Is that where you’re from, York?
Long time ago now, but yes.
A really interesting place to grow up, I imagine. I’ve been there quite a few times.
Dunno really, I don’t think you ever appreciate the place you grow up in when you’re young. I think York would be a nice place to move to, in later life. Not mine 
, I already bought the tee-shirt. It is very beautiful though, and the Yorkshire countryside, the moors, all straight out of period drama.
I’ve been camping all over Yorkshire, Brid, Ripon, and Masham, near the Druid’s Temple, a stone circle built just a couple of hundred years ago. I would certainly consider moving there one day.
This conversation about really helped to cure my insomnia, thanks.
I don’t like your York Peppermint Patty. It is a inferior candy, you simply put, don’t put peppermint in chocolate anymore than you would out tobasco sauce in mashed potatoes.
No, I’m at Fort Holiday, at Holiday’s Cove, up river.
That fort (Fort Randolph) is farther down river. Not to say the Shawnee nation wasn’t here too, and that we didn’t float supplies and man down.
Our area became like Hadrian’s Wall, and we had to hold the river frontier east to west down by a large scattering of forts. The main Indian chief here wasn’t Chief Cornstalk, but a Mingo chief named Logan, he is much more famous. The two tribes didn’t always get along… that’s a understatement actually.
I recall some preemptive strikes at breaking up the camps in Ohio, I believe they we’re Shawnee… they were building up and there was constant skirmishing prior with massacres, but I haven’t traced the route of advance physically yet.
All out towns are directly descended from forts here, but half the fort locations are missing, or the early colonial structures. We didn’t start brick making in the Ohio River till the early 19th century, outside a very few occurances I’ve found around that looks home made when the property was build on a clay foundation (might as well make use of it If you find it). Town immediately north of where I lived, did that. Town farther north, East Liverpool, Ohio, a days walk, or a short canoe ride up river, made a lot of the porceline shortly after when we raided Liverpool, England of half it’s workers. Was sorta bizarre how we went from savage Indian wars and log cabins to industrial brick overnight.
My town has two structures from this prebrick era, well… three, but the third was intentionally buried by jack ass contractors, so they wouldn’t ‘damage it’.
One is a old church, later given a brick exterior. One is old rickety house that came under attack a few times by Indians assaulting the backyard (you can see Ohio from the backyard, they regularly launched forays here, undoubtedly vice versa).
My town was born in war, it wasn’t a industrial center early on. Started by a Dutch guy, who’s family was killed by Indians out in Kittaning when he was a child. It was like, the damn Balkans back during the late imperial era, everyone armed tooth and nail, we regularly had to call for troops from Pittsburgh to man the forts.
A lot of people think the Indians we’re better armed, they were not, just much poorer organized, and clueless in how to breech buildings. If it was wood, they would try to burn it. Stone, they sieged it. If you went out, you would die… so our patterns of defensive warfare was based on community alarm, with everyone running to a fort, with a runner going off to warn nearby forts.
They too would consolidate, but also organize a relief force. It was light forest infantry moving on irregulars attacking a known, fixed defensive point.
If they couldn’t get inside quick enough, they just died. This would happen, especially with new immigrant families. A lot of the attacks into Indian territory happened when it was found a new family passing through was slaughtered. They would locally authorize a group of men to hunt down the raiding party, kill them, save any hostages (if any), but they got to keep anything the Indians stole from them… they would then take these goods up river to Pittsburgh, upriver to auction off, some new idiot family would buy it and set out again to get massacred.
That is, in large part, the origin of light infantry. The idea of the Rangers came about in recognition that the British Army really, really sucked in Forest Warfare. They started in the French and Indian War to develop a new kind of soldier, and that new soldier was initially taken from the lands just east of here. After the war, the colonies expanded to the Ohio River Border, and this was the most hellish and chaotic of fronts. George Washington’s top scouts came through here, including Brady.
Other places had some interesting Rangers too, they would ice skate on Lake Champlain for example. Here, they used a lot of water based movements, first river based raids I know of, up Yellow Creek. It was one of our first large scale, well organized full force operations.
It it right across the river where we started mapping the seven ranges… they borrowed heavily from our fort.
Only people who could travel and settle unmolested during this period in Indian land were the Quakers. Indians rarely attacked them. They set up a few indian towns, but the British forcefully moved them to Canada once they saw they could form stable communities with western style buildings and adopt christianity.
I follow the wars up to the conquest of Detroit (Samuel Brady’s brother was the general who conquered it) and the war of 1812. The memory of what the traitors did during the revolutionary war, like Dirty Girty, was high on everyone’s minds… no way in hell they would let the imperial reminent reassert control. We provided a lot of the war material… I could show you a photo of Peter Tar’s furnace, but what’s the point… and men.
After that last war, nobody mentions the fort. Wasn’t around in the civil war. Turned into a absurd slave economy… Farthest point north of the Mason Dixon line, free states on either side within 3 miles, in one spot on a island, you could be free in under a minute… I don’t get how they managed to keep the damn slaves. Most didn’t have slaves, just a few plantations, rest were white farmers who just farmed their own land.
We did have a unnamed Mingo village in my town, I just don’t know it’s name. George Washington mentioned it. They left under circumstances I don’t know, but we had a stone building built there… according to the books, but the pictures from the late 19th century show wood… we used it as a armory and graveyard.
And Pennsylvania and Virginia both had troops stationed here, I can find tombstones testifying to PA having guys in Half Moon (a neighborhood, all industrial, where our mounds were) but absolutely no records of it in the PA legislative records online. One commander had a son, he became a school teacher… that school teacher is not listed amongst the other teachers.
It gets odd. We also have missing graveyards, I was sent out to hunt for one two years back, spent the day on a steep hillside, hot sun… Burnt and sweating, couldn’t find any evidence, despite assurances it was there… I was very methodological, did a lot of overlap.
I’m still looking for the location where Stewart, President Lincoln’s cabinet member during the civil war, carved his name on a hillside here.
None if this matters. What matters is Dean Martin (the Singer) was from around here, B . E. Taylor was from this area (my town’s Baker used to manage him) and that the elderly want images of the 1940s to 1960s of them walking in parades as kids preserved.
I helped moved the largest archive ever… for the largest steel mill of it’s time in the world, for days from storage to that museum… hurt like hell by the way, tens of thousands of files on contracts, employee records, labor disputes… a massive gold mine to any labor or Marxist historian… and the shit is just collecting dust. They’ve dropped the ball on that too… just leave it rot, not advertise it. So nobody visits… unless they spot something in a magazine from way back when, and the archives aren’t ever brought up. These are labour historians.
I’m really wanting to leave this stupid place. Will soon. You have no idea how much it angers me.
A chief named Logan? Was he Irish, by any chance?
I think you must be in the same general area as the Mothman legend, and the Silver Bridge at Point Pleasant, which, having done a quick Google search, is the same place as Fort Randolph. Legends like that tend to reflect specific local conditions and the history of the place, and I find local folklore like that just as fascinating as the actual history, because the two are part of the same process anyway.
The place I’m going to tomorrow has long had stories of tunnels leading down from the old Bridlington Priory to the sea at various places, including, apparently, Flamborough Head, which has a lighthouse now situated at the top of a cliff.
I’ve conjectured in the past the idea of Zombies actually comes from these wars, the first zombie movie was from this area, and it involved aspects of a stricter physical monism regarding the literal resurrection of the body… the dead would rise, couldn’t figure out how to use a fucking doorknob or latch, mostly small groups of people huddled together, indians always wanted to eat brain.
If you switch brain with cutting scalp, and zombie with indian, remarkably close description of the wars in that period, on the defensive turf.
Not to say they were stupid, excellent light infantry skirmishers, but fortifications were always a challenge to them. Bit like the English in the early days lobbying army after army sieging castle after castle, only one two small castles with a dozen men taken per year… the exchequer freaked out at the costs relative to very low returns and said just destroy the damn land around the castles, and leave the castles alone… you impoverish them, you’ll swallow up the countryside quicker, fuck the dinky forts… and it worked.
Spartans did the same with the Athenians after a while… took a long while for the intellectual understanding of technology to arise in regards to siege warfare to come around to focus once more on these things.
Indians would of needed lots of Rope and grappling irons (I suppose wood could of been used), know how to climb, provide cover while climbing, dismount without injury and kick open the rear door of blockhouses while another force inside skirmishes with the other inhabitants, if they were to take and hold block houses without heavy ordinance… which admittedly nobody had on either side.
I know of a instance when the French tried building a Cannon out of wood, during the siege if Fort McHenry in Wheeling, West Virginia… it ended very bad. Indians fighting along side of the French during that attack didn’t learn a damn useful thing from that exploding bomb they called a Canon.
I also know the indians had a bright idea of creating a IED, they filled a log with gunpowder, and decided to move it along a path where a British troop regularly marched pass (like I said, British were not meant for forest warfare back in the day). The plan was to shoot the log when they passed by, exploding it, sending metal shrapnel and wood splinters into everyone.
I have no doubt it would of worked great, except they put the shrapnel in prior to moving it. Metal made contact with metal while moving it… “Boom”.
Had the westward expansion not been as aggressive, they would of gotten it eventually… the basics of siegecraft. You sneak up with a charge, plant it, then shoot it, boom…
Or ladders, poles, catapult like device, something. This was largely alien technology, their villages used walls, but wasn’t a good fortification, was sticks and wicker bark. Their houses the same. No internal design, just wherever it fits. They had some agriculture, and in this period actually more advanced in it than the whites, but they couldn’t compete with the goods we brought, the forts we built. They did maintain equilibrium in this era with the whites in raw capacity to move people and mutually support one another… but Lord Dunmore’s War caused the Whites to bring far more eastern reserves into the fight… and they didn’t take note of any equilibrium issues on either side of the river, they did deep strikes at indian camps deep in ohio territory, just as the Indians struck here, pushing out neat Camp Catfish (Washington, Pa… Might be listed under Virginia is you see old records).
Honestly, for large military campaigns, we would enlist populations 30-60 miles east of here, in our rear, for an offensive. It always was a shock to the indians because that scale of warfare, while numerically not unknown between themselves, was fought very differently that what they were used to the white settlers fighting.
From Lord Dunmore’s War, into the Revolutionary War… pretty much the sane war on the western frontier. From there, until the conquest of Detroit, still the same war. After that, War of 1812, it was truely over for this area.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logan_(Iroquois_leader
Logan was with cornstalk at Fort Randolph. His family was killed across the river at a bar on Yellow Creek (walking distance for me, a bar called Hell’s Half Acre).
The massacre was organized here initially in my town. Logan never correctly identified who did it. I used to live a dozen feet from the largely forgotten spot where the man lived who did do it.
I can find very impressive memorials to him (chief logan) all over the place on the net, but nothing here.
It needs to be remembered, Lord Dunmore ordered that hit as well. He started the war. He thought we would just fight one another to the death, and Virginia would be too weak to rebel. One of the great causes of the revolutionary war, and the collapse of the first british empire. Had they not done that, Logan would of lived, he was friendly with the whites, allowed them to settle peacefully… western expansion would of looked very differently. We would of had indian townships founded, no great indian genocides, both groups living in time together. Lord Dunmore knew how bloody the skirmishes were here, and how angry the locals were, constantly bring hit, so ordered this to happen along our 30 mile stretch.
British destroyed their own empire as a result. The colony was enraged as time went by, learning what had happened. Virginia fell very quickly to Patrick Henry. It was a great Machiavellian manipulation that backfired like a motherfucker. Our most elite troops were directly recruited by George Washington from this area.
Do any descendants of those Native American peoples still live in the area?
Yes, but they have 100% assimilated. You wouldn’t even know it.
It is funny, but most white people can’t spot a indian, unless they are decked out in costume. For the longest time, a lot of us didn’t know our First Sargent in my old company was a Indian. The racial feature is so widespread, so many whites carry those traits by descent, or… if your Italian you can sometimes pass it off as being one.
Most of the “Mingo” kept moving after the wars. Some live out on reservations. One came when I was in my teens to do a speech. We got out historical information mixed up a bit back then, he had better.
Nothing at all stopping them from moving back. They were a very new tribe at the time of this war, so didn’t have a particular great claim to this area… Shawnee had a better claim, but the Shawnee themselves were spread all over.
Honestly, if they just requested to our state legislature that they wanted to return, we would almost certainly set aside some tax free land for a generation or two. We wouldn’t authorize a reservation… that means a legal separation from the state, but we would seriously try to make it worth their while if they wanted to come back. The Indians mostly used this area as hunting grounds, we got plenty of deer… I picked a baby deer up just yesterday.
But they shouldn’t be mistaken as the mound builder civilization. The Shawnee used the river as a superhighway, traveled all over the eastern US on it. They were not the first I’m guessing. The indians around here didn’t know who made the petroglyphs. I honestly don’t know how long they were made, might of just been one far traveling guy who loved to doodle. I drives me nuts that my towns shores had a high concentration of them, but I can’t find them inland anywhere.
I’ve just looked up the Ohio mound builder civilisation and it turns out that it flourished from around AD 1000 to 1750:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Ancient
Can you describe the petroglyphs?
It didn’t survive till 1750, I can’t say with certainty when it went. It’s like saying Carthage lasted as a Punic civilization until the middle ages. Definitely was not around then, no sedentary, long term population lived here. It was seasonal hunting grounds, cause we got wildlife coming out our ass, but it us very rugged… not the highest mountains, much lower than the Alps, but the terrain is far more brutal and climate damning.
Our petroglyohs, let me see if I can find pics, so others can critique my description. No guarantee they are linked to the moundbuilder civilization, cause they saw a Shawnee (I seriously doubt that, more likely Mingo, they had a village less than a mile away) doing a deer:
599fairviewheightsdr.blogspot.co … s.html?m=1
While I possess a inflatable canoe and can easily evade security to reach browns island… it is largely due industrialized now, the river level is much higher, and the entire island had been raised, by slag waste. I wouldn’t be able to find anything but artificial sediment and pug iron.
The place closest I believe may have a bunch of petroglyohs on it us a giant boulder near by in a high sediment area, backside of the old golf course (and a BDSM kinkclub that opened and closed while I was in Iraq). I suspect because the boulder is cooked black, as if people were cooking around it for years, it isn’t too high above river (1/5 up the hill) you can see the entire island in full from it, near the southern part. Behind the tin mill waterworks.
We also have a black boulder (black isn’t a natural color for boulders here) north of the island, more inland in feral land, I’ve found evidence a cavern is inside, from the rocks the water comes out of, but never found a cave entrance, some evidence near springs of campfires, not much… boulder is up the road from a abandoned ruin of a concrete factory, that is several stories high (she’ll of the walls holding the building back, and floor, waterfall through it).
It too is a high candidate.
I can’t find many spits that leap out as petrogkyph candidates. Mingos, if they did do them, were a recent molygot of tribal elements from Shawnee, Lenape, especially Iraquois. Whoever started busting them out might of been recent, might if been ancient, they could of seen white people drawl, or write… but it looks childlike, Neolithic.
Damn mystery. I can’t rule out the moundbuilders, but I’m thinking if they had been doing itc they would of made a lot more of it, in far, far, far more spots. They hunted all over, arrowheads everywhere, where are the petroglyphs?
Moundbuilders had a very advanced society, a lot of social sophistication. Shawnee and Mingo had nothing similar. I don’t think they died out, descendants all over the place, including within the Shawnee and Mingo…
Imagine the preroman Celts, without metal working , without the horse… That’s the Moundbuilders.
A technological shortcoming wouldn’t of stupidfied them from having large towns/villages sized communities to… fuck, tiny villages. They would of been in a position to respond much more assertively, and the French and English explorers would of noticed large settlements. Ours was quite big (as per aerial photographs the franscican university of steubenville has), right on the river, hard as hell to miss. You dont sail past that sorta thing, without getting out and saying hi.
I would love an inflatable canoe! Sounds all very fascinating and I hope to do a little exploring of my own soon among the Neolithic remains of Yorkshire. Those standing stones are covered with the moss of countless millennia, but I’ve found things in the past, such as a series of very small circular indentations in an obviously artificial pattern. Anyway, just about to set off and will be back Tuesday.
Damn… umm…
I have a inflatable kayak, and it is SLOW. Fits in a bag. Also bought a waterproof ICOM, but think I brought that with me out west, it gone if I did. Wouldn’t recommend ever going out in a river or sea without one, cellphones will let you down. Especially you, being going, lost at sea gotta suck way worst than being lost and sighted. So carry that.
I can drawl up plans on how to center a smart phone or camera over textile surfaces you believe are something, but ummm… how would you see them?
Scale is very important. I don’t know if Braille rulers exist, but if they do, buy two contrasting colors of tape (say to the clerk you need contrasting colors, red and blue for example) and bring it home.
Get some well licked then dried popsickle sticks, and make sure you wrap pieces around a popsicle stick to precisely 1 inch… exact measurements. Recommend the same pattern for all.
Tie them together into a even rectangular cube, it can be longer in one direction, just make sure the stripped parts exactly line up like a grid.
Our your camera or phone on it, camera lens facing inside the space. Goal is, that the camera can see all four stripped bars. If you want, tape the phone or camera in place to make sure it is always centered the same.
Bring a black cloth with you.
When you see these objects, line up the image to the four striped objects, so they are centered inside. Your phone or camera should have a flash (what we call the light from a camera). If you have light on your skin from a odd angle, that you think your camera is casting a shadow on the object your photographing, or the sun is hitting it at a angle, and deep grooves are throwing a shadow within it, contouring the depth, throw the black cloth on it. Camera flash should directly illuminate it.
That is how you can photograph, insuring scale. If you use a geocaching service, you can note the location and provide the images for backpackers to find… or even historians or archaeologists .
Not a bad idea to bring a role of measuring tape either, useful in pictures for giving scale, or distances between objects. Most archaeologists use them in each documented picture.
Try not to find spots you think are ruins but are really just naturally spirally moss, or encrusted birdshit.
You can build a little photo career out of this. I wouldn’t recommend a laser surveyor kit just yet though.
Drink a pint of Jack Daniels whiskey Turd.
Your a bit late to this Joker.
Oh? Pull me up to speed then.
I have insomnia also, it doesn’t help that I play Skyrim Elder: Scrolls all night or every night before I go to bed. 
Currently a Wood Elf on level 13 playing the Thieves Guild.