Hey Matt, how's it going? I've read quite a few articles on Chillicothe (Old Town) and its residents. Native American history in this part of Ohio has always fascinated me and I try to stay current on news and information concerning them. The Rebecca that you talk of is Rebecca Galloway, daughter of James Galloway, one of the first settlers in the area and who claimed the land that the village of Chillicothe stood on (I believe he arrived in the Greene County area around 1793, he had first fallen in love with the area while on an expedition with George Rogers Clark in 1782 and vowed he would come back with his family to settle). The sad thing about the love between Rebecca and Tecumseh is that it never happened. The story came from Rebecca herself much later in her life while being interviewed for a book called Old Chillicothe by William Galloway, Rebecca's grandson (unfortunately this book has many truths and many more inaccuracies and ill conceived tales of the romantic to it). As for the silver in the fields of the farm that is now there, we will never know if it is there or not as is told by someone else in an earlier comment on this post (the current owner is saving all historical artifacts and possible treasure safe in the ground for her grandchildren to find). Regardless it keeps us treasure hunters with something to possibly look forward to in the future, hopefully.
I forgot to add this the last time I replied to this post.
The area that you are referring to as the swamp, Matt, was located next to Massie's Creek and the Little Miami River with the actual village lying just beyond it. This area has since been drained for agricultural purposes and, as far as I know, only small marsh like areas still exist. The silver that was dumped in the marsh fell into a water-filled pit around 15 feet deep. This was done at the direction of Chief Catahecessa or, as he was more familiarly known, Black Hoof, as the army of General George Rogers Clark was fast approaching the village. This was the last time the Shawnee as a tribe inhabited this area for right after this event they fled to Piqua Town never being able to return again due to white enroachment(just an interesting side note: there is still a Shawnee grave yard in this area that holds their revered chiefs and warriors). Not only was almost a ton of silver dumped here, but also anything they could not carry or justify in taking such as broken rifles, properly sealed furs and edibles, extra cookware, farming implements, hand carved figurines, and many other things as well. The Shawnee were well known for the abundance of silver they owned. So much in fact that the name Shawnee and silver went hand in hand. There was a trader by the name of John Kinzie who was also a great silversmith. The name that the Pottawatomie tribe that he befriended gave him was Shawneeawkee for his well known talent. Where this silver came from has been somewhat of a mystery but it is believed that the Shawnee mined it from the Clifton Gorge area as well as around Ceaser's Creek. There were mine shafts found in these areas by the first white inhabitants that predated their arrival. Here are a few paragraphs I found on the internet that summarizes it better than I can with much more information:
The source of the Shawnee silver, of which there was a considerable abundance, has always been a matter of mystery and intrigue. There is no doubt whatever that the Shawnee did have access to a large and continuing supply of raw silver and there is no evidence of such ore ever having been transported into the Shawnee territory from elsewhere. There is much romantic folklore about the so-called lost Shawnee silver mines, but enough truth exists in the record as to be intriguing.
Such mines, if they existed, are believed to have been located in present Warren and Green counties in Ohio, such reports based on the accounts of various white men who had been held captive at Chalahgawtha and were forced to carry ore to the village for smelting and working. These prisoners were marched, always blindfolded, for what seemed to them a few hours ( but which was probably less ) upstream along the course of Massies Creek to some location in the Clifton Gorge area, from just behind present Wilberforce University to "The Glenn" in the present village of Yellow Springs. At a certain point the prisoners were ordered to sit and wait under guard until they were laden with heavy sacks of what they believed to be silver-bearing ore, which they were compelled to carry back to Chalahgawtha. Some attempts to slip the blindfolds were, to a limited extent, successful.
With a map or two of "mine locations," this general area is well described by Dr. Roy S. King, University of Arizona, in an interesting paper entitled "Silver Mines of the Ohio Indians," in the Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, XXVI (1917), 114-116. For many years after their removal to the Auglaize Reservation, small parties of Shawnees returned every summer to Greene Co. and stopped for a few days of camping in "The Glen" at Yellow Springs, now a part of the campus of Antioch University. They then passed onward to the location given in Professor King's paper and from there to well-marked locations in Warren Co. along Caesar Creek near present Harveysburg, where excavations ( made before the advent of white pioneers) were discovered by the earliest arriving settlers.
Virtually all of this area has now been covered over by the U.S. Corps of Engineers impoundment called Caesar Creek Lake. Early excavations of two similar excavations found in the glen at Yellow Springs showed vertical shafts with evidence of timbering in one of them. Excavation evidence at one site is still vaguely apparent. Geological surveys state that the Clifton limestone formation outcropping in this glen as well as the nearby Clifton Gorge, is not ore-bearing. Yet, William Albert Galloway (lineal descendant of James Galloway, first white settler in the Chalahgawtha area), while he was a student at Antioch College, did some blasting in the gorge and uncovered a half-inch vein near the falls on the east end of Yellow Springs Creek, which runs through these grounds. The residue of some specimens from this vein were submitted to a competent assayer in Cincinnati and were found to contain a very definite bead of high-grade silver. Some decades ago an exploratory shaft in Clifton Gorge but no heavy deposit of silver was located and the shaft was abandoned and sealed off when it showed signs of collaping. Only a few years ago a geology student collecting rock samples in the gorge found several pieces of ore quite rich in silver content. The mother lode, if one exists, however, has never been located.
Sorry for such a long post but I hope this gives my fellow treasure hunters some useful information and a little history lesson as well.
