Monday, March 8, 2010

Home of the Oorang Indians, NFL’s Most Colorful Franchise. The Oorang Indian football team was founded by LaRue native Walter Lingo, owner of the Oorang Airedale Dog Kennels. The team, comprised of Native American Indians, played in the National Football League (NFL) Ohio Historical Society www.ohiohistory.org
Historic American Indian Tribes of Ohio 26
in 1922-23. The star player and coach was Jim Thorpe (1887-1953), a Sac and Fox Indian. Thorpe gained international fame as a two-time gold medal winner (decathlon and pentathlon) in the 1912 Olympics and was acclaimed as the “World’s Greatest Athlete.” The team gave LaRue the distinction of being the smallest community ever to have an NFL franchise.

Marion County: Harrison Military Road, War of 1812

Marion County:
Harrison Military Road, War of 1812. The first road through Marion County followed the Scioto Trail of the Native Americans. This 120-foot wide strip through Wyandot territory led from Lower Sandusky (Fremont) to the Greene Ville Treaty Line. A confederation of Ohio tribes ceded it to the United States at the Treaty of Brownsville, Michigan, in 1808. During the War of 1812, the troops of General William Henry Harrison’s Army of the Northwest traveled this road en route to Fort Meigs and the British fort at Detroit, using it to transport supplies to the army and to the chain of forts and blockhouses that protected the road. After the American victory, this area was opened for settlement by the 1817 Treaty of the Maumee Rapids, and soldiers who discovered the area while traveling the Military Road were among the first settlers. On February 4, 1822, the Ohio Legislature established a state road from Norton to Sandusky along this route. It has also been known as the War Road, Norton Road, Marion-Delaware Pike, U.S. 23, and now, State Route 423. Near here, along the Olentangy (Whetstone) River, was Fort Morrow, one of a series of forts used to house troops and the earliest settlers including the Brundiges, Drakes, and Wyatts Cemetery nearby the abandoned fort is the oldest burying place in Marion County. Buried there are many of the county’s earliest settlers and thirteen unknown soldiers of the War of 1812.


Wyandot County:
Departure of the Wyandot Indians. The 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs opened much of northwest Ohio to white settlement. In return, the U.S. Government granted the Wyandot Nation permanent use of the Grand Reserve at present-day Upper Sandusky. There, farming continued, a school was built, and in 1824, this Mission Church was constructed by Indians and Methodist missionaries. However, the Indian Removal Act of 1830 called for reaction of all eastern Native Americans to areas beyond the Mississippi River. By 1840, all Ohio Indians had been removed except for the Wyandot, who refused to leave, preferring instead to stay upon their beloved Sandusky (now known as Killdeer) Plains. Facing considerable pressure from Federal authorities, the Wyandot Nation in 1842, agreed to relinquish the Grand Reserve and move west. From this site on July 12, 1843, 664 individuals began their week-long journey to awaiting steamboats at Cincinnati. The Wyandot were the last organized Native American people to leave Ohio, settling in modern-day Kansas and Oklahoma.
The 1782 Sandusky Campaign. At the twilight of the American Revolutionary War, British forces hired American Indians to conduct attacks on pioneers living along the Ohio and Pennsylvania border. In response the 13th Virginia Regiment, and over 400-man mounted unit formed by General William Irvine, was led by Colonel William Crawford to destroy the Sandusky towns of the Wyandots and Delawares. This volunteer army departed Mingo Bottom on Mary 25, 1782, and headed west into the Ohio country. On June 4, they met an Indian force at an area called “Battle Island,: located between Carey and Upper Sandusky. The Americans held the field, but withdrew when the British reinforced the Indians with Butler’s Rangers and Shawnee Indians. Crawford was ultimately captured, tortured, and killed by Delaware Indians.