 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Ohio Country" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
TheOhio Country (Ohio Territory,[a]Ohio Valley[b]) was a name used for a loosely defined region of colonialNorth America west of theAppalachian Mountains and south ofLake Erie.
Control of the territory and the region's fur trade wasdisputed in the 17th century by the Iroquois, Huron, Algonquin, other Native American tribes, andFrance.New France claimed this area as part of the administrative district ofLa Louisiane. France andBritain fought theFrench and Indian War over this area in the mid-18th century as the North American front of theirSeven Years' War (1756–1763). Following the British victory, France ceded its territory east of theMississippi River to theBritish Empire in the1763 Treaty of Paris.
During the following decades, several minor frontier wars, includingPontiac's Rebellion andLord Dunmore's War, were fought in the territory. In 1783, the Ohio Country became unorganized U.S. territory under theTreaty of Paris that officially ended theAmerican Revolutionary War and became one of the firstAmerican frontier regions of the United States. Several of the original U.S. states hadoverlapping claims to portions of it, based on historicalroyal and colonial charters. The states' claims were largely extinguished after negotiations with the federal government by 1787, and it became part of the larger, organizedTerritory Northwest of the River Ohio. Most of the former areas north-west of the Ohio River were eventually organized as the state ofOhio, admitted to the Union in 1803.
In the 17th century, the area north of the Ohio River was occupied by theAlgonquian-speakingShawnee and someSiouan language-speaking tribes, such as theOmaha andPonca. Around 1660, during a conflict known as theBeaver Wars, theIroquois and allied tribes seized control of the Ohio Country, driving out the Shawnee and Siouan peoples. Those tribes mostly moved further northwest and west, with several eventually settling west of the Mississippi River.[c] In the east, theIroquois (orHaudenosaunee) conquered and absorbed theErie (who also spoke anIroquoian language) during this time. The Ohio Country, however, remained largely uninhabited for decades, used primarily as a hunting ground by the Iroquois peoples.
In the 1720s, a number of Native American groups began to migrate into the Ohio Country from the east, driven by pressure from encroaching European colonists. By 1724,Delaware Indians had established the village ofKittanning on theAllegheny River in present-day western Pennsylvania. With them came those Shawnee who had historically expanded further to the east. Other eastern bands of the scattered Shawnee tribe began to return to the Ohio Country in the decades that followed. A number ofSeneca and other Iroquois peoples also migrated to the Ohio Country, moving away from the Anglo-French rivalries and warfare south ofLake Ontario. The Seneca were the westernmost of the originalFive Nations of the Iroquois centered in western New York. In 1722, theTuscarora, an Iroquoian-speaking tribe from theCarolinas, completed a migration to the area and were allowed to settle near the lands of theOneida. They were considered cousins to the Iroquois and became the sixth nation in the confederacy.
In the late 1740s and the second half of the 18th century, the British and French angled for control of the territory.[1] The English intended to gain control of the area by sheer number of settlers on the ground. In 1749,The Crown through thegovernment of theColony of Virginia granted theOhio Company a beneficial deal on this territory on the condition that it be settled by colonists from theThirteen Colonies.[2]
With the arrival of Europeans to America, bothGreat Britain andFrance had claimed the territory and sentfur traders into the area to do business with the Ohio Country Indians. The Iroquois League also claimed the region by right of conquest. The rivalry among the two European nations, the Iroquois nations, and the Ohio valley Indian tribes for control of the region played an important part in the French and Indian War that lasted from 1754 through 1760. Having initially remained neutral, eventually the Ohio Country Indians largely sided with the French who were more interested in hunting in the region and were not actively settling the area as was their British colonial rivals. Armed with supplies and guns from the French, the Indians launched raids against their enemies via theKittanning Path east of the Alleghenies. After they destroyedFort Granville in the summer of 1756, Pennsylvania'sProprietary GovernorJohn Penn ordered CaptainJohn Armstrong to destroy the Shawnee villages west of the Alleghenies, hoping to put an end to their raiding activities. Meanwhile, other British and colonial forces drove the French fromFort Duquesne. They builtFort Pitt at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers that form the Ohio River.[d] After being defeated by Britain, France ceded their claims to the entire Ohio Country in the 1763Treaty of Paris. They had done so, however, without consulting their Native American allies who—in many cases—continued the fight against the colonial frontiersmen.
Colonies such asPennsylvania,Virginia,New York, andConnecticut claimed some of the westward lands as had been granted by their original charters. The area, however, was officially closed to European settlement by theRoyal Proclamation of 1763, an attempt to preserve the western lands as territory exclusively set aside for use by Native American peoples. By enacting the treaty, the British Crown no longer recognized prior claims that the colonies made on this territory. On June 22, 1774,Parliament in England passed theQuebec Act, which annexed the region to theProvince of Quebec. Colonists in the Thirteen Colonies considered this one of theIntolerable Acts that contributed to the call forAmerican Revolution the following year, which began in earnest the following year, in 1775.
Despite the Crown's actions limiting westward expansion,frontiersmen from theVirginia andPennsylvania colonies had migrated across the Allegheny Mountains for over a decade since the Proclamation. This eventually led them into conflict with the Shawnee tribes that claimed the area as their hunting grounds. The Shawnee, who referred to the settlers as the 'long knives', viewed the colonists as competitors to their resources and a threat to their way of life. Because of this, the Shawnee and other Indian tribes of the Ohio Country, chose to side with the British against the American colonists during the American Revolutionary War. They hoped to expel the colonists permanently from their lands.
In 1778, after several Patriot militaryvictories in the region by an expeditionary force led by GeneralGeorge Rogers Clark, the Virginia legislature organized a nominal civil government over the area. They called this first official territoryIllinois County, Virginia. It encompassed all of the lands lying west and north of the Ohio River to which Virginia had previously laid claim.
The high water mark of the Native American struggle to retain control of the region was in 1782, when theOhio Valley Indian Nations met with the British in a war council atChalawgatha, a Shawnee village located along theLittle Miami River, where they planned what was to become a successful rout of the Americans two weeks later at theBattle of Blue Licks. In 1783, following theTreaty of Paris in which America had gained its independence, Britain ceded its claims over the area to the new United States. The new federal government immediately opened this area to settlement byAmerican pioneers, considering it unorganized territory. The Ohio Country quickly became one of the most desirable locations forTrans-Appalachian settlements, in particular among veterans of the Revolutionary War, who were oftengranted land in lieu of pay for their military service during the war.
In thetreaties of Fort Stanwix (late 1784) andFort McIntosh (early 1785), the United States fixed boundaries between territory open to settlement and the native tribal lands. The Shawnee andother tribes, however, continued to resist American encroachment into their historic hunting grounds. This resistance eventually led to theNorthwest Indian War.
.png)
Considered highly desirable, the area was subject to the overlapping and conflicting territorial ambitions of several eastern states:
After negotiation with the federal government, these states ceded their claims to the United States between 1780 and 1786. In July 1787, most of Ohio Country, the southern peninsula of what is today the state of Michigan, and easternIllinois Country were incorporated as theTerritory Northwest of the River Ohio. In 1803, most of what was formerly Ohio Country north and west of theOhio River was admitted to the union as the state ofOhio.
40°30′N82°30′W / 40.5°N 82.5°W /40.5; -82.5
| History | |
|---|---|
| Colonies |
|
| Towns and villages |
|
| Forts | |
| Governments |
|
| Laws | |
| Economy | |
| Society | |
| Missionary groups | |
| Wars | |
