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Southern side of the Luthor List Mound, aka "Burning Indian Mound" or "Signal Mound", built by the prehistoric Adena culture, located northeast of the junction of the Kingston Pike and Hitler Road #2 south of Circleville in Circleville Township, Pickaway County, Ohio. One of the largest burial mounds in Pickaway County, the Luthor List Mound is believed to contain the skeletons of many leading members of the society that built it. The mound's location atop a small ridge, far from major bodies of water, is indicative that it was built by Adenan peoples, who often buried their chieftains in mounds such as the Luthor List Mound. Such mounds were typically built in stages: individuals would be buried within small mounds, and the resulting mound cluster would be covered with earth and converted into a single large mound. Unlike many of the region's conical mounds, the Luthor List Mound has seen very little damage since white settlement of the region. The erosion caused by the plows of past farmers has not damaged the Luthor List Mound because of its location -- rising 12 feet (3.7 m) above the ridgeline and with a diameter of at least 75 feet (23 m) in all directions, and covered with trees, it is not an ideal farming location:photo by Nytend, 10 July 2010
Adena house, paired-post circular hut. The Adena culture was a Pre-Columbian Native American culture that existed from 1000 to 200 BC, in a time known as the Early Woodland period..The Adena culture refers to what were probably a number of related Native American societies sharing a burial complex and ceremonial system. The Adena lived in a variety of locations, including Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia, Kentucky and parts of Pennsylvania and New York: image by siyajkak, 27 May 2005
Frontier explorer Christopher Gist was the first recorded European visitor to the site of the later white settlers' community of Circleville, Ohio area. Gist reached the Indian settlement "Maguck," a small town of about 10 Native American families on the east bank of the Scioto River and the south side of the present-day Circleville, on January 20, 1751, and remained in the town until January 24.
Original Circleville: image via Circleville, Ohio town website
The Circleville Earthworks were constructed by the Hopewell culture (100 B.C. to 500 A.D.) of prehistoric Native American people in what is now Circleville, Ohio. A circular earthwork consisted of an outer circular wall 1,140 feet in diameter and an inner circular wall with a ditch between them. This double-circle was connected to a square enclosure 908 feet long on each side. In 1820, the walls were five to six feet in height and the ditch was around 15 feet deep. The square had eight openings and each opening was partially blocked by a mound. These mounds were about 40 feet in diameter and four feet in height. At the center of the concentric circles there was a mound, which was about 15 feet in height and about 60 feet in diameter. When excavated, this mound was found to contain a number of burials and artifacts.
Daniel Dresbach founded the community of Circleville along the Scioto River in 1810. The town received its name from circular earthworks that Hopewell Native Americans had constructed in the area, although urban development has destroyed many of those original mounds. Circleville became the county seat for Pickaway County in 1810, and the first courthouse was built in the middle of the circular earthworks for which the community was named.
Dresbach laid out Circleville in a circular pattern. During the 1830s, residents tired of the unusual street patterns. In 1837, the Ohio legislature authorized the Circleville Squaring Company to redesign the community with a more traditional grid pattern. The Circleville Squaring Company completed work in 1856. This marked one of the earlier examples of urban redevelopment in the United States. Most of the native earthworks disappeared as a result of this redevelopment.
(Ohio History Central)
Bird's-eye view of Circleville in 1836, looking south: color print, artist unknown. Circleville, located along the Scioto River, was founded in 1810 and became the county seat for Pickaway County (via Ohio History Central)
Birds eye view of the city of Circleville, Pickaway County, Ohio [after completion of "squaring" into a conventional modern urban grid pattern]: A. Ruger, 1876 (Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress)
Map of the Ohio Country: image by Nikater, 17 September 2007; background map incorporating later state boundaries courtesy of Demis and Wilcomb E. Washburn: Handbook of North American Indians. Vol. 4: History of Indian-White Relations. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington D.C. 1988
One day I undertook a tour through the country, and the diversity and beauties of nature I met with in this charming season, expelled every gloomy and vexatious thought. Just at the close of day the gentle gales retired, and left the place to the disposal of a profound calm. Not a breeze shook the most tremulous leaf. I had gained the summit of a commanding ridge, and, looking round with astonishing delight, beheld the ample plains, the beauteous tracts below. On the other hand, I surveyed the famous river Ohio that rolled in silent dignity, marking the western boundary of Kentucke with inconceivable grandeur. At a vast distance I beheld the mountains lift their venerable brows, and penetrate the clouds. All things were still.
. . .
We proceeded successfully, and after a long and fatiguing journey through a mountainous wilderness, in a westward direction, on the seventh day of June following, we found ourselves on Red-River, where John Finley had formerly been trading with the Indians, and, from the top of an eminence, saw with pleasure the beautiful level of Kentucke. Here let me observe, that for some time we had experienced the most uncomfortable weather as a prelibation of our future sufferings. At this place we encamped, and made a shelter to defend us from the inclement season, and began to hunt and reconnoitre the country. We found every where abundance of wild beasts of all sorts, through this vast forest. The buffaloes were more frequent than I have seen cattle in the settlements, browzing on the leaves of the cane, or croping the herbage on those extensive plains, fearless, because ignorant, of the violence of man. Sometimes we saw hundreds in a drove, and the numbers about the salt springs were amazing. In this forest, the habitation of beasts of every kind natural to America, we practised hunting with great success until the twenty-second day of December following [1769].
. . .
On the twenty-fifth of this month [July 1777] a reinforcement of forty-five men arrived from North-Carolina, and about the twentieth of August following, Col. Bowman arrived with one hundred men from Virginia. Now we began to strengthen, and from hence, for the space of six weeks, we had skirmishes with Indians, in one quarter or other, almost every day. The savages now learned the superiority of the Long Knife, as they call the Virginians, by experience; being out-generalled in almost every battle. Our affairs began to wear a new aspect, and the enemy, not daring to venture on open war, practised secret mischief at times.
. . .
The Indians had spies out viewing our movements, and were greatly alarmed with our increase in number and fortifications. The Grand Councils of the nations were held frequently, and with more deliberation than
usual. They evidently saw the approaching hour when the Long Knife would disposess them of their desirable habitations; and anxiously concerned for futurity, determined utterly to extirpate the whites out of Kentucke. We were not intimidated by their movements, but frequently gave them proofs of our courage. About the first of August [1778], I made an incursion into the Indian country, with a party of nineteen men,
in order to surprise a small town up Sciotha, called Paint-Creek-Town. We advanced within four miles thereof, where we met a party of thirty Indians, on their march against Boonsborough, intending to join the othersfrom Chelicothe. A smart fight ensued betwixt us for some time: At length the savages gave way, and fled. We had no loss on our side...
. . .
[1779] The hostile disposition of the savages, and their allies, caused General Clark, the commandant at the Falls of the Ohio, immediately to begin an expedition with his own regiment, and the armed force
of the country, against Pecaway, the principal town of the Shawanese, on a branch of Great Miami, which he finished with great success, took seventeen scalps, and burnt the town to ashes, with the loss
of seventeen men...
Daniel Boone, from The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon; containing a Narrative of the Wars of Kentucke, in John Filson: The Discovery, Settlement and Present State of Kentucke (1784) [Chelicothe = Chilicothe, first capital of Ohio, upon attainment of statehood, 1803; Sciotha = Scioto [River]; Shawanese = Shawnees; Pecaway = present site of Circleville, Pickaway County, Ohio]
"We Virginians had for some time been waging a war of intrusion upon them, and I, amongst the rest, rambled through the woods in pursuit of their race, as I now would follow the tracks of [a] ravenous animal."
Daniel Boone, on the settler-Indian conflicts in Ohio Country, quoted in Maria R. Audobon, ed. Audobon and his Journals (1897)
The Pekowi or Pekoway band were one of one of the five divisions of the Shawnee people during the eighteenth century. Together with the other four divisions they formed the loose confederacy that was the Shawnee tribe.
Traditionally, Shawnee ritual leaders came from the Pekowi patrilineal division.
All five Shawnee division names have been variously spelt. Variations of the name Pekowi are reflected in many place names, including Pickaway (referred to by Boone as "Pecaway").
The Shawnee Prophet, Tenskwatawa, brother of Tecumseh: Charles Bird King (1785-1862), commissioned by Bureau of Indian Affairs, c. 1820; image by P.S. Burton, 29 July 2012 (Smithsonian American Art Museum)
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Ten-sqúat-a-way, The Open Door, Known as The Prophet, Brother of Tecumseh: George Catlin (1796-1872), 1830,oil on canvas, 73.7 x 60.9 cm (Smithsonian American Art Museum)
“The ‘Shawnee Prophet,’ is perhaps one of the most remarkable men, who has flourished on these frontiers for some time past. This man is brother of the famous Tecumseh, and quite equal in his medicines or mysteries, to what his brother was in arms; he was blind in his right eye, and in his right hand he was holding his ‘medicine fire,’ and his ‘sacred string of beads’ in the other. With these mysteries he made his way through most of the North Western tribes, enlisting warriors wherever he went, to assist Tecumseh in effecting his great scheme, of forming a confederacy of all the Indians on the frontier, to drive back the whites and defend the Indians’ rights; which he told them could never in any other way be protected . . . [he] had actually enlisted some eight or ten thousand, who were sworn to follow him home; and in a few days would have been on their way with him, had not a couple of his political enemies from his own tribe... defeated his plans, by pronouncing him an imposter . . . This, no doubt, has been a very shrewd and influential man, but circumstances have destroyed him . . . and he now lives respected, but silent and melancholy in his tribe.”-- Catlin
Ten-sqúat-a-way, The Open Door, Known as The Prophet, Brother of Tecumseh: George Catlin (1796-1872), 1830,oil on canvas, 73.7 x 60.9 cm (Smithsonian American Art Museum)
“The ‘Shawnee Prophet,’ is perhaps one of the most remarkable men, who has flourished on these frontiers for some time past. This man is brother of the famous Tecumseh, and quite equal in his medicines or mysteries, to what his brother was in arms; he was blind in his right eye, and in his right hand he was holding his ‘medicine fire,’ and his ‘sacred string of beads’ in the other. With these mysteries he made his way through most of the North Western tribes, enlisting warriors wherever he went, to assist Tecumseh in effecting his great scheme, of forming a confederacy of all the Indians on the frontier, to drive back the whites and defend the Indians’ rights; which he told them could never in any other way be protected . . . [he] had actually enlisted some eight or ten thousand, who were sworn to follow him home; and in a few days would have been on their way with him, had not a couple of his political enemies from his own tribe... defeated his plans, by pronouncing him an imposter . . . This, no doubt, has been a very shrewd and influential man, but circumstances have destroyed him . . . and he now lives respected, but silent and melancholy in his tribe.”-- Catlin
Pah-te-cóo-saw aka Straight Man, Shawnee, Semicivilized: George Catlin (1796-1872), 1830, oil on canvas, 73.7 x 60.9 cm(Smithsonian American Art Museum)
Grass, Bush and Blossom or Lay-lóo-ah-pee-ái-shee-kaw, Shawnee, Semicivilized: George Catlin (1796-1782),1830, oil on canvas,73.7 x 60.9 cm (Smithsonian American Art Museum)
The artist described the Shawnee at the time of this portrait: “Remains of a numerous tribe, formerly inhabiting part of Pennsylvania, afterwards Ohio, and recently removed west of the Mississippi River. Number at present about 1200.”
Shawnee leader Tecumseh (1768-1813), pictured in a British general's uniform: Benson John Lossing (1813-1891), c. 1868.
A colored version of Lossing's portrait of Tecumseh. No fully authenticated portrait of Tecumseh exists; Lossing had not met the Native Indian leader and assumed that he was a British general.
Working from a pencil sketch made in 1808 by Pierre le Dru, Lossing replaced Tecumseh's native costume with a British uniform and painted this portrait. Lossing published the painting in his The Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812 (1868): image by Nikater, 6 February 2007
"Where today are the Pekoway ? Where are the Narragansett, the Mochican, the Pocanet, and other powerful tribes of our people? They
have vanished before the avarice and oppression of the white man, as snow before the summer sun ... Sleep not longer, O Choctaws and Chickasaws ... Will not the bones of our dead be plowed up, and their graves turned into plowed fields?"
-- Tecumseh, 1811
Cornstalk (Shawnee: Hokoleskwa) (ca. 1720 – November 10, 1777), a prominent leader of the Shawnee nation: illustrator unknown, in John Frost, L.L. D: Frost's pictorial history of Indian wars and captivities from the earliest record of American history
to the present time; image by CDA, 16 September 2012
Distribution of Shawnee language: Map redrawn and modified from two maps by cartographer Roberta Bloom appearing in Marianne Mithun:
The Languages of Native North America, 1999; image by Ishwar. 24 August 2005
Capture of the daughters of Daniel Boone and Richard Callaway by the Indians: Karl Bodmer, 1852; image by Marmadukepercy, 2011 (Yale University Art Gallery)
Capture of Boone and Stewart by Shawnees, 1769: engraver unknown, illustration fromCecil B. Hartley: Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone, 1859: image by Kevin Myers, 4 July 2006
Daniel Boone's ritual adoption by the Shawnees: engraver unknown, illustration from Cecil B. Hartley: Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone, 1859: image by Kevin Myers, 4 July 2006
Luthor List Mound, built by the prehistoric Adena culture, located northeast of the junction of the Kingston Pike and Hitler Road #2 south of Circleville in Circleville Township, Pickaway County, Ohio: photo by Andrew Williams,18 December 2010
Luthor List Mound (La petite mort), built by the prehistoric Adena culture, located northeast of the junction of the Kingston Pike and Hitler Road #2 south of Circleville in Circleville Township, Pickaway County, Ohio: photo by Andrew Williams, 19 December 2010