Frontier life in the Great Black Swamp
This article is companion to a YouTube video of the same title:
"Started from the foot of the Rapids [Maumee] to meet the army, proceeded through the wilderness towards Urbana, traveled about 25 miles - a very rainy day, and then encamped in what is called the Black Swamp, had a disagreeable night of wet and “Musketoes”.
That was a description of an area known today as the great black swamp, written by Robert Lucas, one of the first people to write about the swamp by that name. Other writers detailed mud so deep that it stained horses’ saddle skirts and caused men to sink inches into the earth as they slept in their tents at night. Lucas documented his experiences in the Great Black Swamp during the War of 1812 and was therefore early enough to see it before serious settling of the area was underway. The War of 1812 was the twilight period of the Ohio frontier, and it's a little bit outside the scope of my channel: but that description is timeless.
The Great Black Swamp was a densely vegetated wetland that stretched inland 120 miles Southwest from the bottom corner of Lake Erie. The swamp was 40 miles wide and at 120 miles, it crossed the Indiana Border. At its creation, the swamp basin encompassed 10,000 square miles. By the 18th century, the swamp had receded to and leveled off at about 1,500 square miles. Today, it fills less than 30.
The swamp would be a final holdout for the Ottawa tribe, preserving their villages throughout the Maumee Valley. It would bring death and hardship to the white settlers, who were often visited by malaria, cholera, and milk sickness due to the harsh environment. Eventually, the swamp gave rise to modern industry. To understand the way this ecosystem developed and impacted the lives of those in the 18th-century, we have to start in prehistoric times.
The Great Black Swamp is a result of glacial movements that occurred over present-day Ohio 14,000 years ago. During that period a massive glacier slid into the Great Lakes region, melting and establishing a large, prehistoric lake known to archaeologists as Lake Maumee. Lake Maumee was the first of a series of glacial lakes that occupied the Erie basin. As the glacier that formed Lake Maumee slid into the Great Lakes region, it scraped away a fantastic volume of topsoil, leaving behind a streak of hard-packed clay impermeable to water. This massive gouge in the earth was filled with shallow water and the loose, sandy soil that had been scraped away, turning into a swampy prehistoric beach at the base of Lake Maumee.
Over time, Lake Maumee receded to the boundaries of what is now Lake Erie. The wetland drained to the extent that plants could grow, and over time, water continued to drain into the great lakes, turning one continuous swamp into a complex network of forests and wetlands. Deciduous swamp forests grew out of the murky water in the lowest, flattest regions, characterized especially by species of ash, elm, cottonwood, and sycamore. In slightly higher areas with some topographic relief and better drainage, beech, maples, basswood, and tuliptree were dominant. Oaks and hickories grew on elevated ancient beach ridges that were almost always dry. The area contained non-forested wetlands, particularly marsh and wet prairies, with extensive wetlands along the Lake Erie shoreline.
Obscene numbers of waterfowl had lived in the swampy wetland for thousands of years. As waters drained and leveled off, larger game began to enter the region, taking advantage of the high ground and enjoying longer, healthier lives as a result of the nutrient-rich plants. Predators included wolves, panthers, and bears, and they too grew bigger and increasingly more satisfied as heightened nutrition filtered through the life cycle.
In the 18th century, the land was plentiful. Yet it was still less than ideal for Native Americans because of the unforgiving terrain. Not many people actively lived in the Great Black Swamp. While Native Americans have ALWAYS been respected as masters of their North American environments, the swamp was unpredictable. Seasonal tides moved the dark waters and silt flows beneath, to the point that it was dangerous to walk through the swamp- you could be walking in 2 feet of water and suddenly step off into 12 feet- a hole that may not have been there the day before.
After a long history of dealing with the settlers as trading partners and allies in war, the Ottawa were relegated to the swamp after signing the Treaty of Greenville in 1796, when white settlers pushed into the Ohio interior and it quickly became a state. The Ottawa inhabited the Maumee River Valley at the edge of the Great Black Swamp, sticking to the river and the high ground surrounding it as much as possible. While the Ottawa hunted in the swamp from ancient beach ridges overlooking the forest, they did not move into the swamp, largely because of the mosquitos and lack of building materials. These hunts were so difficult that eventually, the Ottawa society shifted towards agriculture. Some moved West of their own accord, or North into Wisconsin.
Between 3 and 10 thousand Native Americans continued to reside in and around the swamp following the War of 1812. As late as 1815, war parties continued to emerge from the forests to raid white settlements. Settlement had scarcely touched the land by 1820. Settlers numbered just 1,781 that year- in the first federal census to include northwestern Ohio.
Those who did venture into this land were faced with a variety of barriers. The same seasonal variations of ebbs and flows that initially dissuaded serious settlement by Native Americans frightened white settlers as they encountered dangerous underwater drop-offs. Thick mud was too difficult on the wheels of even the lightest wooden wagons. It would take decades for the first road to be built crossing even a narrow expanse of the swamp.
Malaria remained at a consistent pandemic status in the region and resulted in high death counts every year for decades, which discouraged settlers from moving to the area- especially those with children, who suffered greater mortality from the dangers of the swamp. After a particularly devastating cholera epidemic in 1854, unfavorable publicity disturbed residents so much that they resolved at a meeting to change area place names. Cattle that grazed on poisonous white snakeroot passed the toxins in their milk, which was valued as a safe and nutritious drink... in the swamp, it seemed nothing was safe.
Settlers who could find a foothold in this dangerous land found it on high ground that was not actively inhabited by native peoples. Agriculture was bountiful here, in the rich dark soil, and as more white settlers arrived, the demand for drained, farmable land increased exponentially. Farmers began digging ditches to drain larger and larger tracts of land, and by the mid-19th century, new machinery emerged that mechanized the digging process. Today, farmland across Northwest Ohio is checkered with ditches... some of them original works that led waters into Lake Erie, and others more modern additions used to drain excess rainwater from the fields. Malaria disappeared only during the second half of the 19th century, probably not because the swamps were drained- area residents know that there are still plenty of mosquitoes- but through the use of screens and modern medicine. When Native Americans like the Ottawa became obstacles to the canal systems, were eventually forcibly removed, and pushed far West by ever-encroaching European settlers.
What seems like an end to the Great Black Swamp is hardly that. In 2017, half a million people were without safe drinking water as a massive dangerous algal bloom exploded from the Southwest tip of Lake Erie… the top of the former Great Black Swamp... The ditches that originally drained the swamp for agriculture, now drain manure and harmful chemicals directly into the Maumee, Auglaize, and St. Joseph rivers, among others, which feed directly into the lake. This harmful runoff has prompted officials to advocate REBUILDING parts of the swamp to filter pollutants. When the world news highlights stories about the National Guard being called up to distribute bottled water, it would seem that the quiet curse of the swamp has never truly lifted.
No one knows how the swamp became known as the Great Black Swamp. During the 18th century, most of those who explored the area wrote about the rich, black soil- but given the details we’ve covered, it is equally likely that the name stuck as a result of the perpetual darkness beneath those towering ancient trees- a darkness that conveyed the sinister wrath of disease, wild animals, and Native Americans who were ready to die defending even the swampiest and most undesirable of their ancestral lands.
