

As the largest audience that we could hope to havewould be but a handful compared to the minds that we canreach through the printed page, we will give a short

resume of some of the historical evidence that lies at handand which ought to be accepted without question. Of course if a person will not believe Moses and the prophetshe is in such a mulish state that he will not believe thoughone arose from the dead.

It is a tradition with the Mingoes that they aredescended from the Eries, who were broken up anddestroyed and absorbed into the Senecas in 1656. That

was a tremendous slaughter. The Eries were in a stockadeand they defied the Iroquois. The Iroquois of which theSenecas were the fighting fools made it a policy of theirnation never to fail to carry by assault any stockade or fort.In this case the slaughter was fearful but they did carry thestockade and at places human blood ran knee deep. Theremnant of the Eries were broken up into parties andsettled with the Senecas along the Alleghany Mountain farto the south and became by subjugation Iroquois.

The Senecas were known as the "Keepers of theGreat Back Doorway" in the League of the Five Nations,and they never agreed to lay down their arms.

In the course of the next hundred years the Senecassuccessfully held the eastern range of mountains in theUnited States from the Great Lakes to Georgia. Think of it.

As you walk along the street known as Seneca Trail in thistown, you are literally treading in the foot steps of greatarmies of Seneca warriors who policed the mountain

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barrier and held back the Shawnees and other hostileIndians from the west.

At Mingo Flats for a hundred years was a town thatwas one of a chain of forts keeping the "Great BackDoorway." They were counted as Iroquois warriors and if they had remained loyal to the Iroquois nation it is notlikely that they would have been distinguished by nameand heard of in history. Living at a distance from the FiveNations they were known as Mingoes, a word that had atthat time the same meaning as the British give to the wordColonial.

But the Mingoes of Mingo Flats were so far from the

sphere of influence of the Iroquois nation that they werecorrupted by the Shawnees whose hunting parties came upthe Great Kanawha, New, and Greenbrier Rivers, and thusreached the out post at Mingo Flats and turned themagainst their own nation. There is no question but they, theMingo Flat Indians, joined the French in Braddock's war,while the Iroquois remained loyal to England. And there isno question but that the Mingoes were living at Mingo Flats

In 1755, the date of Braddock's Defeat, for David Tygartand Files wrote in 1754 that they would have to leave thevalley for they were close to an Indian village and that itwas too dangerous to remain there.

Probably immediately afterwards, the Iroquois drovethe Mingoes to the west bank of the Ohio and in 1766, theirtown of 60 families was the only Indian town on the banksof the Ohio from Pittsburgh to Louisville. From that townthey made war on West Virginian settlers for nearly ageneration. They became famous as warriors and the wordMingo which had been more or less general in its natuiebecame their own peculiar tribe name. The big chief Loganhad a good deal to do with adding to the fame of the smallbut distinctive fighting band.

From Mingo Town of Mingo Bottom, now

Steubenville, Ohio, the tribe moved to the headwaters of the Sciota and Sandusky, sold out to the government,moved to Kansas, sold out again, and moved to the IndianTerritory, where they are known as the Sandusky Senecas.

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In 1905 they numbered 366 persons, and have just aboutheld their own since they lived at Mingo Flats.

They fought with the French at Battle of PointPleasant. Logan did not come in person to treat for peaceafter that battle but he sent a speech by Col. Gibson.Roosevelt did them an injustice to refer to the Mingoes as amongrel banditti. Mingo was a term used by the easternIndians for all the Iroquois, composed of five andafterwards six nations. The first name that the Ohio Riverbore was Black Mingo River. The Black Mingoes were theEries, conquered and absorbed by the Senecas, themilitary branch of the Five Nations. When the Mingoes of

Mingo Flats, driven out of the great Iroquois nation,retained their organization for the sole purpose of war onthose who dared settle in the West Virginia territory, thecolonials gradually restricted the name to mean those fewhundred fighting men on the west bank of the Ohio whoraided this country for a business, keeping up an alliancewith the Shawnees, a powerful confederacy.

Mingo Flats is the extreme head of the Ohio River.

There it is a bold trout stream issuing from the CheatMountain. It is a historical fact that the tribe that settlednear Wheeling lived immediately before that on the headof the Ohio at a place so far distant from the Iroquoiscenter that they were thrown more with the Shawnees andDelawares and were thereby weaned away from theirallegiance to the Five Nations. This could not have meantthe head of the Alleghany for there they would have beenin the heart of the Five Nations. Besides the Alleghanyrivers is not the head of the Ohio. It lacks perhaps ahundred miles of being the uttermost fountain. Mingo Flatsis the head of the Ohio and that is the settlement thatcorresponds to the description of a town on the head of theOhio River so far distant from the home nation as to throwthem in constant contact with the Shawnees, and graves

up and down the Greenb'rier Valley bear mute testimony tothe fact that the Shawnee walked in this valley in the earlydays. Reference is made generally to the following

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historical writers on Mingo affairs: Mooney, Bouquet, Rupp,Cowley, Schoolcraft, Harris, Lang and Taylor.

It is twenty-five miles from Mingo Flats to this place,Marlins Bottom. At the time that the Mingoes lived at MingoFlats, there was a fort at Marlins Bottom, in which at timesthere were as many as 150 soldiers. Without a break sincethen the writer and his direct ancestors have lived atMarlins Bottom, and we have no reason on earth to doubtthe truth and fidelity of our local history. A gentleman inMarlinton remembers his grandmother's story of the war-whoop of the Indian when Baker and twelve others werekilled here in the last raid. He can almost make you hear

that war-whoop now. He talked with a person who heard it.On the other hand a gentleman from Chicago who once dida history of Randolph County in the space of six days andall very good, having given the work of historical researchin Tygarts Valley, a lick and a promise, can only say that hedid not find credible evidence of the existence of Mingoesat Mingo Flats, and having said the horse was sixteen feethigh, he will not retract a word of it.

We can tell you how those fiends in human form gotthe name of Mingoes. When a pioneer returned from thehunt and found his house in ashes and the mangled bodiesof his family lying there, in the bitterness of his woe hecried out "Mingo," meaning those nearby hostile Indianswho once lived at Mingo Flats and afterwards moved downthe river to Mingo Town, and as the years went by thename was written in blood, and no man should forget it.And as far as West Virginians are concerned the nameMingo has the narrow and restricted meaning of one smalltribe.

We have taken up more space than we thought to,but we honestly believe that the present generation cancome nearer clearing this muddy water than any that maycome after us, and that it ought to be done.

And in conclusion, we would remind you that namesof places is the most reliable as well as the most concreteevidence of a historical fact where the word is not capableof a double meaning. Files creek, Tygarts Valley, Marlins

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Bottom, Lewisburg, Braddock, and Mingo Flats, each andevery one suggest the history of the place and such arenever wrong. Mingo Flats was called Mingo Flats becausethe Mingo Indians lived there and this is capable of proof beyond all reasonable doubt.

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ARTICLE IV -AIMAGINATION VERSUS HISTORY

BY Hu MAXWELL

It is unfortunate that an attempt to do historicalJustice in the matter of dedicating the Indian monument atMingo should be muddled by the interjection of personalities, as our friend, the editor of the PocahontasTimes, seems to be trying to do. The question is, did theMingo Indians have a village at Mingo? If they did not, itwould be misleading to dedicate the monument to them.

Captain Cobb's article deals with history and shows

that all known evidence points to the fact that the Mingoesnever lived there. That ought to settle the matter, unlessstronger evidence can be cited to prove the contrary. Thusfar, no evidence whatever has been brought forward toshow that the Mingoes ever lived there.

What Mr. Price has published proves nothing excepthis own opinion. His last article is about 2 per cent history,8 per cent tradition, and 90 per cent imagination. When he

attempts to cite history, he fails to distinguish between factand fiction, as is shown by citing the following fourmistakes in his article:

1. He says: "The first name the Ohio River bore wasBlack Mingo River." That is not true, but if it were true, itwould prove nothing in regard to Mingo Indians living inRandolph County.

2. He states: "David Tygart and Files wrote in 1754that they would have to leave the valley, for they wereclose to an Indian village and that it was too dangerous toremain there." If it were true that this was written 1

1 The pamphlet doesnt list alll four errors and this sentence stops inthe middle.

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ARTICLE VFROM THE RANDOLPH ENTERPRISE

The unveiling of the Indian monument at Mingo, inthe southern end of the county, at the head of the TygartsValley River, took place in accordance with the program onSaturday, September 25, 1920.

The monument stands about 20 feet high and anIndian is represented standing listening, looking and readyfor the "war path" upon short notice.

Some 1,200 or 1,500 people attended the meetingfrom Pocahontas and Randolph counties and a few from

other sections, who are candidates for political honors. Thedinner served was superb and praised by all who attendedas being one of the biggest, best and freest dinners everoffered in the county.

Capt. H. G. Kump was introduced about 11 o'clock inthe morning by Samuel H. Wood, the promoter of themonument, and the Beverly band announced thatsomething was on and the Chairman introduced Captain

Wm. H. Cobb, as the first speaker for the occasion. Takingas his subject the Prehistoric Race, or America beforeColumbus, Capt. Cobb interested the people for half anhour, the talk being favorably commented upon and manyrequests made that his speech be published.

Hon. Andrew Price of Marlinton, not being satisfiedwith the articles heretofore published upon the subject of the Mingoes not having been the founders of the village of Mingo, insisted in a half hour's address that his positionwas correct and detailed some very interesting Indianhistory. His remarks were also requested to be put intoshape and given to the press.

The dinner hour having arrived, the Chairman was ina mood to enjoy a good dinner and invited the people tothe spread and not only himself, but all enjoyed what was

set before them and the quantity was such that a fewhundred more even if they had been half Indians, couldhave been fed.

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The band played and the chairman called for morespeeches and introduced the Hon. Roy Waugh of UpshurCounty, who told some interesting stories and commentedon the question of building a monument to the pioneerswho were slain by the Indians, and in a very happy wayentertained the crowd for twenty minutes.

Hon. Arthur B. Koontz was called and pleasantlyintroduced. He got off some good stories and interestedthe gathering for several minutes taking Indian "skelpts"and making a very pleasant talk.

Hon. William S. O'Brien being on hand by invitationwas introduced and gave the crowd a talk along the line of

the spiritual life and what awaits good citizenship, and toldonly one story, but a good one.Dr. F. H. Barren, who always says the right thing in

its proper place was happy in his remarks and advised thatmonuments be constructed every year and mark thehistorical place in the county, it being good for thecommunity and posterity.

Upon the monument is engraved:

MINGO

THIS MONUMENT IS ERECTED IN

MEMORY OF THE PASSING

OF THE "RED MAN"

An Indian village was located near this place.According to local tradition it was frequented by the Mingotribe and at one time was an Iroquois outpost. Mingomeaning "foreign service." The Mingoes are said to havebeen expelled by the Iroquois for disloyalty. This village

was on the trail from the Lakes to the South, but had beenabandoned prior to the coming of the "pale face."

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From this tradition came the name of the presentvillage, the Magisterial District and the adjacent streamMingo Run.

Tal gah-Jute, John Logan, the Mingo Chief, issupposed to have used this habitat. He was terrible inwarfare, yet humane in peace and was a factor in Colonialdays.

Erected by S. H. Wood and other descendants of thepioneers who located near "this Indian trail."

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ARTICLE VIBY ANDREW PRICE

In The Pocahontas Times.

The Mingo monument to the vanised Mingo town wasunveiled Sept. 25, 1920, with imposing ceremonies in thepresence of a large assembly. The monument is an artisticfigure of an Indian chief set upon a pedestal. It isprominently located on a head-land looking towards thesetting sun. It is about half a mile from the Confederatemonument and it adds charm and interest to Mingo Flatswhich is naturally one of the beauty spots of the world.

Hon. S. H. Wood, the old residenter, was the activeforce behind the movement. The good people of Randolphhad furnished a great feast for the occasion and all werewell fed. Addresses were made by Hon. H. G. Kump, Hon.Arthur B. Koontz, Judge W. S. O'Brien, Capt. W. H. Cobb,Hon. Roy Waugh, and Andrew Price, the last named beingus, having been invited to attend and testify as to whathad occurred some hundreds of years prior.

It was agreed that it was a historical meeting, andthe crowd was asked to indicate its love for the study of history, and one person held up his hand but for all thatthe audience listened intently, drawing near on the sod tothe great well of truth as it issued from the grandstand.

Liars are said to be divided into three portions forcomparison, as liars, damned liars, and historians, and forthat reason a good text to indicate the spirit of the addresswould be a part of a verse of Scripture which being slightlyaltered from the ancient Hebrew was to the effect:"Ananias stand fourth," and that we were perfectly willingto enact the part of Ananias, if Lawyer Kump, CaptainCobb, and Judge O'Brien, would stand first, second andthird, respectively.

And in order to keep the record straight it should be

stated that according to the passage in the well belovedMcGuffey, "I come to bury Caesar and not to praise him,"for we belong to the school which holds fast to the belief that a good Indian is a dead Indian.

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There has been some criticism as to the propriety of the descendants of the pioneers honoring the memory of acruel and a treacherous foe, but as we read the scroll of ancient events, there never was a time when themountaineers were not perfectly happy and willing to burythe Mingo and bury him deep. And the importance of thisenduring monument is emphasized by the fact that alreadydoubters have arisen who are asserting that the head of the valley was not peopled by a tribe of Indians who havewandered from this place through the wilderness to thewest, keeping their tribal identity until they found theirpresent place of abode in the Indian Territory. And while

we of the present day do not know it all, we do know moreabout the first inhabitants of the valley than those who willcome after us, and it is fitting that we do know what thepioneers might have done in a day that is dead, and fix thefact beyond dispute.

Authentic history reaches back into the seventeenthcentury and it is crystallized from the time that the whitepeople became firmly established on the Atlantic seaboard.

From that time the Indians were forced back into themountains and the white people were assigned to thecountry lying between the mountains and the ocean. TheIndian tribes became a confederacy under the name of theIroquois or the Five Nations, and the division of theterritory was so complete and endured for so manygenerations, that it was believed to be a permanent thing,and like our constitution which has not as yet lasted aslong as the partition of lands, it must have seemed to theslow generations of those former times, that the division of territory was forever.

When it was first made, the settlers on the seacoasthad a vague idea of the rich mountain country in which wenow live, and believed that they were too rugged toexplore. One of the favorite fallacies of those days was that

the snow never melted in the summer time on these hills.Up until comparatively modern times, the mostauthentic accounts of the mountains and the lands west of

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them were the reports of the Jesuits who went there asmissionaries to the Indians.

When the Iroquois had become firmly established asa nation, the land drained by the Ohio river from the greatlakes to the Ohio, was held by a powerful tribe of Indiansknown as the Eries, but they are constantly referred to asthe Cat Nation, because their tribal sign was that of thepanther. This is the tribe of whom it was reported by apriestly voyageur, that he floated down one of the rivers inthe State of Ohio without ever being out of sight of a cornfield.

Up to the year 1653, the Iroquois had a treaty of

peace with this nation which was renewed at stated timeswith imposing ceremonies. That year, thirty ambassadorsappeared at the council lodge of the Iroquois for thepurpose of continuing the treaty. When they had arrived,and before the meeting, a dispute arose, and one of theambassadors killed an Iroquois chief. Whereupon theIroquois arose and killed all but five of the visitors, and warbroke out between the nations, and lasted for three years.

The end of the war came in 1656, at which time 1800Iroquois appeared before a fort in the Cat Nation anddemanded that it surrender to save carnage, for theinvading chief told them that it was useless to resist for theMaster of Life fought for them. The Eries replied that theydepended upon their arms and acknowledged no otherpower. In this fort there were an army of 4000 warriors andthe women and children of the tribe. Reading between thelines, the superiority of the attacking force must haveconsisted in a cannon and gun-power for the fort was takenand the Iroquois entered the fort and the carnage was sogreat among them that blood was knee deep in places.

It is reasonable to suppose that the great fort thatwas taken at that time was the one still preserved by theState of Ohio, known as Fort Ancient, in Warren County. It

is a headland about three hundred feet high overlookingthe Miami river fenced in by a wall varying in height from 6feet to 19 feet and ennclosing a boundary of one hundredacres of land. This fort is well preserved but was

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abandoned prior to exploration and it is pretty certain thatit marked the spot where the Cat Nation was conquered,for only such a fort could have contained the fifteen ortwenty thousand Indians present at the time of the greatbattle.

The Eries surviving were absorbed into the Iroquoisnation, and as the Senecas of that nation occupied thewestern border they naturally became the tribe of theconquered people, and their numbers were so great thatthe towns of the Senecas increased from four to thirty. Andthis frontier work of guarding and amalgamating with aconquered people naturally resulted in the Senecas

becoming the military department and power of theIroquois nation.Prior to this time the Ohio River was named the Black

Mingo River, and the Indians living on the waters of thatriver, with the intolerance of race, were called Mingoes,meaning a stealthy treacherous people, by those living tothe east of them. This racial feeling is like that whichprompts us to call Italians, Dagoes, and Austrians,

Bohunks, which to say the least are words of little esteem.And so the Iroquois council found a question of

foreign affairs before it. In considering it, they referred to itas their mingo problems. A part of the policy was to mixthe native stock with the mingo element and form a line of villages reaching from the St. Lawrence river south toGeorgia, policing the whole line of the Endless Mountains.In council, if a statesman arose to bring up the subject of the faraway village on the head of the Tygarts Valley River,he would probably say: "I want to take up the question of supplies for one of our mingo towns," just as acongressman might say today: "Here is a matter about ourcolonial possessions." In the Iroquois council we can almosthear a chief say to the English ambassador stationed at theCapital of the Five Nations: "Yes, we of the old original

stock respect the contracts we have made with the English,but our widely scattered mingo settlements are of mixedblood and we can never be sure that they understand thebond that is between us. And then they are apt to be

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influenced by strange tribes like the Delewares andShawnees."

It is interesting to trace the origin of the word Mingo.It first meant chief or greatest. It became the name of thegreat river. Then it was used as a word to denote theinhabitants of the country drained by that river. Then todistinguish the foreign from the native blood of theIroquois. Then to designate the towns which were locatedin faraway parts of their possessions. And finally by thepioneer white men to mean a particularly deadly tribe of Indian outlaws who having moved to the far bank of theOhio harried this country for more than twenty years

during the days of the first settlements west of theAlleghany. The English tongue in spite of the fact that it isfixed and made definite by the art of printing, is constantlychanging the meaning of its words. For example, a fewgenerations ago the word villain meant a tenant, and theword miser meant a sick person. Both are in universal usetoday with the meaning wholly changed, and the oldmeaning all but lost.

The Batts and Fallam expedition got as far as the BigKanawha in 1671, and reported the signs of a Indian townnear the falls where the fields were grown up with weeds,small prickly locusts and thistles. That reference to secondgrowth locusts tells its own tale to a man of thesemountains. It fixes the date the site was abandoned asfifteen years before the end of the Great War.

It is fairly certain that from 1656 to 1756, an evenhundred years, that the Five Nations, that is the Iroquois,maintained a fighting town or garrison on this part of thegreat Seneca Trail, which extended the whole length of theAppalachian Mountains. There is a trace of an old fort inthe old field that gives the name to the Old Field Fork of Elk, fifteen miles east of Mingo Flats. There is a possibilityof that being the town for a time. But in 1754, David Tygart

wrote a letter from this valley saying that he would have toleave on account of the proximity of an Indian Village. Andhe did get safely away, but the Files family on the creek of that name at Beverly, did not get away and they were all

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killed by these Indians that same year, and their bleachedbones found and interred in 1772, eighteen years after.

We know that the Iroquois tried to help Braddock in1755, and that they were driven away from his army bythat martinet. We know that tribe moved away from thisplace in 1756, and that they went just beyond thejurisdiction of the Iroquois. There can be little doubt thatthey had a hand in the massacre of the army underBraddock, and that they left or were driven out by order of the Iroquois council in 1756. The killing of the Files familyin 1754 shows that they were being corrupted by thedeadly Shawnee and were getting out of hand.

From 1766, to the present day their history isdefinite. In 1766 they were found at Mingo Bottom, sixmiles above Wheeling, which was the only Indiansettlement immediately upon the Ohio river betweenPittsburgh and Louisville.They told the early explorers thatthey had been there for ten years and that they moveddown from the head of the Ohio ten years before. The Ohiohas two heads, the river forking at Pittsburgh. But the

Tygarts Valley River and the Monongahela form by far thelongest fork. The water does not divide evenly atPittsburgh. The southern fork is the longer by at least fiftymiles. But the clinching fact that this is the uttermostfountain of the Ohio where they lived is that they werenear the Shawnees and the Delawares. That is true of Mingo Flats and it could not be true of the headwaters of the Alleghany River, the north fork, for the Shawnees weresouthern Indians forced by the Cherokees. The Shawneeswere split by the mountains, one part going to the east andsettling in the Valley of Virginia and the other in southernOhio, so that the road between the two Shawnee placesran by or through Mingo Flats, and the Delawares,originally from Delaware River were allied with theShawnees in the French and Indian war of the seventeen

fifties. There will never be a better time than now to fix thefacts in history. Here is the chart of the Mingo Indians, socalled because of the handiwork shown in the signs of the

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atrocities they committed on the pioneer settlement of ourancestors:

In 1755, at Mingo Flats, Randolph County, WestVirginia. In 1766, at Mingo Bottom, now Steubenville, Ohio,numbering 60 families, making a total of about 300persons. In 1800 they lived on their own lands on the headof the Sandusky and the head of the Scioto Rivers. In 1831,they numbered 251. This is the year that they sold theirlands in Ohio, and moved to lands on the Neosho River inthe State of Kansas, where they lived until 1867, whenthey moved to the Indian Territory, where they now live. In1885 the number of the tribe was 239, but in 1905 they

numbered 366. The tribe seems to have just about held itsown all these years, and it seems a matter of regret thatan effort was not made to have a representative of thetribe present on this occasion.

After the tribe left here the most notable conflict withthem In this neighborhood occurred In 1780. ThomasLackey saw Indian tracks at Valley Head, and thought heherad a voice saying, "Let him alone and he will go and

bring more," which is a clear case of telepathy. He warnedthe settlers at Fort Hadden, but the next day a party underJacob Warwick, returning to the Greenbrier settlementswere fired upon by Indians in ambush, and three menkilled: John McLain, James Ralston, and John Nelson. JamesCrouch was wounded but escaped. Thus passed the namesof McLain, Ralston, and Nelson from this valley, but Crouchhas many descendants. A similar preservation of a nameoccurred in Pocahontas County, the same campaign. Twomen, Hill and Baker, went to the river to wash. The Indiansfired on them and killed Baker, and his name faded away,but Hill escaped and his name is one of the most commonof family names in that county.

We are here to dedicate a monument to the memoryof a bitter foe, and to preserve an historical truth by writing

it upon tablets of stone. And every effort that is made topreserve the memory of those heroic times is to beapplauded and encouraged. And no less important is theduty that each and everyone of us owe to the lives of the

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departed of our families and friends to mark the lastresting place.

Many years ago there lived in Scotland a man by thename of Robert Patterson who had reached the age of eighty-six years at the date of his death. The last fortyyears of his life were spent on traveling from church-yardto churchyard restoring with his chisel, the tablets markingthe graves of the Hill-men or Cameronians, who had beenpersecuted for their faith. As it is so beautifully put:

"In the dream of the night I was wafted away,To the moorland of mist where the martyrs lay;

Where Cameron's sword and his Bible are seenEngraved on the stone where the heather growsgreen."

This remarkable man would accept nothing for his workand Sir Walter Scott named one of his immortal works forhim by calling it by the name that had been given RobertPatterson, to-wit: "Old Mortality." Yet when it occurred to

Sir Walter Scott to search out the place where RobertPatterson lay buried in order to place a modest monumentthere, he could not discover the place though the mostexhaustive and diligent search was made. What acomment upon the lack of appreciation of those OldMortality labored among.

And in this connection, mention should be made of the fact that under the laws of this land that burialexpenses are made the first charge upon the estate of adescendant, and these are to be paid even before debtsdue the nation or taxes and levies. And it is not too muchto say that burial expenses ought to include the cost of amonument in proportion to the size of the estateaccumulated, and that if we could imagine a descendantobjecting to this tribute to the life and memory of the

departed, that courts would so hold."Our lives are like the prints which feetHave left on Tampa's desert strand;Soon as the rising tide shall beat,

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All trace will vanish from the sand."

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ARTICLE VIIAddress at the Unveiling of the Mingo Monument

BY CAPTAIN WILLIAM H. COBB

On a former occasion, in connection with theproposal to build a monument you are today unveiling, Iwas called upon to give an account of the Mingo Indians,and having paid my respects to them, and indirectly tothose who made this site, in former times sacred to theIndians, I shall not, therefore, follow the line of the articlewhich some of you honored me by reading, but will confinemy remarks to an historic race that preceded the tribe we

call "American Indians."The subject of America before Columbus is notknown as it deserves to be known by our people, andthought by many not to be known by any, but in thatrespect you may be mistaken, for the trace of man is neverlost, though It be thousands of years in the past, and whenwe say the past, it may mean many thousands of years, soremote that man dreams of such an age.

Some confusion among anthropologists has occurredin tracing man and his works in the past, and that for thereason that they all do not agree upon the theory of thecreation of the earth and man. The scientist looks only tofacts as he finds and sees them, while the biblicalanthropologist keeps in mind the Mosaic theory of creationand that only six thousand years, or nearly, havetranspired since man came upon the earth.

The men whom the scientific world acknowledge asauthority upon the subject of the human race in America,place man here as long ago as two hundred thousandyears; some much longer; and others probably not as long;while those of the biblical account would place theprehistoric man upon the continent from 6 to 7 thousandyears and would not yield one day more; but it would

appear that a class of civilization existed in America longcenturies before any certain and definite history isrecorded in the Mediterranean country or Asia Minor.

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Who was the prehistoric man in America? Fromwhence did he come? And of what race? These questionshave not been answered and we have no certain accountand probably never shall know.

We know the Mound Builders and the Cliff Dwellerswere different and distinct races, or at least, their habitsand characteristics were different and they did not followthe same path at the same time.

If we recall our Bible history correctly, one of thetwelve tribes of Israel was lost and unaccounted for andthe Jew has undertaken to account for this tribe coming tothe western hemisphere and being the ancestors of the

American Indian, but I have never been able to follow theircourse of reason to a favorable conclusion as to thecorrectness of the theory.

So long ago as Plato, a few hundred years before thebirth of Christ, he gave us an indefinite description of the"Elysium fields," or as others have interpreted it, "theWestern Continent," and not only a vivid description of theclimate, the people and the glories thereof, but of a mighty

race that measured favorably with the knownMediterranean country, and there can now be no doubtthat his writings and those of like nature in part inspired inColumbus the ambition to discover and locate thatdelightful country. In this story Plato is pictured as listeningat the feet of an Egyptian philosopher, who told him thatTroy and her heroes in war, then ancient, was but as achild in age. Homer sang of such Elysium fields, as didmany who followed him in early ancient Greece.

That a civilization existed in America along withEgypt, Greece and Babylonian civilization, I take it that noscholar denies, but accepts it as a fact, and that thiscivilization was equally as high, is in fact true.

In the walks of life, in agriculture, in art, inarchitecture, in mathematics and in the implements of war,

our greatness is largely measured by our ability to slay themost men. We see in prehistoric America nothing superiorin the eastern countries of Asia, Europe or Africa.

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In the line of agriculture these people raised thecorn, the squash, the gourd and many of the modernvegetables of this day, including the bean, tobacco and thevine. These have been located in fhe Mounds, and therethrough ages have been planted and grown the samewheat and corn we now produce. These, in the days of which I speak, were fields of hundreds of acres scattereduniversally over the country and not as the recent Indiancultivated his patch of corn and tobacco or had his squawdo it, but these early people in America were farmers infact.

In art, there has probably never been seen in the

East articles of greater fineness and requiring more skillthan what has been turned out by these pre-historicpeople. The vase they produced was an ornament of wonder, and of different shades and designs; and theircooking vessels were of no mean design; their cups werepatterns of the present generation. The fernery vases werethe pride of the age and no less than 800 or 1000 havebeen taken from one mound in the state of Mississippi. Nor

were they wanting in paintings and pictures in which all lifewas represented, such as the birds, the animals and thesnake, the smoke a thing that has figured the world over inreligion and myths since the creation of man; and while welook upon these early people as without vision andresources, if we only reflect, we are now practicing many of the pagan ideas that controlled them.

In architecture, the inhabitants of Mexico and Peruwere artists, and while the houses were of the one storycharacter generally, the decorations were so splendid andgorgeous that they would have been creditable to a homein the glorious days of Rome or Greece. Curtains of thefinest texture and brilliant colors fell over the doors and thestucco floors were covered with mats of exquisiteworkmanship, representing an artistic taste that has

probably not been surpassed in any age. Another work of art and industry, and now followed by the Indian, wasfeather work in which no people has excelled them.

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We have been told that the art of embalming hasbeen lost as practiced by the Egyptians, and while that istrue, it is probable that the embalmer of the Nile hadnothing on the prehistoric American in this art. Thesepeople built crypts, constructed of stone or beaten or sundried earth, for the preservation of the bodies; the bodyfirst having been chemically treated, and in this state, afterthousands of years, the skeletons have been found in asurprisingly good state of preservation. The art of cremating was practiced, this being carried out, in a way,along the lines of the modern custom. These customsbelonged strictly to the civilization of the true prehistoric

races of both North, Central and South America, and likethe Egyptian civilization, the fine arts were lost and therude and rough customs took their places.

If gorgeous flowers, mourners, the lying of the corpsein state, the viewing of the body by the family and friends,and guards standing by for protection, with the practice of sacrificing human beings, as readily as Abraham offeredhis only son Isaac, if this constitutes the higher civilization,

then these prehistoric Americans were in the class of theearliest Egyptians, Babylonians and Jews.

In the mounds in which these bodies were placed wefind that the deceased were men of renown and wealth,and a part of their belongings were buried with them. Inthese burial places and by their sides we find the sea shellfrom the Atlantic Ocean and the Mexican Gulf; the copperfrom the shores of Lake Superior; mica from NorthCarolina; silver from Mexico; lead from Wisconsin; jadefrom Chili; the skin and painting of the Rocky Mountainlion, these things representing the commercial intercourseof the people from the Arctic Ocean to Cape Horn. How thiscommerce was carried on is only explained by the art of the canoe and sail boat and overland travel, but certain itis that it occurred and was no more marvelous than the

travel in Asia or Africa at that time.The mound builder, who figured so extensively inOhio, and in fact in all parts of the United States,constructed nearly 10,000 mounds alone in that state, and

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thousands of other "isms" of the day, a man who thinks isnone too certain himself, certain that he does not know.

In matters of government, these people exhibited thesame disposition that has ruled man from the very earliestday that the stronger should rule the weaker, if not by will,by force.

And if we know the history of the people from theremotest age, whether in the old or in the new world, wefind the same traits and characteristics in tribes andnations, the stronger ruling the weaker, if men andimplements of war can enforce it; and under this practicehistory teaches us that nations have risen to their heights

in Asia, Europe and Africa, and In turn been wiped out bysome other great power. No matter what country we pointto in the distant history, it has gone the way of the other.

Leagues of Nations and Alliances were not unknownto the prehistoric race in America and for the momentworked in theory, but in time distant races and those not inharmony with the greater would rebel and seek to live tothemselevs and worship God under their own vine and fig

tree. This would bring dow'n the wrath of the League uponthem and in instances this has brought destruction uponthe strong in waging war upon a distant tribe. The alliancewith the central head in Mexico, about the center of thewestern hemisphere, was never able to enforce strictobservance by the outer tribes and nations.

In studying these people, it is of interest to know thatevery color of mankind was represented in prehistoricAmerica, and that brings us to the question as to whetherall races sprung from the Adam-Rvo race or whether therewas a preadamite and that theory is not without Interest,but time will not permit its discussion.

My reading and study upon the question of the originof the human race has brought me to the belief that man isindigenous to America; that is, that the prehistoric man of

the western hemisphere was created or brought to being inthis country, and that in no wise conflicts with the biblicalstory of the creation; man could have gone from this

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country as well as from Asia to America and God couldhave started the race here as well as in Asia.

The Irish have given an interesting account of St.Brendon in the 6th century, coming to America on his twotrips covering a period of eleven years, and who was, theyclaim, the first to plant the cross of Christ on the continent.On this point great stress is laid upon the fact or assertionthat the Cross was religiously recognized by the peopleupon Columbus' discovery. The cross may, and probablydid eixst, at this time in America, and if so for the samereason it existed in the eastern countries before Christ.

It is also claimed by Buddhists that monks of the 5th

century visited America and planted their religion andinstituted their rites and ceremonies among the people,and this claim has ground to stand upon. But with all of this, I am inclined to the belief that neither Christian, Irishpriest or Buddhist, before Columbus, ever planted anyreligious Doctrines here, but on the other hand that thegreat God of the Universe gave, through nature, thereligious beliefs they possessed and nature did this in the

same way she imparts inspiration the world over.The study of man, the race and the nation has

brought the student to the conclusion that all men sprungfrom the same source; that the same God created them,and you may trace the race from the original to thepresent time and no special characteristic appears in onefrom the other to any material extent. So we have toconclude that man, the world over, has been uniformlygood and great and uniformly wicked and evil, in this, thatat times, a great and good spirit has ruled him and that atothers the evil has directed his walk. That at differenttimes in the history of many of the races or nations of men,there has been greatness in the national and spiritual lifeof the nation, and following the fate of their predecessors,has fallen into the depths of depravity.

On the ruins of Troy of old, for centuries the worldaccepted the story of Troy as only a fancied story of Homer, and when excavations developed the ruins, theydiscovered the city as described by poets, they also found

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buried underneath the city of Trojan fame, two otherburied cities of which no account of their date wasobtainable. It may have been that the ray of history keptalive by repeating the story from one generation to theother, gave Plato and others of his age the key to the storyof an ancient race that lived to the west of the Atlantic andthat in antiquity and greatness and beauty their countrywas but an infant.

This may be a fancy, but there is ground for thebelief. Research in the western hemisphere has developedgrandeur that is not surpassed by the wonders of thepyramids of Egypt and possibly more ancient or co-equal in

age. These structures fully define the use of the square,the circle, the triangle and other geometrical figures.According to competent engineers it would take thousandsof workmen, well provided with modern machinery, an ageto construct and build one of the great temples in Peru.The stones going into some of these structures were 37 ft.in length and 8 ft. in thickness and are estimated to weigh200 tons, and removed from a quarry 40 miles away. In

this way we can conceive how ancient our country is andwhat may have occurred in the whole history of the ages ithas passed through.

We are prone to regard the prehistoric man of America as a barbarian, and the last of the race waslargely so. Nevertheless, the man of thousands of yearsago measured well with the civilization of other countriesand especially the countries we would refer to as having aglorious history.

It is true these people had customs we now condemnand attribute to the evil, or ignorance of the time. Butwhen we reflect that they too had their superstitions andburned man for witchcraft, we did Ihe same at a period nottoo remote in European history, and under the laws of Massachusetts, not two hundred years aog, witchcraft was

a violation of both the material and spiritual laws.Witchcraft was in vogue in the time of the Jew, for Saul indistress called upon the witch of Endor to put him incommunication with the departed Samuel, and if the Jew

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Monument to and History of the Mingo Indians1

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