Month: November 2022

Following the trail left by Cache Owner mellpen 15 years ago, we hope to capture a moment in history from a faraway time.

On our route northwest, we pass the Zane Shawnee Caverns, purchased and operated by returning Shawnee tribe members. Across ethnic communities, we clasp hands, share strengths, and gifts, and space, and resources, with like-minded individuals.

Further down the road, Zanesfield, Ohio, population 194, overlooks the Mad River valley.

Here, the hardwood forests teeming with game, deep soil rich with nutrients, and a river connection to the great inland water network made it a Black Friday supersale for chiefs, traders, and surveyors. Like gold diggers in the Black Hills, farming immigrants staked out the land.

Tucked into a sleepy Zanesfield street is the Isaac Zane memorial. Captured as a child, he was raised by the Wyandot tribe and eventually married Myeerah, daughter of Wyandot Chief Tarhe. Friendly to captured prisoners, Isaac also served as a defacto spy, warning settlers of Indian movements. In an impressive display of bi-partisanship, Isaac was allotted land in Zanesfield by both Wyandot chiefs and the American Congress. Ultimately Isaac helped to broker the Treaty of Greenville, which would lead to the displacement of the tribe to Oklahoma.

Walk down the street and find the marker for the marriage of Isaac and Myeerah, where they birthed and raised their seven children. These children helped define the emerging shape of America, some descendants moving west and others remaining in the Ohio Valley, blending a sharing of tribal and immigrant strengths.

Myeerah’s father, the Chief, fought for the British army against the Americans, until Anthony Wayne defeated the combined army of tribes at Fallen Timbers. Chief Tarhe faced the choice of all tribal chiefs, to oppose to the death the newly born American army, or to hope for survival on the side of the Americans. The long generations of honor and valor, which demanded war dances, scalpings, and revenge, did not easily end. But Chief Tarhe sized things up and joined the Americans. He fought loyally for his new ally at the Battle of the Thames against the British in Canada. The chief’s choice did not save his tribe from removal to the West. Conquerors, driven to claim and resell the next resource on the horizon, were unable to sleep at night until they sat alone at the top.

Our GPS lands us at the Ebeneezer Zane Cabin, named for the British/Irish immigrant Zanes, who settled Zanesville, and who were Isaac Zane’s other family. In his trilogy about the Zane family, great grand Zane Grey brings to life the decades of chieftains, pioneer settlements, forts, bordermen, and guerilla warfare in the Ohio Valley.

The marker tells us that, in 1819, the First Methodist Conference was held on this spot, with 300 settlers and 60 Wyandots in attendance. Exactly 200 years later, at the Methodist conference on missions in 2019, a chief of the Wyandotte Nation of Oklahoma spoke of the turning point that John Stewart brought to the tribal nation’s history, when John began telling the tribe of the Gospel story. John, a man of mixed tribal/Black heritage, was respected and admired by the Wyandots. Many found hope and peace from the destructive forces of alcohol addiction and warfare that defined their lives.

Across the road, today’s version of the one-room log cabin.

In this humble spot, buried under national and world wars, witnessing untold stories of heroism, affection, celebration, and compassion, we find a cache.

With a hat tip to our Cache Owner, and to all those who have loved this tiny corner of the earth.