a *brief* history of early Cincinnati

On the cusp of the American Revolution, Great Britain recognized the Ohio River as a boundary between native American lands and lands up for white settlement. American victory in the War of Independence meant that Great Britain’s claims to the land were rendered null and void, and the American Congress made sure the Americans knew that fact: because they allied with the British during the war, they were the losers, and as such they had no right to claim the land north of the Ohio River as their own. King George III betrayed his promises to the native Americans, acknowledging in the Treaty of Paris 1783 that the lands belonging to the natives now belonged to the United States. As the Ohio River boundary line dissolved, white settlers poured across the Alleghenies, settling not only in Kentucky but also on the Ohio side of the river. The natives—primarily the Shawnee and Miami, who dwelled closest to the Ohio River—saw the encroaching Americans not only as unwelcome pests but as unlawful intruders. The United States government sought to appease the Indians by a series of treaties that ceded certain lands to the whites and certain lands to the natives. The lands of the Shawnee and Miami were ceded away in these treaties, and the U.S. government coyly invited only the Indians of the upper Ohio to the meetings, so that those living on the lands had no say in what happened to them. The deceit only intensified the loathing felt on the part of the Shawnee and Miami, and such war chiefs as Little Turtle and Blue Jacket vowed to do all they could to stifle the American settlements. They assembled what has been known as the Western Confederacy, an alliance of various indigenous nations, which sought to retain their lands, lands exploited by the Americans and unlawfully seized. The formation of the Western Confederacy inaugurated the Northwest Indian War, a war in which the early settlement of Cincinnati found itself a locus.

In December 1788, a settlement by the name of Losantiville was established. The original surveyor of the land, John Filson, named it Losantiville, which meant “The city opposite the mouth of the (Licking) River.” The “L” was for the Licking River, the “os” is Latin for “mouth,” “anti” is Greek for “opposite,” and “ville” is French for city. Thus incorporating four different languages into the name, the future Cincinnati was born, encompassing also the two other settlements between the Little Miami and Great Miami rivers, Columbia on the former and North Bend on the latter. In 1789, construction on Fort Washington began, bolstering the small town that at the time consisted only of two small hewed log houses and a handful of cabins, with a population around 150. General Josiah Harmar, a man noted for his drunkenness and failures in expeditions against the Indians north of the town, described Fort Washington as “one of the most solid substantial wooden fortresses… of any in the Western Territory.” The fort’s walls were two stories high with blockhouses located on each corner. (the fort sat on the current location of the Guilford School Building downtown)

Fort Washington

Fort Washington became the principal staging point for expeditions against the native Americans in northwest Ohio. In 1790, Harmar led an ill-fated expedition against the Miami city of Kekionga (which looked a lot like any other city in elegance and splendor; don’t buy into the idea that the native Americans were “primitive”) at modern-day Fort Wayne, Indiana. The Miami Indians had ample warning through British traders, and their Shawnee allies joined them in springing a trap against Harmar’s extended forces. Harmar burned a lot of corn and ransacked abandoned Miami villages, but when push came to shove, the Miami and Shawnee won the contest: the Indians, led by the Miami chief Little Turtle, sprung not one but two ambushes against the Americans, and Harmar’s forces high-tailed it back Losantiville, suffering 183 killed and exacting against the Indians only 75 casualties. Later that year, the Miami and Shawnee retaliated. Shawnee war chief Blue Jacket and 300 allied Indians attacked a recent fort built at a new settlement called Colerain Station. The Colerain settlers fled into the fort and fired at the Indians with rifles and cannon. The Indians captured a surveyor, and outside the fort they made a public spectacle of him: they tied him to a tree, gouged out his eyes, disemboweled him with tomahawk blows, and then set him afire. The Indians weren’t able to take the fort, and they fled before reinforcements from the nearby Fort Washington could be launched between them. The Shawnee and Miami continued attacking various settlements sprouting up around Losantiville (including Columbia, North Bend, and Losantiville proper). At the end of spring in 1791, John Van Cleve, a blacksmith of Fort Washington, was stabbed in five places and killed by the Indians just outside Cincinnati, near the present site of Music Hall and Washington Park.

Cincinnati: the early years (Fort Washington in the upper right)

Losantiville’s name changed in 1790: Arthur St. Clair, the governor of the Northwest Territory, was a member of the Society of Cincinnati. The society named itself in honor of Cincinnatus, a Roman general and dictator, who saved the city of Rome from destruction and then retired to live a farming life. The society sought to help Revolutionary War veterans return to civilian life. These veterans were allotted land as a reward for their services, and St. Clair saw that Losantiville could easily become one of the biggest cities on the Ohio River. He renamed it to Cincinnati and encouraged veterans to begin settling there, and to this day numerous families of Ohio can trace their lineage back to veterans of the War of American Independence. Cincinnati’s connection with Cincinnatus is kept alive not only by a statue of Cincinnatus down by the riverfront but also by the nickname of “The City of Seven Hills” (Legend states that the settlement was named Cincinnati because its geographic location mimicked the geography of Rome; this is simply coincidence, but what a wonderful coincidence at that!)

In 1792, with the Northwest Indian War still raging, and attacks by Indians against the growing city of Cincinnati continuing unabated, U.S. President George Washington relieved the drunk and inept Harmar and sent Arthur St. Claire to clean up his mess. St. Claire failed, and the battle known as St. Claire's Defeat is the greatest American defeat against Indians in history. The Americans lost just under 850 men to Indian losses of 66, making it the worst one-sided battle in American history up to that point., and the survivors fled in a rout and straggled into Fort Washington over a series of several days. Infuriated, Washington searched for a replacement, and with those he truly wanted either too old or too ill for the task at hand, he chose “Mad” Anthony Wayne to bring the war to a victorious conclusion. Washington questioned Wayne as a drunkard and womanizer, but the British in Canada knew they would do well to fear him. A veteran of the War of Independence, he served at Fort Ticonderoga, suffered through Valley Forge, and participated in such keynote battles as Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth Courthouse. Wayne led his new army north to just outside present-day Toledo, Ohio, and he attacked the 1500 Indian forces led by Blue Jacket’s Shawnees and bolstered by Delawares, Miamis led by Little Turtle, Wyandots, Mingos, Ottawas, and other assorted tribes that were a part of the Western Confederation; they also had assistance from British-Canadian soldiers. Wayne’s forces pressed against the Indian line and attacked with a bayonet charge, and the American cavalry outflanked the Indians. Blue Jacket’s warriors retreated towards the British Fort Miami, but the British commander refused to open the fort to them, knowing to do so could ignite an official war with the United States (the British were itching for a renewed war to punish their “insubordinate children,” but Great Britain was embroiled with conflict with France at the time; in 1812 war would again erupt between Great Britain and the United States). Wayne’s army won the victory and went about burning Indian villages and crops, and the Western Confederation came to the bargaining table.

The Battle of Fallen Timbers

The Treaty of Greenville in 1795 following the Western Confederation’s defeat at what became known as “The Battle of Fallen Timbers.” The United States government offered the natives blankets, utensils, and domestic animals valued at around $20,000 (a large sum for the time), and the Indians ceded to the U.S. government large part of modern Ohio, the future site of downtown Chicago, and the Fort Detroit area, among other locations. Thus the Northwest Indian War came to a close, and white settlers were able to settle relatively unhindered. Cincinnati boomed, Fort Washington was torn down (the command was relocated to the Newport Barracks across the river), and a relative peace ensued for two decades (with the outbreak of the War of 1812, the treaty was renewed, garnishing support for the U.S. from the tribes involved).

Cincinnati, 1802, seven years after the Treaty of Greenville

All this to say, Cincinnati is a cool little city, with lots of history. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't sometimes walk to work imagining the land littered with cabins and settlers, the woods thick all around, and Fort Washington glowering in the background over it all.