Hell Town is the name for a

Lenape The Lenape (, , ; ), also called the Lenni Lenape and Delaware people, are an Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, Indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands, who live in the United States and Canada. The Lenape's historica ...

(or Delaware)

Native-American Native Americans (also called American Indians, First Americans, or Indigenous Americans) are the Indigenous peoples of the United States, particularly of the lower 48 states and Alaska. They may also include any Americans whose origins lie ...

village located on Clear Creek near the abandoned town of Newville, in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

.Case, "Description of Mounds and Earthworks in Ashland County, Ohio," in ''Miscellaneous Papers Relating to Anthropology,'' 1883, p. 74. The site is on a high hill just north of the junction of Clear Creek and the Black Fork of the

Mohican River The Mohican River is a principal tributary of the Walhonding River, about long, in north-central Ohio in the United States. Via the Walhonding, Muskingum and Ohio Rivers, it is part of the watershed of the Mississippi River, draining an area ...

. After the signing of the

Treaty of Easton The Treaty of Easton was a colonial agreement in North America signed in October 1758 during the French and Indian War (Seven Years' War) between British colonials and the chiefs of 13 Native American nations, representing tribes of the Iroquois, ...

in 1758, the Lenape were required to move west out of their native lands (in

Delaware Delaware ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic states, South Atlantic regions of the United States. It borders Maryland to its south and west, Pennsylvania to its north, New Jersey ...

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, eastern

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, and eastern

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) into what is today known as

. The village had originally been settled by Native Americans of the

Mingo The Mingo people are an Iroquoian group of Native Americans, primarily Seneca and Cayuga, who migrated west from New York to the Ohio Country in the mid-18th century, and their descendants. Some Susquehannock survivors also joined them, a ...

(a tribe belonging to the

Eastern Algonquian The Eastern Algonquian languages constitute a subgroup of the Algonquian languages. Prior to European contact, Eastern Algonquian consisted of at least 17 languages, whose speakers collectively occupied the Atlantic coast of North America and adj ...

group). But the Mingo abandoned the site around 1755. The Lenape re-founded the settlement in the 1770s. One source says the resettlement came in 1770, while another says it was in 1776. According to the Lenape, the village was called Clear Town, after the clear stream which ran nearby. However, when the Lenape learned that the

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word for "clear" was "hell," they renamed their village Hell Town. The site was abandoned in 1782 because of repeated clashes with Colonial American troops and settlers, angry with the Lenape because some members of the tribe had sided with the British during the

American Revolution The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a colonial rebellion and war of independence in which the Thirteen Colonies broke from British America, British rule to form the United States of America. The revolution culminated in the American ...

. The violence would culminate in the

Gnadenhutten massacre The Gnadenhutten massacre, also known as the Moravian massacre, was the killing of 96 pacifist Moravian Christian Indians (primarily Lenape and Mohican) by U.S. militiamen from Pennsylvania, under the command of David Williamson, on March 8, ...

of 1782, in which American militia killed 96 Lenape. Hell Town was located along a "war trail" used by Native Americans in the region, which ran from a point about south of

Sandusky, Ohio Sandusky ( ) is a city in Erie County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. Situated on the southern shore of Lake Erie, Sandusky is located roughly midway between Toledo, Ohio, Toledo ( west) and Cleveland ( east). At the 2020 United Stat ...

, north-northeast into the

Cuyahoga River The Cuyahoga River (see ) is a river located in Northeast Ohio that bisects the City of Cleveland and feeds into Lake Erie. As Cleveland emerged as a major manufacturing center, the river became heavily affected by industrial pollution, so mu ...

valley.Cherry, ''The Portage Path,'' 1911, p. 64.

Anthropological Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including archaic humans. Social anthropology studies patterns of behaviour, wh ...

investigations in the late 19th century found that the site of the village was a high mound composed primarily of

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

rocks, held in place with packed earth. A number of Lenape graves existed at the site until 1881, but local farmers plowed them under over the next two years. Diggings at the site found two iron knives, an iron tomahawk, stone arrowheads, a stone axe, a gun flint, and some brass mountings from a musket.

Notes

Bibliography

*Case, H.B. "Description of Mounds and Earthworks in Ashland County, Ohio." In ''Miscellaneous Papers Relating to Anthropology.'' Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1883. *Cherry, Peter Peterson. ''The Portage Path.'' Akron, Ohio: The Western Reserve Company, 1911. *Howe, Henry. ''Historical Collections of Ohio: Containing a Collection of the Most Interesting Facts, Traditions, Biographical Sketches, Anecdotes, Etc. Relating to Its Counties, Principal Towns and Villages.'' Norwalk, Ohio: Laning Printing Co., 1896. *Jennings, Francis and McNickle, D'Arcy. ''The History and Culture of Iroquois Diplomacy.'' Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1985. *Keenan, Jerry. ''Encyclopedia of American Indian Wars, 1492-1890.'' New York: W.W. Norton, 1999. *Moore, Charles. ''The Northwest Under Three Flags, 1635-1796.'' New York: Harper and Bros., 1900. *Olmstead, Earl P. ''Blackcoats Among the Delaware: David Zeisberger on the Ohio Frontier.'' Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1991. *Roeber, A.G. and Kade, Max. ''Ethnographies and Exchanges: Native Americans, Moravians, and Catholics in Early North America.'' University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008. *Schonberg, Marcia. ''Ohio Native Peoples.'' Chicago, Ill.: Heinemann Library, 2010. *Sisson, Richard. ''The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia.'' Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2006. *Wheeler-Voegelin, Erminie and Tanner, Helen Hornbeck. ''Indians of Northern Ohio and Southeastern Michigan: An Ethnohistorical Report.'' New York: Garland Publishing, 1974. {{Native Americans in Ohio Pre-statehood history of Ohio Archaeological sites in Ohio Lenape Native American history of Ohio