When the English secured possession of the country northwest of the Ohio River at the end of the French and Indian War, the British government angered the colonies, first by the decree of 1763 forbidding settlement, and later by ignoring the colonial charters which had granted the colonies territory “from sea to sea” and passing the Quebec Act of 1774, in which representative government was abolished.
It is not possible, a hundred and fifty years later, even if it were possible at the time, to interpret the working of the minds of the English king and council. It is a fair surmise, however, supported by considerable evidence, that the crown then saw the threat of American independence, if the American people could establish themselves in this vast and fertile empire beyond the mountains where physical geography alone would make it impossible for the mother country to hold the colonies in subjection or enforce her decrees upon them.
[Illustration: LANDING OF PIONEER SETTLERS IN NORTHWEST TERRITORY AT MARIETTA]
As early as 1761 Frederick Post from Pennsylvania, a Moravian missionary to the Indians, built perhaps the first “American’s” house in Ohio on the Tuscarawas River. On May 3, 1772, David Zeisberger and a company of Christian Indians established Moravian villages at Schoenbrunn, Gnadenhutten, and Lichtenau (near present New Philadelphia). Clarksville, now a suburb of Jeffersonville, Indiana, had been established by George Rogers Clark in 1784. Wiseman’s Bottom, four miles above the mouth of the Muskingum, was named after a man who made a clearing as entry right to 400 acres while Virginia still claimed the land north of the Ohio. During the Revolutionary War squatters began to settle northwest of the Ohio. Since these squatters were trespassing on lands reserved by treaty for the Indians, Congress attempted to drive them out. Ensign John Armstrong reported in 1785 that “there are at the falls of the Hawk Hawkin [Hocking River] upwards of 300 families, and at the Muskingum a number equal.” The squatters even elected one William Hogland, governor. These temporary and unlawful settlements would defeat orderly settlement, and deprive the new nation of the income from sale of the lands. To prevent such illegal occupation Fort Harmar was erected on the Ohio at the mouth of the Muskingum.