Ohio’s History to Becoming a State
The history of Ohio began much earlier though, when the Native Americans arrived in the region. Ohio was originally inhabited by ancient American Indians. The earliest human inhabitants of what is now Ohio was the Paleo-Indian people, who lived in the area as early as 13,000 BC. They were eventually replaced by Native Americans known as the Archaic people. The Archaic period is generally subdivided into the Early, Middle and Late Archaic. Early Archaic people in Ohio are generally thought 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 not accessible.
When the first Europeans began to arrive in North America, Native Americans participated in the fur trade business. When the Iroquois confederation depleted the beaver and other game in the New York region, there was a war launched known as the Beaver Wars, which destroyed or scattered the Indians living in Ohio. The Erie’s along the shore of Lake Erie were virtually eliminated by the Iroquois by the 1680s. Then the Ohio lands were claimed by the Iroquois as their hunting grounds. Ohio was largely uninhabited for several decades.
But population pressure from expanding European colonies on the Atlantic coast compelled several groups of American Indians to relocate to Ohio by the 1730s from the east, Delaware’s and Shawnees arrived, and Wyandots and Ottawa’s from the north. Miami’s lived in what is now to Ohioans as western Ohio. Mingo’s were those Iroquois who migrated west into Ohio.
British military occupation in the Ohio 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 an end.
During the American Revolutionary War, Native Americans in the Ohio Land were divided over which side to support. Such as, the Shawnee leader Blue Jacket and the Delaware leader Buckongahelas sided with the British, while Corn Stalk from the Shawnee and White Eyes from the Delaware sought to remain friendly with the United States. Cornstalk was killed by American militiamen, and White Eyes may have been also. Perhaps the most tragic incident of the war the Gnadenhutten massacre took place in Ohio in 1782.
The Gnadenhutten massacre took place on Friday, March 8, 1782 was a mass murder of ninety six Munsee American Indians, including sixty women and children, by American militia from Pennsylvania during the American Revolutionary War. Many White Americans were outraged by the massacre. However, many frontiersmen, embittered by a cruel war unlike anything ever in the East, voiced support for the militia’s actions. Although there was some talk of bringing the killers to justice, no criminal charges were ever filed.
With the American victory of the Revolutionary War, the British took claims to Ohio and the territory in the West to the Mississippi River to the United States.
American settlement of Ohio began prior to the war and proceeded thereafter. As Ohio’s population numbered 45,000 in December of 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 and submitted a constitution to Congress. In 1953 it was decided to make March 1, 1803 the official date of Ohio’s admittance into the Union.
