Big Bottom Massacre - Historical Markers

Historical Markers

A sign at the site of the massacre, which appears to be posted by the city of Stockport, reads:

Big Bottom, named for the broad Muskingum River Flood Plain, this park is the site of an attack on an Ohio Company settlement by Delaware and Wyandot Indians on Jan 2, 1791. The Big Bottom Massacre marked the outbreak of four years of frontier warfare in Ohio, which only stopped when General Anthony Wayne and the Indian Tribes signed the Treaty of Greeneville.

A second marker at the site, posted by the Ohio Historical Society, reads:

Big Bottom Massacre Following the American Revolution, the new Federal government, in need of operating funds, sold millions of acres of western lands to land companies. One such company, the Ohio Company of Associates, brought settlement to Marietta in 1788. Two years later, despite warnings of Native American hostility, an association of 36 Company members moved north from Marietta to settle "Big Bottom," a large area of level land on the east side of the Muskingum River. The settlers were acquainted with Native American warfare, but even so, built an unprotected outpost. They did not complete the blockhouse, put pickets around it, or post a sentry. On Jan 2, 1791, a war party of 25 Delaware and Wyandot Indians from the north attacked the unsuspecting settlers, killing nine men, one woman and two children. War raged throughout the Ohio Country until August 1794 when the tribes were defeated at the Battle of Fallen Timbers.

A third marker was posted in 2002 by the Ohio Bicentennital Commission, the Longaberger Company, the Morgan County Bicentennial Committee, and the Ohio Historical Society. This monument reads:

• "Erected by Obadiah Brokaw, 1905"
• "Site of Big Bottom Massacre, Winter of 1790"
• "Escaped, Asa Bullard, Eleazer Bullard, Philip Stacy"
• "Killed, John Stacy, Zebulon Throop, Ezra Putnam, John Camp, Jonathan Farewell"
• "Killed, James Couch, Wm James, Joseph Clark, Isaac Meeks & his wife and two children"