Hell Town is the name for a Lenape (or Delaware) Native-American village located on Clear Creek near the abandoned town of Newville, in the

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.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 o ...

. 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

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, eastern New York, and eastern

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) into what is today known as

. The village had originally been settled by Native Americans of the Mingo (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 was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...

. 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, north-northeast into the Cuyahoga River 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 past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behav ...

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 sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates ...

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