they saw that the soil could produce almost any
crop, and the weather was so mild and lovely that they must have been
confirmed in their belief of all that Dr. Cutler had told them of the
climate. Captain Pipe, the Delaware chief who had brought Crawford to
his death of cruel torment a few years before, was encamped for trade
near the military post, and with seventy other Indians he welcomed the
newcomers to the Muskingum, where they wisely built a stockade as soon
as they could for defense against their red friends. They settled down
at once to hew their fields out of the forest, and the very next year
they had a school for their children. Bathsheba Rouse taught this first
Ohio school, and Ohio women may well be proud that she taught it a whole
year before a man taught the next Ohio school. The settlers called their
town Adelphia, but soon changed its name to Marietta, which they made up
from the name of the French queen Marie Antoinette, though Marietta was
a common enough name in Italian before their invention of it.

They built mills on the streams, and in the streams, where the current
turned their wheels, and after a first summer of rejoicing they quieted
down to the serious business of clearing farms, having ague, and saving
their scalps from the hospitable Delawares and their allies. The very
year after their arrival the wonderful climate behaved so ungratefully
that the corn crop was cut off by an early frost; and something like a
famine followed; but still the year of the settlement was one of high
hopes and sober jollity. The pioneers celebrated the Fourth of July,
1788, with a grand banquet of "venison barbecued, buffalo steaks, bear
meat, wild fowl, and a little _pork_, as the choicest luxury of all;"
and at least "one fish, a great pike, weighing one hundred pounds, and
over six feet long," which could easily be "the largest ever taken by
white men in the waters of the Muskingum." Several of the Indians, who
were always ready for eating and drinking, took part in the celebration,
and the settlers saw with pleasure that they did not like the sound of
the cannon. They all "kept it up till after twelve o'clock at night, and
then went home and slept till daylight."

The Marietta people knew how to enjoy themselves, but they had not
come to Ohio for pastime, and they were soon all hard at work improving
themselves as well as their lands. They not only had the first school
in Ohio, but the first Sunday school.