MOUNT VERNON -- It’s unfortunate that relatively little of the Knox County area’s American Indian history was preserved.
The obvious reason is that the early White settlers were taking over land once occupied by natives, and little thought was given to preserving information about the displaced people. An additional complication is that this process happened through a period of intermittent warfare from the 1700s into the 1800s.
The Lenape tribe, known to white settlers as the Delaware tribe, once lived in Knox County, Ohio. This is an early historical drawing of Lenape tribe members drawn on the east coast of the U.S. before the tribe was pushed beyond the Allegheny Mountains to Ohio.
It was when a grave was dug for young Henry Cooper in 1894 that the historical Indian burial was discovered. Grave artefacts dated the find to the historical period, and Sac-a-manc’s local prominence suggests that he could have been buried there after he was killed during the War of 1812. Mound View Cemetery was not founded until the 1850s.
The original mound of Mound View Cemetery is officially known as the McLaughlin Mound. In addition to an ancient Adena burial at the base of the mound, a later historical American Indian burial was discovered at the base of the mound, believed to be Chief Sac-a-manc.
GALLERY: Sac-a-manc
The Lenape tribe, known to white settlers as the Delaware tribe, once lived in Knox County, Ohio. This is an early historical drawing of Lenape tribe members drawn on the east coast of the U.S. before the tribe was pushed beyond the Allegheny Mountains to Ohio.
It was when a grave was dug for young Henry Cooper in 1894 that the historical Indian burial was discovered. Grave artefacts dated the find to the historical period, and Sac-a-manc’s local prominence suggests that he could have been buried there after he was killed during the War of 1812. Mound View Cemetery was not founded until the 1850s.
The original mound of Mound View Cemetery is officially known as the McLaughlin Mound. In addition to an ancient Adena burial at the base of the mound, a later historical American Indian burial was discovered at the base of the mound, believed to be Chief Sac-a-manc.
The outbreak of the War of 1812 brought open warfare to the Ohio country, including scalping raids by Indians encouraged and supplied by the British.
There were Indians in this area who lived peacefully alongside the Whites such as Chief Tom Jelloway, whose name is remembered in the creek and the hamlet in northeastern Knox County.
Jelloway lived in the area in the early 1800s, and is recorded in one historical story demonstrating his skills as a bird charmer to a startled Brown Township farmer.
But there were natives who did not resign themselves to the coming of the Whites. One such chieftain was to become a name that was feared all along the frontier: Sac-a-manc.
Little is known about this interesting historical figure, other than the fact that he was the bearer of the news of the War of 1812 to the Whites. It must be remembered that news traveled slowly along the frontier, and the Whites living in Ohio were the last to hear about the war. Word reached Fort
Detroit, a British outpost in Michigan, and from there spread to the Indians who had been supplied with guns by the British.
Sac-a-manc is said to have been a young chieftain of the Delaware tribe. The Delaware Indians had been given that name by the White settlers of the eastern colonies. The name comes from the Delaware River, colony, and state, all of which were named after the British Lord de la Warr. The tribe’s name for themselves was the Lenape.
Known among native nations as the peacemakers, the Lenape attempted to do the same with the White settlers, but found themselves getting pushed further and further west after the first contact of the 1600s.
After 150 years, the Delaware had been forced all the way to Ohio, and the coming of war promised further displacement. Tom Jelloway opted to take the traditional role of peace, and chose to live a solitary life, partially integrated into the new White society. Sac-a-manc did not.
Sac-a-manc’s origins are unclear. It is known that he was familiar with the entire Greenville treaty area of Ohio, and was known as an aggressive young chief when the War of 1812 broke out. This suggests that he was likely born after 1785.
Some sources claim that the Kokosing River valley was his home, but he moved freely from here to the Scioto, Sandusky, and Maumee valleys. The early historical novel Philip Seymour, or Pioneer Life in Richland County, Ohio, which contains a great deal of historical information includes a footnote at one point, regarding the Indian raids that happened as the War of 1812 erupted:
“… a party of British and Indians made their appearance at the Rapids … One of these was a young Delaware chief named Sac-a-manc. This was the same notorious chief whose name was a terror to many a poor pioneer family. Like a stealthy tiger he sought his prey in ambuscade. The name of Sac-a-manc was well-known among the pioneers of Owl Creek, Knox County, where he distinguished himself in the scalping business.”
This suggests that Sac-a-manc’s home base was Knox County, and that said knowledge was passed down orally, which is entirely possible considering that Philip Seymour was published in 1858. It is widely considered likely that author James Franklin M’Gaw collected many such local history stories from people with living memory of the events themselves. This information marks Sac-a-manc’s entry into the annals of history.
More we cannot say, for there are no records of Sac-a-manc before 1812, when it was recorded that Sac-a-manc led a raiding party that stole everything of value from the white settlements near what is today Toledo.
Shortly after that, he met up with a French-Canadian fur trapper named Peter Manor (or Minor, or Minard, according to different sources), on the Maumee River a little further southwest. The two had long known each other, and conversed. Sac-a-manc liked the fur trapper and had never had any problems with him or his trade, for Manor lived much like the Indians.
He decided to give the trapper a heads-up about what was happening, so Manor could keep himself out of danger. Sac-a-manc had heard from the British forts that war had been declared.
He said that the British were still trying to figure out what they were going to do, but that some of the Indians were already planning. He said a war council would be meeting at the British Fort Malden in 10 days, and that he would return for it.
Meanwhile, however, the Indian said that he was going to honor the declaration of war by making a raid into the settled areas.
"I shall go to Owl Creek,” Sac-a-manc said to the French trader, according to Hezekiah Lord Hosmer’s Early History of the Maumee Valley. “I shall kill some of the Longknives before I come back, and will show you some of their scalps. In ten days after I get back, all the hostile tribes will hold a council at Malden, and very soon after that we shall come to this place and kill all the Yankees. You, Manor, are a good Frenchman and must not tell them what I say."
Sac-a-manc then proceeded toward Knox County along with four of his warriors.
If they went by canoe, it would most likely have been by heading up the Sandusky River valley to the river’s southernmost point, southwest of where Bucyrus stands today in Crawford County, then porting his canoe over to the Olentangy River, and taking it southeast.
After another portage across land, they could have put in on the upper course of the Kokosing River (known to the Whites as Owl Creek) near Williamsport in Morrow County. Following the river downstream would soon have brought the raiders into Knox County. Going across the countryside by horseback on established trails would have brought them even more quickly.
Peter Manor, meanwhile, was disturbed by the knowledge that Sac-o-manc had imparted to him. He decided that it was his moral duty to warn the local militia, led by Major Amos Swafford. Swafford, alas, laughed in his face, certain that if there had been a declaration of war with the British, he would have heard about it before the Indians.
Six days later, Sac-a-manc returned to the Maumee River and showed Manor three scalps, which he identified as being the scalps of a family living along Owl Creek that he had raided and killed.
This brings to mind some questions, though. According to Manor, Sac-a-manc’s stated intention had been to kill some “Longknives,” which was an Indian term for the White soldiers, who carried long swords. It appears that, instead, he attacked civilian targets.
Such raids were, unfortunately, part of the total warfare that erupted along the frontier, including such infamous events as the Copus Massacre in Richland County, where native raiders attacked the cabin of Reverend Copus, whom they thought had betrayed them.
With four White casualties, the Copus Massacre has gone down in local history.
So where are Sac-a-manc’s victims? But his own account, it was a family in a cabin, and not Longknives. Sac-a-manc’s alleged attack came from months earlier than the Copus Massacre, with three casualties, yet I can find nothing in period documents to prove it ever happened.
The early settlers of the Kokosing River valley were often quite isolated, but, then again, there were so few of them, could even the chaos of a war zone result in an entire family being lost?
While some people gathered in blockhouses and other sturdy shelters, there were those who didn’t. Dr. Lorle Porter points out in her book Politics & Peril: Mount Vernon, Ohio, in the 19th century that while Aaron Hill worked his trade in Mount Vernon, his wife and children remained at their farm in Miller Township.
Sarah Newell Hill dug a hiding space beneath the puncheon floor beams of their cabin and slept there every night with the children while the frontier hostilities continued. So, there certainly were outliers who could have been attacked.
It’s just curious that no known case of missing settlers matches up with Sac-a-manc’s story.
Or, should we say, Peter Manor’s story?
As the French fur trader was the ultimate source of this story, we have to examine him as a source. But there is no evident reason why he would fabricate such a story, for by speaking to the American militia, Manor was risking his relationship with the Indians who allowed him to pass among them, in Indian territory, playing his trade without hindrance.
And years after the war, Manor was the founding father of the village of Providence, Ohio, a canal town in Lucas County. Unlike the vast majority of canal towns, which had rough reputations, Providence was said to be a quiet, devout place, thanks to the influence of Peter Manor.
In sum, he seems an unlikely figure to fabricate such a story.
After boasting of his intent, Sac-a-manc certainly had to produce something to show Manor on his return to the Maumee River. Did he and the four tribesmen under his command actually travel all the way to Knox County and back to the Maumee River in only six days?
With their command of waterways, it’s not impossible that they could have done so by canoe. It’s far more likely if they had been traveling by horseback. Not finding soldiers to attack, it is possible that Sac-a-manc settled for an isolated cabin somewhere along the Kokosing, and the record of the settlers’ disappearance has simply been lost. It is also possible that the scalps Sac-a-manc produced were native, instead of White.
The various tribes in Ohio at this time included Delaware, Mingo, Shawanese, Ottawa, and more, and there were disputes among them that occasionally erupted into outright fighting. We have no way of knowing what really happened.
At any rate, the threatened Indian war council did in fact happen, followed by the first official attacks of the war, with native forces burning down White settlements near the Maumee River.
The next thing that we hear about Sac-a-manc was that he was killed in further fighting during the War of 1812. What we don’t know, oddly, is where. No historical source seems able to nail down this piece of information. I only found two second-hand references, one of which places his death in the Maumee River area, while the other says it happened near Mount Vernon.
The possible historical footnote is that in the late 1800s, an excavation of the mound in Mount Vernon’s Moundview Cemetery discovered an unexpected grave, one deduced to be from the historical period because of the warrior being buried with an iron pipe.
It was supposed that the most likely candidate for such a burial was Sac-a-manc himself. It’s certainly possible that his tribe might have buried such a prominent war chief there, particularly if he was originally from this area.
And, considering that most settlers were in hiding during the hostilities, it is even possible that if Sac-a-manc died near Lake Erie, and the season wasn’t at the height of summer, his warriors could very well have ported him all the way back to Owl Creek for his burial.
