sub-commissioner of the British government, embarked at Pittsburg, with some friendly Indians, intending to visit the Wabash and Illinois country, and conclude a treaty with the Indians. Five days from Pittsburg, he notes in his journal that "we passed the mouth of Hochocen, or Bottle River." This translation of the word Hochocen or Hockhocking, is also given by Heckewelder and Johnson, and is undoubtedly correct. The Shawanese called the river Weathakagh-qua, which meant, in their dialect, the same as Hockhocking; and one of the other tribes called it by a name signifying Bow river. All of these names had reference to the winding, crooked course of the stream. The origin of the name Hockhocking-Bottle river-is thus explained by a writer in an old number of the American Pioneer, who says: "About six or seven miles northwest of Lancaster, there is a fall in the Hockhocking of about twenty feet; above the falls, for a short distance, the stream is very narrow and straight, forming a neck, while at the falls it suddenly widens on each side, and swells into the appearance of the body of a bottle. The whole, when seen from above, appears exactly in the shape of a bottle, and from this fact arose the Indian name of Hockhocking." It is to be regretted that the name of the river is now almost invariably abbreviated to Hocking. True, it takes longer to write or pronounce the real name-Hock hocking; but the whites have never rendered such distinguished favors or services to the Indian race as to entitle them to mutilate the Indian language by altering or clipping the few words that cling to the geography of the country. Some of these Indian names are not only expressive in their original signification, but are really musical. The following verses, written many years ago, by a former editor of Cincinnati-Mr. William J. Sperry, of the Globe-though not highly poetical, are worth insertion in this con nection: THE LAST OF THE RED MEN. Sad are fair Muskingum's waters, Sadly, blue Mahoning raves; Tuscarawas' plains are lonely, Lonely are Hockhocking's waves. From where headlong Cuyahoga And the billows of blue Erie, Unto where Potomac rushes Arrowy from the mountain side, And Kanawha's gloomy waters Mingle with Ohio's tide; From the valley of Scioto, And the Huron sisters three, To the foaming Susquehanna, Over hill, and plain, and valley, On the water, in the forest, But sad are fair Muskingum's waters, Sadly, blue Mahoning raves; Tuscarawas' plains are lonely, Lonely are Hockhocking's waves. By Kanawha dwells the stranger, Cuyahoga feels the chain; Stranger ships vex Erie's billows, Strangers plough Scioto's plain. And the Iroquois have wasted On the waters, in the valley, Only by the Cattaraugus, Or by Lake Chautauqua's side, Or among the scanty woodlands By the Allegheny's tide: There, in spots, like sad oases, Lone amid the sandy plains, There the Seneca, still wasting, Amid desolation reigns. A CHAPTER II. The Ohio Company. LL of the present county of Athens was included in the original "Ohio Company's Purchase." It formed a part of Washington county until the year 1805, so that for a period of sixteen years, or until the date of its severance from Washington and erection into a separate county, their histories were, in some sense, identical. The fortified and well-protected settlement of Marietta, begun in 1788, very soon pushed its outposts into the interior, and many of those who first located within the limits of Washington, died within the limits of Athens county. The number of instances is still greater in which the second generation of pioneer families is found to have removed from one county to the other. In view of these facts we may with propriety introduce into this narrative some account of the formation of "The Ohio Company" and its founders, and of the first colony planted under its auspices at Marietta in 1788, by which Washington and Athens counties became. the site of the earliest white settlement made in the territory of the Northwest. The conclusion of the Revolutionary war, as of all earnest and protracted wars, witnessed the sudden throwing-out of employment of a great many men. There were patriotic officers who had risked their lives and sacrificed their property in the contest, and no less patriotic soldiers who, though they had not sacrified so much, found themselves at the end of the war with an abundance of liberty but no property, and their occupation gone. The eastern states abounded with these men. They were men of character, energy, and enterprise, full of patriotism and true democratic ideas, proud of their manhood and of their ability to labor. Nor were they in every case men of merely physical resources; in many instances they had enjoyed the advantages of scholastic training, and had mingled the culture of science with the profession of arms. Others of them, though not educated, in the usual acceptation of the term, had that strong native sense and "mother wit" which avail far more in the world than the knowledge of mere pedants however extensive. Bold, active, and adventurous, they had the fullest confidence in the future of their country, and longed to bear a further part in its history and development. Added, doubtless, to such considerations was a desire to rebuild their shattered fortunes, and to regain, under the large liberty and equal laws |