Ohio Country
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The Ohio Country, (Ohio Territory,[a] Ohio Valley[b]) was a name used for a loosely defined region of colonial North America west of the Appalachian Mountains and south of Lake Erie.
Control of the territory and the region's fur trade was disputed in the 17th century by the Iroquois, Huron, Algonquin, other Native American tribes, and France. New France claimed this area as part of the administrative district of La Louisiane. France and Britain fought the French and Indian War over this area in the mid-18th century as the North American front of their Seven Years' War (1756–1763). Following the British victory, France ceded its territory east of the Mississippi River to them in the 1763 Treaty of Paris.
During the following decades, several minor frontier wars, including
History
Pre-colonial period
In the 17th century, the area north of the Ohio River was occupied by the
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,
Colonial period
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 the government of the Colony of Virginia granted the Ohio Company a beneficial deal on this territory on the condition that it be settled by colonists from the Thirteen Colonies.[2]
French and Indian War
preserved the western lands for exclusive use by Native American peoples With the arrival of Europeans to America, both Great Britain and France had claimed the territory and sent fur 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 the Kittanning Path east of the Alleghenies. After they destroyed Fort Granville in the summer of 1756, Pennsylvania's Proprietary Governor John Penn ordered Captain John 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 from Fort Duquesne. They built Fort 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 1763 Treaty 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 as Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York, and Connecticut claimed some of the westward lands as had been granted by their original charters. The area, however, was officially closed to European settlement by the Royal 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 the Quebec Act, which annexed the region to the Province of Quebec. Colonists in the Thirteen Colonies considered this one of the Intolerable Acts that contributed to the call for American Revolution the following year, which began in earnest the following year, in 1775.
American Revolution and afterward
Despite the Crown's actions limiting westward expansion,
In 1778, after several Patriot military victories in the region by an expeditionary force led by General George Rogers Clark, the Virginia legislature organized a nominal civil government over the area. They called this first official territory Illinois 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 the
In the treaties of Fort Stanwix (late 1784) and Fort McIntosh (early 1785), the United States fixed boundaries between territory open to settlement and the native tribal lands. The Shawnee and other tribes, however, continued to resist American encroachment into their historic hunting grounds. This resistance eventually led to the Northwest Indian War.
States' claims
Considered highly desirable, the area was subject to the overlapping and conflicting territorial ambitions of several eastern states:
- Connecticut claimed a strip of land across the northern part of the region, delineated by the westward extension of its northern and southern state boundaries, called the Connecticut Western Reserve.
- New York claimed an elastic part of the region based on its perceived sovereignty over the Iroquois, though the majority of the four tribes, allies of the British, resettled in Upper Quebec and Ontario).
- Pennsylvania claimed land as a westward extension of its colonial boundaries.
- Illinois Countyby right of conquest.
Incorporation of the Northwest Territory
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 eastern Illinois Country were incorporated as the Territory Northwest of the River Ohio. In 1803, most of what was formerly Ohio Country north and west of the Ohio River was admitted to the union as the state of Ohio.
See also
- Gnadenhutten massacre
- Illinois County, Virginia which encompassed Ohio Country and part of Illinois Country
- Nanfan Treaty
Notes
- ^ 'Ohio Territory' is a misnomer, since it was never an organized territory of the United States or of any other nation.
- ^ The French referred to the area as the Ohio Valley.
- ^ The Omaha, Ponca, and some Shawnee eventually migrated even further west, crossing into territory west of the Missouri River.
- ^ The Ft. Pitt settlement later developed into the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
References
- ^ MacCorkle, William Alexander. "The Historical and Other Relations of Pittsburgh and the Virginias". Historic Pittsburgh General Text Collection. University of Pittsburgh. Retrieved September 16, 2013.
- ^ "Addresses Delivered at the Celebration of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Bushy Run, August 5th and 6th, 1913". Historic Pittsburgh General Text Collection. University of Pittsburgh. Retrieved September 16, 2013.
External links
- Ohio History Central: The Ohio Country
- Ohio Lands in the History Community at RootsWeb
- Ohio Territory Grant Map
- National Archives: Historical Documents Celebrating the 200th Anniversary of Ohio Statehood
- Ohio Division of Geological Survey: Map of Original Land Subdivisions of Ohio (1.9 MB pdf)
- Shawnee History