Baptist preacher encounters Delaware, Shawnee, west of Scioto River in Licking County

In 1751, surveyor Christopher Gist left the first written account about Licking County by a white man. Twenty-three years later, a book published by a Baptist preacher from Freehold, New Jersey, left the second account.

In 1774, the Rev. David Jones published the book, “A Journal of Two Visits Made to Some Nations of Indians on the West Side of the River Ohio, in the Years 1772 and 1773.”

In the introduction, Jones wrote, “Kind reader, you have in this journal presented to your view my travels in two visits to the Indians on the rivers Ohio and Scioto; in which a description is given of the western world, as far as the towns of the Shawnee, which are situated west of the river Scioto.”

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On June 9, 1773, Jones arrived at Fort Pitt, modern-day Pittsburgh, and began his missionary journey to the Ohio country. Eight months into their journey, on Feb. 10, 1773, Jones and his party left a village of Delaware Indians near present-day Lancaster.

He wrote, “Intending to travel forty miles set out early in the morning, our course more northerly than northeast, the land chiefly low and level and where our horses broke through the frost it might be called bad road and good land. There were no inhabitants by the way. Before night came to the designed town, called Dan. Elliot's wife; a man of that name was said to have here a squaw for his pretended wife. This is a small town consisting of Delaware and Shawnee. The chief is a Shawnee woman who is esteemed and very rich, she entertains travelers, there were four of us in the company, and for our use, her negro quarter was evacuated this night which had a fire in the middle without any chimney.”

Jones added a footnote to this sentence, which states, “This woman has several negroes who were taken from Virginia in time of the last war (the French and Indian War), and now esteemed as her property.”

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His narrative continued: “This woman has a large flock and supplied us with milk. Here also we got corn for our horses at a very expensive price. But Mr. Duncan paid for me here and in our journey till we parted. About a mile before we came to this town, we crossed a large stream called Salt Lick Creek (the Licking River) which empties into the Muskingum, on which the chief Delaware town is situated. The country here appeared calculated for health, fertile and beautiful.”

It is believed that this village was situated at the site of Montour’s Point, just west of Marne. The next day, Jones and his party left the village, recording nothing else of their journey here.

Jones leaves us with a clue of an early white settler named Elliot, who was married to an Indian woman in this town called Dan at Montour’s Point. While he doesn’t elaborate further, next week we will look at other sources that may shed some more light on just who this man Elliot was.

Doug Stout is the Licking County Library local history coordinator. You may contact him at 740.349.5571 or dstout@lickingcountylibrary.org.

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Licking County history: Baptist preacher encounters Delaware, Shawnee