80, on his raid against
the Indians of Chillicothe. In 1788, John Cleves Symmes, the first
United States judge of the Northwest Territory, purchased from
Congress a million acres of land, lying on the Ohio between the two
Miami Rivers. Matthias Denman bought from him a square mile at the
eastern end of the grant, "on a most delightful high bank" opposite
the Licking, and--on a cash valuation for the land, of two hundred
dollars--took in with him as partners Robert Patterson and John
Filson. Filson was a schoolmaster, had written the first history of
Kentucky, and seems to have enjoyed much local distinction. To him was
entrusted the task of inventing a name for the settlement which the
company proposed to plant here. The outcome was "Losantiville," a
pedagogical hash of Greek, Latin, and French: _L_, for Licking; _os_,
mouth; _anti_, opposite; _ville_, city--Licking-opposite-City, or
City-opposite-Licking, whichever is preferred. This was in August.
The Fates work quickly, for in October poor Filson was scalped by the
Indians in the neighborhood of the Big Miami, before a settler had yet
been enticed to Losantiville. But the survivors knew how to "boom" a
town; lots were given away by lottery to intending actual settlers;
and in a few months Symmes was able to write that "It populates
considerably."

A few weeks previous to the planting of Losantiville, a party of men
from Redstone had settled Columbia, at the mouth of the Little Miami,
about where the suburb of California now is; and, a few weeks later, a
third colony was started by Symmes himself at North Bend, near the
Big Miami, at the western extremity of his grant; and this, the judge
wished to make the capital of the new Northwest Territory. At first,
it was a race between these three colonies. A few miles below North
Bend, Fort Finney had been built in 1785-86, hence the Bend had at
first the start; but a high flood dampened its prospects, the troops
were withdrawn from this neighborhood to Louisville, and in the
winter of 1789-90 Fort Washington was built at Losantiville by General
Harmar. The neighborhood of the new fortress became, in the ensuing
Indian war, the center of the district.

To Losantiville, with its fort, came Arthur St. Clair, the new
governor of the Northwest Territory (January, 1790); and, making his
headquarters here, laid violent hands on Filson's invention, at
once changing the name to Cincinnati, in honor of the Society of the
Cincinnat