Dr. Thomas E. Rigel Trust

The road leading out of Findlay goes through the wilderness and at times loses itself in piles of fallen leaves, at times is interrupted by muddy spots, and at times has been improved with corduroy in a manner precarious for wagons and riders, becomes lonelier and more silent the farther one proceeds westward. The fences following it almost without interruption as far as Gilboa gradually disappear completely. Now and then, off to the side in the depths of the forest, the bells of grazing cows can be heard, or the crashing of a falling branch scares up crowing birds. Here and there a couple of forked branches stuck into the ground, across which a horizontal pole has been placed and beneath which, in addition to a pile of ashes, crudely carved wooden troughs are lying around, indicate a place where maple sugar has been boiled. Occasionally an oxcart is encountered, laboriously rolling toward its destination through the mud road and its holes.

Once in a while the wanderer, coming around a corner of the forest or emerging from a thicket into a reed-covered prairie, overtakes a procession of those "movers" who, following a roving impulse inherent in the Yankee, are traveling to the sparsely populated regions of the Far West after selling their unmovable possessions in the East. In advance on his nag comes the father of the family, in blue pilot cloth or crab-red warmus, leggings wrapped around his legs, the long rifle with the beautifully inlaid butt over his shoulder, the powder horn and the bullet pouch on his back. Then appears the wagon, drawn by handsome small horses and driven by a second pilot cloth jacket or, according to circumstances, the wife; under its white canvas are stowed the children, the trunks, and the best of the household equipment. Finally, as a rear guard, follow a few breeding cattle, led and accompanied by other armed riders. Thus they move slowly toward their new home, spending the night with farmers and sometimes also camping out in the woods, when the weather permits or necessity compels. Once in the Great Black Swamp and when all roads cease, they are guided by the evening star and the compass.

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"Travels between the Hudson & the Mississippi"
by Moritz Busch

It was on the morning of the twelfth of October that Cousin Theodore and I left Dayton on the morning train of the Mad River Railroad, and by noon we were seventy miles to the north in the friendly country town of Bellefontaine. On the way a young farmer had attracted my attention by creating a small pool of tobacco juice on the floor of the car. He had fired the brown liquid at it twenty-seven times a minute, according to a careful calculation made with the aid of the second hand of my watch. It had been unusually interesting to observe how accurately he kept within the circle he was forming until he had produced a complete pond as round as the sun that looked down upon this fascinating pastime. In view of the distance from which this target practice was performed, I have no doubt that our fine young man would have been a good match for that virtuoso who, according to legend, could spit through a keyhole at ten paces. It’s a disgusting habit, coating barroom floors and the sidewalks of Yankee cities with the nastiest marble, transforming the steamboats into floating spittoons, and lending to an American railroad car (when the weather permits the opening of windows) a strong resemblance to the hull of a battleship that fires a full volley at the enemy from its broadside. But: other countries, other customs, and as it says in the Negro song about the yellow weed of Virginia:
It cures our double headache
And helps digestion, too, Sir.
And if you have no grits in your head,
It’ll get them for you, too, Sir.
     So I’ll forbear and keep in my pocket any further criticism of this shooting pleasure, as dangerous as it may be at times to clean coattails and trousers. Besides, that saliva-devastator was a good fellow in other respects - he cheerfully put us on the right road to the grave of General Simon Kenton, which is situated five English miles from Bellefontaine at the edge of a wood not far from the sources of the Mad River.

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By the recollections of Moritz Busch
The Great Black Swamp will one day be called the "Garden of Ohio" and will support a half million people. In only a few places is it a real swamp, with reed-filled ponds and stagnant cane puddles; for the most part it is a broad expanse of fertile marsh soil and profusely covered with an enormous tree growth - various oak species, ash, poplar, hickory, cottonwood, and sugar maple are the most frequently occurring varieties. The cover of treetops, toward which the branches of this magnificent primeval forest entwine, is absolutely impenetrable for sunlight and the forest’s main features are a melancholy semi-darkness and a majestic silence. Its mysterious depths may still conceal a treasure for the botanist. With its motionless, half-denuded grey trees, it gave to us who passed through it in autumn and on calm days an impression of dread, of inhospitality, and, in the long run, of monotony. But it must be a real pleasure to roam through its exuberant greening and blossoming in the springtime, and it must be a delight to hear it rustle with that rustling with which Eden’s treetops greeted the first man on the sixth day of creation.

In its hollow trees live bears, raccoons, opossums, and wildcats in great numbers. Troops of small deer sprang across our path more than once, and we heard the gobbling of wild turkeys. Eagles and hawks and a colorful variety of songbirds, some attired in the most magnificent plumage, nest in its branches. Veins of limestone from a half to a whole mile wide pass across its surface, from east to west, like the crests of waves; these are covered with black walnut, butternut, sugar maple, and red elms.

We now and then saw small turtles under piles of dry leaves. Flocks of ducks were swimming in the river, and white birds of prey darted back and forth, snapping up fish that rose in clumsy leaps from the sunset waters. And when we had worked our way down into a hollow formed by a caved-in bank, we saw a raccoon slip away from a projecting root, upon which he had been making his toilet, into a hollow sycamore.

One can deduce how productive the land is from the fact that we saw cornstalks 15 feet high, and we were shown an orchard in which the apple trees had grown to a height of 20 feet in the space of five years and their trunks had attained a circumference of 18 inches at the base. And if one has an appetite for game, the rifle stands by, for within a mile deer are going to the waterhole, turkeys and doves are flying, and squirrels as fat as rabbits and with a flavor like partridge jump about in great numbers through the treetops. Frequently, too, a bear is kind enough to carry his hams into the path of the hunter.

I believe that the occupants of this wilderness live a life like the worms in a head of cabbage. Thick and tall cornfields, richly rewarding the seeding, surround the log cabins, although the squirrels that swarm along the fences by the hundreds share the fruits of the same with the legal owner. Fat cattle graze in the forest, from whose branches the wind shakes down all kinds of nuts for them. Beautiful orchards supply the material for cakes, preserves, and other sweets; the wives of the backwoodsmen accomplish miracles in their preparation. If one wants sugar, one taps the maple trees outside. If one desires honey, enough is found in the hollow trees.

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Upon entering the Great Black Swamp, we recognize that we are standing upon classical ground. We recall that we are about to walk through the area where the racial conflict of the whites with the reds, which had begun on the Hudson and the Delaware, was fought to its conclusion. In fact, it is here that the expansion power of civilization blazed down from the Alleghenies, with the character of an annihilating flow of lava, into the western wilderness; carrying with it a demoniac pleasure in extermination, not only the virgin forest, but also the races of primitive people.

The entire district between the Ohio and Lake Erie was a single large battlefield, and someone who might be able to understand the language of the streams flowing toward the Muskingum and the Scioto would hear from them a story as full of mighty deeds and unspeakable suffering as any song sung to us about the praiseworthy heroes and the great labors of Germanic antiquity. Let us look around. Here is the grave of General Kenton, the "Indian hunter." Its occupant could tell us how he endured the tortures of Mazeppa, how he went through the terrors of fiery death four times in one week, and how his existence up to ripe old age was a chain of risks, victories, and defeats, such as we should scarcely believe in a novel. But let us look farther. There towers an old oak tree, mutilated by ax and fire, without branches, a black pillar. We wonder whether the dryads that abandoned it saw the red warriors slip by who were led by Little Turtle into battle with the Kentucky horse sharpshooters of General Wayne? There a buzzard flies up screaming. We wonder whether he remembers the day when his father summoned him to the carrion feast on the field of Saint Clair’s Defeat, when "the hands of the squaws were tired from scalping the dead and dying militiamen"? Here the murmuring creek. We wonder whether it heard the lament raised by the noble Chief Logan when his family was foully murdered by the Long-Knives? And over there, the sun behind the clouds. We wonder whether it watched as the seven cities of the Wyandots were laid to ashes by Clark’s troops? And we wonder whether it was a witness as the Shawnees, at the place where the pretty Zanesfield has blossomed, tortured to death the prisoners taken by them in the victory over Crawford?

Yes, it was a time of blood and terror, this period of which the Virginian Simon Kenton is typical, and the "Fathers of the West" were a race as wild and crude as the nature in which they lived. But no one speaks about them any more, except for the books and graves, and the day is not far off when these, too, will become silent. The American is not much at home for the dead. The present uses up all his thoughts, and when he has any left over, he applies them to the future rather than to the past.

Moritz Busch

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