Human and wolf skeletons reveal a life and death struggle at the edge of the Great Black Swamp

Given my passion for history, archaeology, artifacts, coins, etc.,  I sometimes wonder what occurred in history or even pre-history on the site of what is now my house and backyard.  I've always been a little envious of people who have found artifacts on or near their own property.  When I was a kid, I would go to my aunt and uncle's farmhouse in northwest Ohio and join my cousins in looking for arrowheads and other "Woodlands Indians" artifacts in their soybean fields abutting the Sandusky River.   In addition to arrowheads, they would frequently find discoid artifacts, hockey-puck shaped smooth black stones about 2 or 3 inches in diameter which were definitely not derived from the local rocks, flint drill "bits", and some presumably atlatl counterweights made of some kind of polished banded stone.   Of course, during all of our excursions down into those fields, I would find nothing...

The following is an interesting story, for which unfortunately I cannot return to interview the eyewitnesses to gather further details.  My father's uncles, long deceased, farmed on the ancestral land in rural Seneca County, Ohio, in Liberty Township, just a few miles east of Fostoria, Ohio.  I will attempt to get this pinpointed on Google Maps and post the file on this blog at some point in the future.  Back in I believe the 1920's when they were young men, they were walking the fields probably while plowing with a horse, and found in the soil at their feet a human skeleton, with the corroded remains of a flintlock rifle or musket in immediate proximity.  Directly adjacent to the human skeleton, and only a few feet away, they found the skeletons of several (I believe three) wolves, and I think there was evidence of a bullet in at least one of these wolves.   Clearly a life-and-death struggle had occurred, and unfortunately this person lost the battle, only after taking out several of the wolves.   According to my father, the county sheriff was contacted and arrived to assess the scene, which was obviously not a contemporary scene of foul play.  I do not know what became of the skeleton or whether records exist in the courthouse or sheriff's office logs about this incident, but it would certainly be interesting to know.   

At the time when this person (presumably a man) succumbed to the wolves, this particular location (very close to Wolf Creek, a tributary of the Sandusky River) would have been either on the southern-most border of the Great Black Swamp, or would have been in the primeval forest just south of that border.   I have read accounts of my own ancestors who also settled in Huron County (just to the east) in 1836, who noted how huge bonfires had to be lit at night to keep packs of marauding wolves away while their first log cabins were in progress; this seems to be a common theme from other accounts that I have read from the region prior to the 1840's. It is my understanding from reading various accounts that after 1840 concerted efforts were made to eradicate wolves from the Northern Ohio counties by mass amounts of hunters turning out to hunt and trap inward from a perimeter, thereby "tightening the noose" on the wolves in any given acreage of woods.  

I am intrigued by the identity of this person, the date of his death, and the circumstances surrounding his death.   Did this occur in the winter, when he was perhaps already weakened from frostbite, exposure, and wet/icy buckskin leggings and moccasins?  Was he wounded already?   Was he an American from the 1830's or 1820's, a French trader from a much earlier period, a British agent from the 1700's traversing from the Sandusky valley to Detroit and trying to avoid crossing the Great Black Swamp, or a Native American perhaps armed by the British?  Did he get lost in the dark, unable to build a fire before sundown to safely camp due to a cold and rainy November afternoon?  Was he sick from cholera or typhoid or yellow fever, and therefore an easy target for the wolves (I doubt he was too incapacitated given the evidence of the valiant fight he gave)?  Could he have been a separated survivor or wounded straggler from the ill-fated Crawford (1782) or St. Clair (1791) expeditions, a deserter from the Legion of America, led by the harsh disciplinarian General "Mad Anthony" Wayne (1794), or was he simply an immigrant farmer hoping to settle with his family and make a decent living?   I am sure we will never know.

1814 O-105a "single leaf" capped bust half dollar and the Second Treaty of Greenville

The photos below are of an 1814 capped bust half dollar, which is an O-105a variety, an R4 in rarity, and quite scarce... an elusive coin.  It also happens to be a variety that is listed in what is referred to as the "Red Book", but what is actually titled "A Guide Book of United States Coins", by R.S. Yeoman and Kenneth Bressett.  There's an Amazon.com link to this book on the right-hand side of this page if you're interested - it's been published annually for about the last 64 years, and is an incredibly informative and well-illustrated (photos) reference for a very economical price.  

The reason that this half dollar is a Red Book variety is because on the reverse, directly under the eagle's left wing (from the observer's perspective, not the eagle's), there is what appears to be a single leaf at the topmost part of the olive branch, where normally there are two leaves paired together.  This is because at the Philadelphia Mint in 1814, over time the reverse die probably became clashed and someone at the mint aggressively "lapped" or polished the die in this position to remove the surface defect, and in the process the upper pair of leaves were reduced to a thin remnant resembling a single leaf.  This particular variety, among other early capped bust halves, is known to have a bit of a "raccoon eye" effect on Miss Liberty, which is fairly notable on this half.   

My wife, who did not know this capped bust half dollar was an R4 variety, chose this for me at a flea market in Tampa, and picked it up for only I think about $63 or $70.  It has been cleaned in the past but only just mildly. I think that for $70 for a nice, early date, historic, R4 rarity bust half that is also a Redbook variety, she (accompanied by my daughter) did really well, and I was very pleasantly surprised/thrilled, and also very proud of her "cherrypicking" a great bust half at a cheap price without having knowledge of the variety.   

1814 O-105a capped bust half dollar obverse

1814 O-105a capped bust half dollar reverse

In contemporaneous U.S. history, the year 1814 was extremely important in the ongoing but waning War of 1812.  Military actions included but were not limited to the battle of Fort McHenry in Baltimore, at which Francis Scott Key composed the United States' national anthem, the Star Spangled Banner.  In the vicinity just a short distance southwest of the Great Black Swamp, in Greenville, Ohio, on July 22, 1814, General William Henry Harrison and Governor Lewis Cass (of Michigan territory) negotiated on behalf of the United States government a second treaty with the Wyandot, Delaware, Shawnee, Seneca, Miami and Potawatomi at the same place where the original treaty had been negotiated in 1795.  This Second Treaty of Greenville was referred to as "A TREATY OF PEACE AND FRIENDSHIP Between the United States of America and the tribes of Indians called the Wyandots, Delawares, Shawanoese, Senacas and Miamies."  It provided peace among the tribes, and alliance of these Tribes with the U.S. against Great Britain during the War of 1812.   Shown below is a photo of a "peace pipe" given to the tribes by the U.S. government.

Peace pipe from Second Treaty of Greenville, 1814

This agreement illustrated the continued struggle between the British and the white Americans to establish allies with Ohio's Native American people, and the struggle of the Native Americans to maintain their land and preserve their way of life. This struggle had existed since the American Revolution, but with the United States' victory in the War of 1812, Ohio natives no longer had the British as an ally to assist them in inhibiting the westward migration of white Americans.