Camp Tuscazoar Breeze

January 1997            Vol. 8, Number 1

Foundation assembles wish list for future camp improvements

Many hikers and campers at Tuscazoar ask, "How can I help?" The following list details many of the projects the Foundation hopes to tackle in the coming months and years, provided labor, materials and funds are available. If you can help, please contact the camp. The Foundation's operating budget is funded by our camp usage fees, and from donations from our friends and supporters.

Capital Projects

Reconstruction and Roof Repairs

Miscellaneous

 
Museum open Saturdays; brick sales continue

The W. C. Moorhead Museum will open on Saturdays during the remainder of the camping season (through May). Foundation volunteers will staff the museum, and any additional volunteer help would be greatly appreciated. If you plan to visit the museum, please contact the camp Ranger to verify the hours that the museum will be open. If you can offer a couple of hours on Saturdays to assist in staffing, please contact curator Eric Schoenbaum at 330-493-1386. He would be happy to hear from you.

It's not too late to honor an Eagle Scout in the museum's Eagle walk. Now that the walk has been installed, we have found space for additional bricks. Bricks can also be purchased for other commemorations as well. In the spring, the Camp Tuscazoar Foundation will be constructing another brick patio in camp.

Buy-A-Brick brochures are available to assist in buying a commemorative brick. Please pick up a copy at camp or give the camp a call and we can mail a copy to you.

www.tuscazoar.org

Log on all you old time campers! Camp Tuscazoar is pleased to announce our move into the global realm of the World Wide Web! Very soon www.tuscazoar.org will connect you to our new web page.

We plan to include schedules, maps, event news and photos, history, and even an online Trading Post. Trustee Brian Criswell is working to get our site up and running. If you are interested in helping, or have experience in this field, he wants to hear from you. Please call him at 330-493-3322 or email him at info@tuscazoar.org. A big special THANK YOU goes out to WebNetworks International for donating the hosting of our web site. Keep watching for our web page as it grows and spreads the spirit of Camp Tuscazoar!

   
Down by Dover Dam, by the river Tuscarawas, land of wild beauty, and of pioneer and indian tradition dwell the boy scouts in the summer...supervised by Chief George Deaver, directed by W. C. Moorhead, they live in tents or cabins as they choose...eats are fine (take a bow Mrs. Chindgren) days are long and interesting.

There's lots of fun carving totem poles, archery, learning how to do and make things. Sports, games and all kinds of scoutcraft...they learn to swim, dive and save lives too. They hike the hills and valleys and explore the river. Stunts, songs and stories around the council fire. Sleep 'til reveille, then greet a new adventurous day.

From a 1930's camp brochure

10th annual event scheduled for May 3-5

Dover Dam Weekend keeps Tuscazoar spirit burning

On May 3-5, the great stockade gates will swing open to welcome campers to the tenth annual Dover Dam Weekend. Since 1988, Dover Dam Weekends have kept Camp Tuscazoar's rich traditions alive and well for new generations of campers. Hikes, games, crafts, outdoor skills, sports and campfires remain essential elements of our annual spring event.

Tours of Dover Dam are always a popular activity, along with traveling to Pioneer Point to place a rock on the ever-growing stone cairn. In recent years, canoeing trips and a climbing and rappelling wall have added to the weekend's adventures.

This year's event will include many fun and adventurous outdoor activities. The organized events will begin with a flag-raising ceremony at 9 a.m. on Saturday and will conclude with a campfire at Hoover Lodge that evening. The cost is $5 per person, which includes all camp activities, a commemorative patch and dinner on Saturday in the camp dining hall. Camping and canoeing fees are additional. Preferred campsites can disappear quickly, so please make your reservations as soon as possible.

 
Officers elected for '97

The Camp Tuscazoar Foundation Board of Trustees has elected new officers to lead the Foundation during the 1996-97 camping year. The new duly elected officers are:

Ted Novak - President
Don Selby - Vice President
Eric Schoenbaum - Secretary
Dana Powers - Treasurer

Congratulations to those elected. We look forward to another exciting year at camp.

 
The 14th American State

Compiled by Fred Gray

Canton, Ohio

If you have spent time at Camp Tuscazoar, no doubt you have crossed White Eyes Brook or spent a night in White Eyes Campsite. Did you know that because of the great Delaware Chief White Eyes, the woods of Tuscazoar might still today thrill to the song of the Indian, and bear the mark of his heel? ...That is, if our founding fathers’ words could have been trusted. This is the true story of the State of Tuscarawas, the 14TH AMERICAN STATE.

In the early spring of 1778, delegates from the recently proclaimed thirteen states journeyed by carriage and by horseback to Fort Pitt, at the forks of the Ohio River. The trek to this remote western frontier had taken them far from the comforts of home and family. They had come to confront some of the many problems of the war with Great Britain. The states’ treasuries had been drained by the tremendous costs of the conflict. And, since taxation had been a major factor in the decision for the colonies to revolt, it was a near impossibility to levy any taxes to pay for the war. And, everywhere there were disputes with the various Indian tribes over the commandeering of their lands. Some tribes actively supported the British cause. The War for Independence was going poorly for the new states. Their armies were without supplies. Desertions were reaching catastrophic proportions. And, to make matters even worse, perhaps no more than a third of their constituents were in favor of the war. About the same number supported the British, while the remaining one-third had little interest in the revolution at all. British sympathizers were everywhere. Quite a melancholy setting for a convention.

It is little wonder, then, that when Chief White Eyes of the Lenne Lenape on the Tuscarawas River took the floor on April 23, 1778, he got everyone’s undivided attention. For nearly a week, rumors had circulated that his presence would somehow alter the mood of the convention. When Chief White Eyes began to speak, the room went silent. He stood straight and tall, and his voice rang out with authority. His dark, piercing eyes looked squarely into each face, as if daring any man to question his right to be there. Drawing a deep breath, he began:

"I make the proposal that my entire tribe, the Lenne Lenape (Delawares) become the 14th fire. We wish to join the other thirteen fires in your fight with Great Britain. We wish to enter the Union of States as a Christian state, and as an all-Indian state. We want to become a full and equal partner with your thirteen states."

Although these concepts were foreign to the thirteen states, hands went up all around the room to approve the proposal. There was no question about what this would do for the new country. The Delawares were rich in supply goods, and their several thousand warriors were well trained and battle ready. The delegates were being handed a gift on a silver platter.

The proposal was adopted at once. The new state would encompass all of what is now Tuscarawas County and Carroll County as well as major parts of Stark, Harrison and Columbiana Counties, though it was agreed that the new state’s name and the specific boundary lines would be chosen at a later time.

While Congress hailed the addition of the Delaware warriors to the struggling colonial army’s ranks, this agreement for Indian statehood posed a threat to private land speculators. Many members of the Continental Congress, including George Washington, had invested in western lands. Some viewed White Eyes as a dangerous man who had to be eliminated, because official recognition of Indian land rights would result in the loss of millions of dollars in potential profits from westward expansion. Schemes were set into motion by rival special interest groups to sabotage Indian sovereignty - while keeping the Delaware as war allies against the British.

The Delawares went to war against the British. In every engagement, their battle cries could be heard ringing out above the thunder of the cannons and the reports of the muskets. Their courage sparked like response from their white comrades. The Delawares were instrumental in winning many important battles and proved faithful allies. At the same time, Chief White Eyes accepted a colonel’s commission, put on a blue uniform, and was asked to lead - without any other Indians - thirteen hundred American troops against his old enemy, British Governor Henry Hamilton. The mission turned out to be a hoax; White Eyes had been tricked. The great chief, who had remained true to the Americans, was assassinated by the soldiers. They covered up the murder, claiming that White Eyes had died of smallpox even though a later investigation concluded that the Lenape Chief was "treacherously put to death."

The fortunes of war began to swing in favor of the "fourteen" states. But it would not end quickly. The War for Independence officially ended on October 19, 1781, but armed conflict continued until December 24, 1814.

When the Delawares asked where their state boundaries would be exactly, they were told that a necessary signature had inadvertently been omitted from the statehood document. They were told that no law existed that would allow the signature to be added retro-actively. In truth, they had decimated their tribe and spent their resources on behalf of America - and so they were no longer needed. With no excuses or apologies, they were turned away. Disillusioned, and with no choice, the Delawares moved westward. They became a bitter foe of the whites. They joined the other ten Ohio tribes at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in, northwestern Ohio to fight the encroaching Americans. After their defeat in this battle they were removed from the Tuscarawas valley forever, until, in 1841, the final move to the undesirable reservation lands in the Oklahoma Territory.

Of the 1778 U.S.-Lenape Treaty - still recognized as the first federal Indian treaty - Colonel George Morgan remarked: "There never was a conference with the Indians so improperly or villainously conducted."

In passing, ponder for a moment Chief White Eyes' dream: an American Indian state, here in the Tuscarawas Valley, that would always be sympathetic to the many Indian tribes which stood in the way of U . S . expansion. But for the want of a single signature - and an honest congressman - how would our nation have been different today?

Whole sections quoted from:

WAMPUM BELTS & PEACE TREES: George Morgan, Native Americans and Revolutionary Diplomacy by Gregory Schaaf

THE DELAWARE INDIANS: - History by C. A. Weslager

The Red Record The Wallam Olum of the Lenne Lenape by David McCutchen

and from a private paper by Leland Conner

 
Eagle project update

Eagle candidate Bill Brothers from Troop 301 recently relocated and improved a footbridge crossing the Netawatwes Creek. A class from the Tuscarawas County Joint Vocational School will use the bridge as part of its efforts to re-route the trail from central camp to Pioneer Point.

Scout Mark Starchman has begun refurbishing the showerhouse near Keppler Lodge. Work will be completed this spring.

Many other Eagle projects are planned. If you would like to complete an Eagle project at Camp Tuscazoar, call Don Selby at 330-477-5085.

 
Coming Events:

Feb. 1 Camp Workday
Feb. 2 CTF Board Meeting
Feb. 7-9 Gold Rush Weekend
March 2 CTF Board Meeting
March 8 Camp Workday
April 6 CTF Board Meeting
April 12 Camp Workday
May 2-4 Dover Dam Weekend

Camp Tuscazoar "Breeze"
is published by the
Camp Tuscazoar Foundation, Inc.
P.O. Box 308
Zoarville, OH 44656-0308

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