ite population
beyond the Blue Ridge was believed to be considerably over one hundred
thousand. For a decade the "Indian side," as the north shore was
habitually called, was trodden only by occasional hunters, traders,
and explorers. But after Clark's victories on the Mississippi and the
Wabash, the frontiersmen grew bolder. By 1780 they began to plant camps
and cabins on the rich bottom-lands of the Miamis, the Scioto, and the
Muskingum; and when they heard that the British claims in the West had
been formally yielded, they assumed that whatever they could take was
theirs. With the technicalities of Indian claims they had not much
patience. In 1785 Colonel Harmar, commanding at Fort Pitt, sent a
deputation down the river to drive the intruders back. But his agents
returned with the report that the Virginians and Kentuckians were moving
into the forbidden country "by the forties and fifties," and that
they gave every evidence of proposing to remain there. Surveyors were
forthwith set to work in the "Seven Ranges," as the tract just to the
west of the Pennsylvania boundary was called; and Fort Harmar was built
at the mouth of the Muskingum to keep the over-ardent settlers back.

The close of the Revolution brought not only a swift revival of
emigration to the West but also a remarkable outburst of speculation
in western land. March 3, 1786, General Rufus Putnam and some other
Continental officers met at the "Bunch of Grapes" Tavern in Boston and
decided that it would be to their advantage to exchange for land in
the Seven Ranges the paper certificates in which they had been paid for
their military services. Accordingly an "Ohio Company" was organized,
and Dr. Manasseh Cutler--"preacher, lawyer, doctor, statesman,
scientist, land speculator"--was sent off to New York to push the matter
in Congress. The upshot was that Congress authorized the sale of one and
a half million acres east of the Scioto to the Ohio Company, and five
million acres to a newly organized Scioto Company.

The Scioto Company fell into financial difficulties and, after making
an attempt to build up a French colony at Gallipolis, collapsed. But
General Putnam and his associates kept their affairs well in hand and
succeeded in planting the first legal white settlement in the present
State of Ohio. An arduous winter journey brought the first band of
forty-eight settlers, led by Putnam himself, to the mouth of the
Muskingum on April 7, 1788. Here, in the