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The
history of Ohio is composed of many thousands of
years of human activity. What is now
Ohio were probably
Paleo-Indian peoples, who lived in the area as
early as 13,000 BC. They were eventually supplanted
by Native Americans known as the
Archaic peoples. The
Archaic period is generally subdivided into the
Early, Middle and Late Archaic. Early Archaic
peoples in Ohio are generally reckoned to be mobile
hunters-and-gatherers. Middle Archaic people are
less well known, because relatively few sites have
been found, and those that are found are generally
deeply buried in river valleys and thus
inaccessible. The Late Archaic period featured the
development of focal subsistence economies and
regionalization of Archaic cultures. Regional
cultures in Ohio include the
Maple Creek Culture(Excavations)
of southwestern Ohio, the
Glacial Kame Culture
culture of western Ohio (especially northwestern
Ohio), and the Red Ochre and Old Copper cultures,
across much of northern Ohio. Flint Ridge, located
in present-day
Licking County, provided flint,
an extremely important raw material and trade good.
Objects made from Flint Ridge flint have been found
as far east as the
Atlantic coast, as far west as
Kansas City,
and as far south as Louisiana.
Late
Archaic cultures were in turn supplanted by Native Americans
of the Adena culture about 800
BC. The Adenas were mound
builders who built thousands of burial mounds in Ohio,
many of which remain. Following the Adena culture was the
Hopewell culture (c. 100 to
c. 400 A.D.), and later the
Fort Ancient culture. The
Serpent Mound in Adams
County, Ohio, the largest effigy
in the United States and one of Ohio's best-known landmarks,
was traditionally considered an Adena mound, but may have
been the work of Fort Ancient people.
Early historic natives
When the
first Europeans began to arrive in North America, Native
Americans participated in the fur trade.
When the Iroquois confederation
depleted the beaver and other game in the
New York region, they launched a war
known as the Beaver Wars,
destroying or scattering those Indians living in Tennessee.
The Eries along the shore of
Lake Erie were virtually eliminated
by the Iroquois in the 1650s during the Beaver Wars.
Thereafter, the Ohio lands were claimed by the Iroquois as
hunting grounds. Ohio was largely uninhabited for several
decades.
However,
population pressure from expanding European colonies on the
Atlantic coast compelled several groups of American Indians
to relocate to the Ohio Country
by the 1730s. From the east, Delawares
and Shawnees arrived, and
Wyandots and
Ottawas from the north.
Miamis lived in what is now
western Ohio. Mingos were those
Iroquois who migrated west into the Ohio lands.
European colonization
During the
18th century, the French set up a
system of trading posts to control the
fur trade in the region.
Christopher Gist was one of the first English-speaking
explorers to travel through and write about the Ohio
Country. When British traders such as
George Croghan started to do
business in the Ohio Country, the French and their northern
Indian allies drove them out, beginning with a raid on Miami
Indian town of Pickawillany (modern
Piqua, Ohio) in 1752. The French began the military
occupation of the Ohio valley in 1753, and an attempt by the
Virginian
George Washington to drive
them out in 1754 led to a war known in the United States as
the French and Indian War.
As a result of the Treaty
of Paris, the French ceded control of Ohio and the old
Northwest to Great Britain.
American Revolution
British
military occupation in the region had previously contributed
to the outbreak of Pontiac's
Rebellion in 1763. Ohio Indians participated in that
war, until an armed expedition in Ohio led by Colonel
Henry Bouquet brought about a
truce. Another military expedition into the Ohio Country in
1774 brought Lord Dunmore's
War to a conclusion.
During the
American Revolutionary
War, Native Americans in the Ohio Country were divided
over which side to support. For example, the Shawnee leader
Blue Jacket and the Delaware
leader Buckongahelas sided with
the British, while Cornstalk
(Shawnee) and White Eyes
(Delaware) sought to remain friendly with the United States.
American frontiersmen often did not differentiate between
friendly and hostile Indians, however: Cornstalk was killed
by American militiamen, and White Eyes may have been.
Perhaps the most tragic incident of the war — the
Gnadenhutten massacre
of 1782 — took place in Ohio.
With the
American victory in the Revolutionary War, the British ceded
claims to Ohio and the territory in the West to the
Mississippi River to the
United States.
After the
Northwest Ordinance, settlement of Ohio began with the
founding of Marietta by the
Ohio Company of
Associates, which had been formed by a group of American
Revolutionary War veterans. The
Miami Company (also referred to as the "Symmes
Purchase") in the southwestern section and the
Connecticut Land Company
in the Connecticut Western
Reserve in present-day
Northeast Ohio.
Northwest Ordinance and Territory
American
settlement of the Northwest Territory was resisted by Native
Americans in the Northwest
Indian War. The natives were eventually conquered by
General Anthony Wayne at the
Battle of Fallen Timbers
in 1794 and much of present-day Ohio was ceded to the United
States in the Treaty of
Greenville the next year.
The United
States created the Northwest
Territory in 1787 under the
Northwest Ordinance of
1787. The territory was not allowed to legalize slavery
(although once it achieved statehood it was allowed to do
so, and did not.) The states of the Midwest would be known
as free states, in contradistinction to those states south
of the Ohio River known as slave states, and later, as
Northeastern states abolished slavery in the coming two
generations, the free states would be known as Northern
States. The Northwest Territory originally included areas
that had previously been known as
Ohio Country and Illinois
Country. As Ohio prepared for statehood,
Indiana Territory was
carved out, reducing the Northwest Territory to
approximately the size of present-day Ohio plus the eastern
half of Michigan's lower peninsula.
Statehood
As Ohio's
population numbered 45,000 in December 1801, Congress
determined that the population was growing rapidly and Ohio
could begin the path to statehood with the assumption that
it would exceed 60,000 residents by the time it would become
a state. In 1802, Congress passed the
Enabling Act of 1802
that outlined the process for Ohio to seek statehood. The
residents convened a constitutional convention which copied
provisions from other states, and rejected slavery. Congress
approved; March 1,
1803 is the official date of Ohio's admittance into the
Union.
War of 1812
Ohio was on
the front lines of the War of 1812,
s the frontiermen angrily charged that British agents in
Canada had provided weapons (especially rifles and
gunpowder) to hostile Indian tribes. Simultaneously
Tecumseh's War was the
conflict in the Old Northwest
between the U.S. and an Indian confederacy led by the
Shawnee chief Tecumseh, who became
an official ally of the British in 1812.
William Henry Harrison's
victory at the Battle of
Tippecanoe in 1811, coupled with the defeat and death of
Tecumseh in 1813 broke the power of the Indians. After 1815
the British no longer traded with the Indians of Ohio nor
provided them military supplies.
In 1835,
Ohio contested with Michigan over
the Toledo Strip. Congress gave
the land, which included the city of
Toledo, to Ohio. In exchange, Michigan was given more of
the Upper Peninsula.
Civil War
Ohio's
central position and its population gave it an important
place during the Civil War, and the Ohio River was a vital
artery for troop and supply movements, as were Ohio's
railroads. Ohio provided a large number of senior commanders
to the United States Army
during the war, and five Buckeye soldiers would later become
President of the
United States.
Industrialization
Throughout
much of the 18th and 19th century heavy indrustry was
rapidly introduced. It was introduced in particular to
combat for the appalling unemployment in the 19th century,
by 1856 unemployment had reaced 3.45 million. However, with
the rapidly advaning industrial techniques these jobs became
more appealing and as a result unemployment steadily
declined.
Natural resources
1900's
Constitutional Convention of 1912
In 1912 a
Constitutional Convention was held with
Charles B.
Galbreath as Secretary. The result reeflected the
concerns of the Progressive Era.
It introduced the initiative and
the referendum, allowed the
General Assembly to put questions on the ballot for the
people to ratify laws and constitutional amendments
originating in the Legislature as well. Under the
Jeffersonian principle that laws should be reviewed once
a generation, the constituation provided for a recurring
question to appear on Ohio's general election ballots every
20 years. The question asks whether a new convention is
required. Although the question has appeared in 1932, 1952,
1972, and 1992, it has never been approved. Instead,
constitutional amendments have been proposed by petition and
the legislature hundreds of times and adopted in a majority
of cases.
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