III. The Real Cleveland Indians

A Bostonian chanced the hazards and discomforts of the Midwest with a visit to Cleveland a few years ago and he found the experience to be an eye-opener. His very first day in town, as he was making a preliminary scouting stroll down Euclid Avenue, he saw two Indians.

“There was no mistaking them,” he says. “They looked just the way I always imagined Indians looked; just the way that James Fenimore Cooper, one of our eastern experts in this field, described them in his books. They were lean and swarthy and their coppery skin was stretched tight over their high cheekbones.

“They were, in fact, perfect Indians except for one or two minor details. That is to say, they did not wear the feathery headdress which I have always understood was more or less traditional with Indians, and they were not wearing moccasins. They had on regular business suits, two-button models with drape lapels, and- this really surprised me!- Hush Puppies.”

Up to that time, he said, he had always supposed that the expression, “Cleveland Indians,” was one of those amusing little baseball nicknames.

“Take the Boston Red Sox,” he explained. “There’s a name that is interesting and colorful, but it doesn’t really indicate a thing about Boston. I’ve lived in Boston a long time and never have I seen a Bostonian wearing red socks. But those Clevelanders were really Indians! I mean they were the real thing!”

Of course they were. Indians are a solid part of the city’s history and played a prominent role in the earliest days of the town. Then they gradually disappeared, either dying of! or drifting westward with their dispossessed tribes. They were gone from the city for about 150 years, and then the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1957 chose Cleveland as one of several metropolitan centers to participate in a noble experiment.

The government agency, rightly perturbed by the depressing fortunes of Indians who lived as wards of Uncle Sam on the reservations, persuaded some of them to try living and working as self-reliant citizens in cities like Cleveland. As a result, Indians have been returning in significant numbers over the past ten years to a city that had not known their kind in a century and a half. Cleveland now is borne to several thousand Indians, representing forty-seven great American tribes, and it’s almost like old times again. Almost.

Only time will tell if any of the modern Indians will contribute as generously to the anecdotal lore of the town as did the Indians who lived in the thick forests of northeastern Ohio and along the banks of the Cuyahoga when Moses Cleaveland’s expedition arrived in 1796.

Those Cleveland Indians of 1796 were, man for man, a more interesting aggregation than the ones who play baseball under that name today. It is even possible, judging from the recent history of the American League, that they also were better ball players, but this is sheer conjecture.

There were some great names among them, notably Chief Seneca and John O’Mic.

The very first people to live in Cleveland, that cold winter of 1796-97, came to know the Indians and to admire them. There were only two cabins on the east bank of the Cuyahoga that winter, having been hastily put together by the men of the surveying party. One was for the use of the surveying party and the other was for Job Stiles and his good wife, Tabitha Cumi.

The surveyors returned to the East for the winter, but Job and Tabitha stayed on, as did a man named Joseph Landon, who shared their quarters for a while. Something shortly altered Landon’s plan to winter in Cleveland with the Stiles couple; perhaps it was the wind whistling in off the icy stretches of Lake Erie, or maybe the Stiles snored. Historians never really got around to investigating the whys of the situation, but Landon left. However, if Job and Tabitha thought they were going to enjoy a little privacy, they learned otherwise very quickly. Edward Paine arrived from the East and took Landon’s place in the cozy little log cabin. The site of the cabin, incidentally, is where West 6th Street and Superior Avenue meet in today’s city.

It was a rough, tough winter for the three white pioneers. The Indians camped on the west side of the Cuyahoga knew of the hardships the new settlers were enduring, and they extended a helping hand bearing gifts of food. A special benefactor was a chief named Seneca.

Edward Paine, who later moved on to found the city named Painesville, writing of that first Cleveland winter, paid an extravagant tribute to Chief Seneca and the other Indians of the Cuyahoga Valley:

“That they are capable of disinterested benevolence and confer favors when none are expected, cannot be doubted by anyone acquainted with Seneca, or as his tribe called him, Stigwanish. This in English means ‘Standing Stone.’

“In him there was the dignity of the Roman, the honesty of Aristides, and the benevolence of Penn.”

Chief Seneca lived in Cleveland until 1809. He was a teetotaler, and this alone was enough to set him apart from all the other Indians of the day and to mark him as a special person. The old joke about the weakness of the redskins for firewater was no joke. It was a terrible weakness and a very real one; it helped to undo the Indian sovereignty over the continent and, in the specific case of Chief Seneca, it helped to bring about a personal tragedy.

Once Seneca had been among the leaders in the chug-a-lug competition, but he came home to his wigwam one time after a drunken spree and his wife presumably spoke reprovingly to him, as wives are wont to do, even today, when the old man rolls in at an ungodly hour absolutely crocked. Whatever transpired between the two, the chief became enraged and, according to Paine, “he aimed a blow at his wife with a tomahawk and split the head of his child which was on her back…”

After that tragic happening, Seneca abjured ardent spirits and preached the evils of drink. He made his home, later, in Seneca County, Ohio, named in his honor, but he died in Holmes County, Ohio, in 1816. And, ironically, this distinguished chief who had befriended the white man died a violent death at the hands of a white man. He was shot to death by a man named Jacob Ammond, who claimed self-defense, alleging that Chief Seneca had fired upon him first.

Despite the deleterious effects of firewater on the Indians, whiskey was a prized commodity in the pioneering scheme of things. In 1800, when Cleveland was little more than a clearing with three or four cabins, an enterprising pair, David Bryant and his son, Gilman, set up a still at the foot of Superior Lane (Avenue) on the bank of the Cuyahoga. The still, which they had hauled all the way from Virginia, had a capacity of two quarts of raw spirits a day. Thus, if one excludes the fur trading outpost which predated the town, Cleveland’s first business enterprise was a booze factory) not- as some propagandists have tried to mislead us- a comb factory.

It is not reasonable to think the Bryants would have gone to all the work and risk of establishing their operation at this particular place in the wilderness Simply to keep a few colonists supplied with spirits. They must have had their sights trained on a larger clientele, as indeed they did. The site met the most rigid qualifications for a successful saloon operation because the mouth of the Cuyahoga was a busy crossroads meeting place for the Indian tribes east and west. This was the jumping-off place to the happy hunting grounds to the south for the Senecas, Ottawas, Delawares, and Chippewas. They would gather here as the year waned, park their canoes where the Cuyahoga empties into the lake, and then plunge inland where the game was thick. They would return in the early spring heavily laden with furs which they would sell at the small trading post.

The first order of business among the hunters after a successful winter in the woods was an old-fashioned binge with the white man’s firewater, and there, not a tomahawk’s throwaway, stood the Bryants’ still, steaming and bubbling and sending out the seductive smell of sour mash to be wafted by the springtime breezes deep into the forest glen. Little wonder that the Indians, in a burst of emotion, threw a big banquet to celebrate the opening of the distillery. Bryant the younger was guest of honor. His father, wiser in the ways of the wilderness world, apparently took a quick business trip so as to be away on the big night, sending his regrets in his R.S.V.P. The Indians, with undiminished enthusiasm, went all out to indicate their affection for Gilman Bryant by bringing forth as the piece de resistance that indescribable forest delicacy, White Dog Soup-a dish which, understandably, was regarded as sacred among the Iroquois.

Young Mr. Bryant, unaccustomed to a fancy cuisine, blanched when he was served his portion. It seems that his hosts had singled him out in a special way by reserving for him the sacred right forepaw of the white dog, which still had a fair patch of partially singed hair on it.

Bryant protested that his hosts were overdoing the hospitality bit and pushed the sacred right forepaw back at them.

“I can’t eat another bite,” he said. “I’m full; I mean I really am stuffed.”

“Why, you’ve hardly touched your food,” replied the Indians. “You haven’t got the appetite of a bird. Here, eat some sacred right forepaw and put some meat on your bones.”

“No, thanks,” said Gilman. “One more bite and I’ll burst. You know what I mean, fellows?”

“How about,” said one of the Indians, thoughtfully, “if we put the sacred right forepaw in a bowwow bag and you take it home with you to eat later, hey?”

Bryant gulped and protested he couldn’t consider such a breach of etiquette, finally satisfying the Indians that he was serious in his refusal to eat the delicacy, whereupon one of them, presumably, lashed into it, while the guest of honor lurched off into the forest in search of some roots, herbs, and simples to soothe his frenzied nerve ends and still his flapping pyloric valve.

It is possible to understand better the heartfelt delight of the Indians over the arrival of the Bryants and the establishment of their distillery in the light of what had happened in Cleveland the previous year, 1799, when the only source of supply was Major Lorenzo Carter, Cleveland’s first permanent settler and a pioneer who quickly asserted his leadership as the tiny new community grew.

Several hundred Chippewas and Ottawas came out of the forests that spring, disposed of their furs, and headed for Major Carter’s cabin to pick up some syrup for their blowout. But before doing so, all the tribesmen yielded their tomahawks and other deadly weapons to their squaws with orders to hide them “so that, in the height of their frenzy, they need not harm each other.”

“Then,” writes an anonymous historian, “they sent to the major for whiskey from time to time as they wanted it; and in proportion as they became intoxicated, he weakened it with water.

“After a while, it resulted in the Indians becoming partially sober from drinking freely of diluted liquor. Perceiving the trick, they became much enraged. Nine of them came on to the major’s swearing vengeance on him and family.”

Then, as now, it is clear, drinking men were terribly thin-skinned about any tampering with their drinks. Major Carter was treading dangerous ground. And in view of the fact that the Indians had thoughtfully disarmed themselves so as not to harm anybody else after becoming drunk, it is not easy to appreciate Major Carter’s trickery. The Indians certainly did not. Nine of them swept down on the major’s cabin.

It was an unfair contest in terms of numbers-nine to one-but Major Carter did have certain advantages. He was sober, he had a strong defensive position, and he had a good stout poker.

As the Indians poured through the narrow doorway of his cabin, the major laid about him with the poker, crashing the weapon down on the tufted skulls with devastating results. At least four of the Indians were toppled and the other five took it on the run with the major in pursuit. They were fortunate enough to escape in their birchbark canoes, leaving the major the victor.

Relations between the Indians and the Cleveland pioneer were mended a short while later when a committee of squaws visited him to apologize, in effect, for the unseemly conduct of their braves. The major, in a magnanimous gesture, then went to the encampment of the tribe and in a powwow with the leaders settled the dispute.

There can be no doubt that Lorenzo Carter was one of the strong men of the early city, or that he was highly versatile. He not only operated Cleveland’s first tavern-hotel, he also served as a kind of unofficial mayor, sheriff, police chief, magistrate, and bouncer. Carter Road, which runs from the river, near the mouth, up the hillside to West 3rd Street, is named in his honor, as is a large hotel, the Pick-Carter. He was, by all accounts, a strong-willed character, but still a good man to have on your side; a man born for the tough, crude time in which he lived. And somehow-probably through his penchant for quick, direct action-Carter came to own what amounted to an Indian sign over all the tribes in that part of the Western Reserve.

There is, inevitably, wonderment that some of the more impulsive Indians didn’t bury a tomahawk in the hardheaded major’s skull. The thought likely occurred to any number of the red warriors, but they withheld the attack, probably because of a strong legend that had arisen that Major Carter was invulnerable to bodily harm. The word that was passed along from one tepee to the next was that arrows and bullets merely glanced off the Carter person and only served to irritate him. It was, from the Indian standpoint, a rather discouraging legend, and they faced up to its message realistically. They wasted no time attempting the impossible.

One Indian, at least, was unimpressed by the myth that enveloped Cleveland’s own Major Carter, but he was very young-only sixteen years old.

His name was John O’Mic.

With all the thousands of guitar players and folk singers bred in the United States in recent times, it is astonishing that no one of them has gotten around to composing a sad ballad about the Indian named O’Mic. His is a story that deserves the proper telling against the thrumming of a guitar, or maybe a whole nest of guitars.

As in all Cleveland stories, it is best to begin by establishing that he was a West Sider, and of course all West Siders claim him as their very own, which is as it should be. He lived on the Indian-owned side of the Cuyahoga, on the hillside slope that later became a famous Cleveland neighborhood with the picturesque name of “The Angle.”

When you search into the origins of local names, such as this one, inevitably you are overwhelmed by the logic of the people of the community and their talent for descriptive speech. The Angle was called such because its border streets enclosed a neighborhood shaped-right!- like an isosceles triangle.

The Angle was a hillside settlement predominantly Irish in character- if it isn’t extravagant to consider 100 per cent a predominant total- and there is something incredibly prophetic in the fact that the area’s most famous name, prior to the arrival of the Irish, should have had the Gaelic ring of O’Mic.

O’Mic first aroused the awareness of the Cleveland colony when, at the reckless age of sixteen, he was apprehended by Mrs. Lorenzo Carter in the family garden as he was helping himself to some of the homegrown vegetables. The lady was, of course, the wife of Major Carter, the hotheaded one.

Mrs. Carter shrieked at the boy and flapped her apron in his direction, but he, like any normal, healthy, red-blooded juvenile delinquent, whipped out a knife- they had switchblades in those days?- and chased the poor woman around the yard, apparently just for kicks. But his funning was interrupted by the approach of a young man, and O’Mic scooted off into the forest primeval.

When Carter heard of the outrageous incident he made a series of short, bull-like rushes hither and yon that hinted at his contained fury, And before setting out in pursuit of the redskin rascal he crammed into his buckskin pocket a length of stout rope which he vowed he would use to hang O’Mic by the neck until he was dead. Carter had definite ideas on how to deal with youthful delinquents so as to teach them a lasting lesson.

Following the trail on the west side of the river with the relentless skill which had earned him fame as a tracker of game, the major finally did trace the boy to an Indian encampment. It is likely that Carter’s fury had cooled as he followed the spoor because, with his quarry at hand, he allowed himself to be dissuaded from his plan to hang the boy by the father, O’Mic, senior.

The older O’Mic promised that the young miscreant would be confined to the west bank of the Cuyahoga from that time hence, and Carter was assured that he need not expect any further trouble from the boy ever again.

The major accepted the assurance and, rope in hand, returned to his own side of the river and Cleveland-town.

This should have been the happy ending, but it was not to be. Call it only the beginning because, as it turned out, John O’Mic did cross the river again to Cleveland, and his path did cross that of Major Carter again, bringing high excitement and an event of great moment to the colony.

On April 3, 1812, two white fur trappers named Buel and Gibbs were murdered in their sleep and their traps and pelts were stolen. The crime occurred near Sandusky City in Huron County, about sixty miles to the west of Cleveland.

Three Indians were arrested for the foul deed, and one of them was John O’Mic, now in his early twenties and grown up to a flabby manhood.

One of his two companions in crime escaped from his captors via the suicide route and the other was released because of his extreme youth. Only four years later, ironically, the same lad led two other Indians in the murder of another pair of white men and he was executed in Huron County.

At the time of the Buel-Gibbs murders, Huron County was within the jurisdiction of legal authorities in Cuyahoga County, and young O’Mic therefore was returned to Cleveland, the town from which he had been banished. Even worse, from his standpoint, he was delivered into the custody of his old nemesis, Major Carter.

Cleveland in 1812 was a town of limited facilities, lacking even such everyday essentials as a jail and a courthouse. But this lack was swiftly circumvented by the resourceful Carter, who took O’Mic to his cabin and tied him to a rafter in the attic.

The term of imprisonment was brief, just long enough for justice to marshal its forces and for word to be spread through the forests and thickets of the impending excitement in Cleveland-town. A murder trial was just as thrilling to the frontiersmen as it is to today’s suburbanites; perhaps more, considering the limited pleasures and divertissements of the wilderness.

Within weeks after the double murder, still in April, the trial was held in an open-air court under the shade of a large oak tree at the corner of Water and Superior streets. The largest crowd that ever had collected in the tiny town, drawn from all parts of the Ohio country, massed on the grassy edges of the “courtroom.”

The dramatis personae featured William W. Irvin and Ethan Allen Brown as judges; Samuel S. Baldwin as sheriff; Alfred Kelley as prosecuting attorney, and Peter Hitchcock as counsel for the defense. John O’Mic was the central attraction, of course.

He was charged, specifically, with the murder of Daniel Buel, who, intoned the court, had been done in “with a certain Tomahawk, made of iron and Steele.”

The trial moved along quickly in a no-nonsense manner, eschewing oratory and leaning heavily on simple recital of fact. The judgment, thus swiftly arrived at, was inevitable. John O’Mic was declared guilty of murder in the first degree and he was sentenced to be hanged by the neck until he was dead. The date set for the execution was two months hence, June 26.

O’Mic was returned to Major Carter’s attic to await the fateful day, while the entire territory buzzed with the news of the exciting and historic occasion in the immediate offing. Pioneer families all throughout the Western Reserve and even some in Pennsylvania, it is said, began their preparations for the rugged trip to Cleveland. Some of them would need weeks to make the trek and there was much to be done.

But if the white men thought that the impending execution would unnerve the Indian prisoner, they soon came to know that he was a man of remarkable composure. He seemed, in fact, to view approaching death with disdain, as if it hardly were worth his attention, and all who conversed with him were stirred to admiration by his aplomb.

The scene of the execution was the Public Square, and the gallows were erected on the northwest comer of the park, immediately in front of the site of the future courthouse. Scattered all about, indeed, were the timbers and other building materials which would go into the house of justice, and the large crowd that assembled on execution day used the lumber to improvise benches for more comfortable viewing.

The multitude that gave Public Square its very first traffic jam was even larger than had been expected, and the commonly accepted reason for the surprising turnout was the colorful nature of the prisoner. This is not a reference to the established fact that O’Mic was a redskin, such being common knowledge and no rarity, what with redskins darting from tree to tree in large numbers in those days. But O’Mic was colorful in his philosophy and in his speech. He made no secret of his deep-seated contempt for the paleface, and he let it be known that he intended to show white people how an Indian could die. He said he would not even allow his executioners to tie his arms or blindfold him, such being devices to help cowardly whites through their fearful last moments.

When it came to his turn to die, said O’Mic, he would jump off the gallows. Finally- and while he didn’t come right out and say as much- his words and the sneer that curled at the comer of his mouth as he talked lent the general impression that he might even do a little entrechat as a last fillip to give the big occasion real Indian class.

The word got around the forest fastness in a hurry, sounding from hill to hill and from cabin to cabin, causing the eyes of the frontiers- people to shine with anticipation and drawing them, inexorably, to Cleveland for the big event.

The day, quite properly, began with a religious service, which was held in a grassy clearing in front of Major Carter’s house. There were several clergymen present, but the sermon was delivered by Rev. Mr. Darrow of the town of Vienna in Trumbull County.

There also was on hand to embellish the occasion a detachment of the military commanded by a Major Jones, who was admittedly a fine figure of a man in his full uniform, but he could not be described honestly as The Compleat Officer. He ran into his first tough problem as soon as the religious service was ended. The last “amen” was his cue to form a hollow square around the newly painted wagon which bore O’Mic himself, seated high atop his own coffin, but the major either couldn’t remember what command to give, or he didn’t know.

The prisoner presumably looked down on the ensuing scene of military confusion with a quizzical expression; even, perhaps, a smirk. The palefaces who did not know how to die apparently didn’t even know how to conduct themselves when a brave man was about to breathe his last.

The major rode frantically back and forth, “epaulets and scabbard flying,” according to one description, but he couldn’t summon the magic words. His men, understandably, were completely nettled and confused by the major’s wild-eyed behavior and the guttural, unintelligible sounds he was making. Some kind onlooker finally persuaded the major that the simplest solution to the problem was for him to ride to the head of the line and double it around until the front and rear of his forces met. The wagon with O’Mic, meanwhile had gone on a distance, led by the disgusted sheriff, but the major and his men caught up to the wagon and tried the suggested deployment. It worked wonderfully well, drawing a loud cheer from the spectators loping alongside.

Word of the military fiasco sped ahead and the large crowd on the Public Square was in a mellow, appreciative mood when the principals in the hanging arrived on stage. Major Carter, the sheriff, and the prisoner ascended to the platform by a ladder, and it was noted approvingly that the arms of the prisoner were pinioned loosely. There was a rope around his neck and it had a loop in the end. Still another rope was let down through a hole in the top piece of the gallows, and hanging from it was a hook which would be attached to the loop in the rope around O’Mic’s neck.

There was a brief conversation among the three men on the high platform and then Carter withdrew, presumably having told the Indian “I told you so,” leaving Sheriff Baldwin to attend to the final distasteful formality-the hanging itself.

The sheriff took the traditional cap and pulled it down over O’Mic’s face, but when he did, the Indian sprang into action. He seized the cap with his right hand, bending his head low to make this feat possible, and, tugging it up enough so that he could see where he was going, he dove for one of the corner posts of the platform, wrapped his arm around it, and held on for dear life. Which, come to think of it, was precisely the prize at stake.

There was a roar from the crowd, and it was a mixture of approval and disapproval. Some of the spectators who had resented O’Mic’s slur’s about the courage of palefaces confronted with death jeered loudly, as you might expect. But there were many who cheered the frantic Indian for putting on a more interesting show.

Sheriff Baldwin, nonplused for the moment by the sudden metamorphosis that had changed O’Mic from a docile, cooperative prisoner into a reluctant tiger, tentatively tried to pry the Indian’s grip from the corner post but he was unsuccessful. While he was contemplating
the situation and seeking a more effective maneuver, Major Carter ascended to the platform and addressed O’Mic, speaking in the Indian dialect. Nobody within earshot understood the conversation that ensued, but apparently the major scolded O’Mic for behaving like an old squaw and appealed to his honor as a brave to be more cooperative in the matter at hand, namely, getting hanged.

O’Mic, it is said, listened attentively, nodding his head gravely from time to time, and when it was his turn to speak, he made a forthright, businesslike proposition. He promised that if Carter would give him half a pint of whiskey, he, O’Mic, would gladly dance at the end of the hangman’s rope.

The whiskey was swiftly forthcoming- somebody in the crowd had been providential in guessing there might be need of a stimulant- and it was, furthermore, very good booze; real Old Monongahela, for which, in the words of one historian of that day, “an old settler would almost be willing to be hung, if he could now obtain the like.”

O’Mic took the tumbler full of whiskey and downed the half-pint in one savage swallow that brought tears to the eyes of the hitherto dry-eyed spectators. Once again, Carter retired from the platform and Sheriff Baldwin returned to his duties. He drew the cap down over O’Mic’s face and was reaching for the rope with the hook on the end when O’Mic gave a repeat performance of his previous escape routine. That is, he sudden lowered his head, nudged back the hangman’s cap, and sprang to the corner post, wrapping his arms around the post in a death embrace.

The crowd roared and Sheriff Baldwin adopted a stance that spoke of his complete exasperation. Even as he shook his head, Major Carter ascended to the platform again and spoke curtly to the Indian. O’Mic nodded in complete agreement with everything that Carter said, but he pointed out that a half-pint of whiskey- even Old Monongahela- is not much, really, when one is about to take his final leave of this mortal coil.

Given another half-pint, said O’Mic, he would see to it the authorities had on their hands a prisoner so compliant and cooperative as to make them marvel.

The offer was accepted, another half-pint was proffered, but this time the sheriff held the tumbler, allowing the prisoner to drink his fill, but holding the rope that pinioned his arms so as to prevent him from lunging for the post again.

Now O’Mic truly had reached the end of his trail. Seconds later, full of Old Monongahela, his body swung out in a long arch toward the lake as far as the rope would permit, swung back again, and after repeating this pendulum motion several times, the limp body twisted in a full circle above the center of the platform and then just hung there, hardly moving.

The silent spectators, who had suddenly lost their holiday mood in the presence of death, sat motionless for a full minute or two, as if awaiting some new dodge by the artful Indian, but the truth finally became clear-O’Mic really was dead. Even as this realization came to the crowd, there was a rumble of thunder, and the first spatter of rain came from the lowering clouds that had been gathering through the execution drama. Now there was a heavy blow from the north- northwest that swayed the virgin forest all around the Public Square and sent the new leaves of summer streaming straight out at the end of heaving branches. Lightning crackled across the sky and left a rumble of thunder that came in off the lake like a breaking wave.

By now the crowd was on its feet and running for shelter in the scattered group of cabins west of the Public Square and alongside the steep trails leading down to the Cuyahoga River. An eyewitness observed that “the storm was heavy and all scampered but O’Mic.” But several men, presumably Sheriff Baldwin and Major Carter, lingered long enough to place the body in a rude coffin and to drop the remains in a shallow grave that had been prepared alongside the gallows.

There is a finality, somehow, to this simple act of being returned to the earth that precludes any possibility of further developments, but even so the story of O’Mic had not yet reached the last punctuation mark, the community discovered the next day, when it was ascertained that the grave had been disturbed and that O’Mic’s body was missing.

Some of the colonists said, almost hopefully, that O’Mic had not really died, that the storm had prevented the officials from making a real determination of his death and that, under the cover of night and the stormy elements, the wily redskin had recovered and made good his escape into the forest. The officials stoutly denied this unlikely possibility, but they could not present a satisfactory explanation for the fact that O’Mic was missing, nor could they prevent the story of his “resurrection” from spreading like wildfire.

Wiser townspeople suspected that the mystery of O’Mic was one that could be cleared up quickly by any of the several doctors of medicine who were prominent in the crowd attending Cleveland’s first public execution. The medical practitioners of that day were desperate for good cadavers. O’Mic was a prime, healthy specimen. It is believed that the sheriff and other authorities chose to look the other way while the doctors abducted the Indian’s body.

This story is supported by people involved directly, and indirectly, in the grave-robbing episode. The wife of Cleveland’s only doctor, Dr. Long, spoke of the deed with a high degree of candor and a measure of emotion because, as a child living in Painesville, she and John O’Mic had been close friends and had played together “on the banks of the Grand River at my father’s old residence.”

Mrs. Long was in the crowd on Public Square, watching as O’Mic dueled with the hangman, when she suddenly was assailed with revulsion and, in her own words, thought: “Why should I wish to see my old playmate die?”

“I got out of the crowd as quick as possible and went home,” she related. “All the people from the Western Reserve seemed to be there, particularly the doctors. I remember several of them who stayed at our house. Among them was Dr. Allen of Trumbull County, Dr. Coleman of Ashtabula County, Dr. Johnson of Conneaut and Dr. Hawley of Austintown.

“When O’Mic was swung off the rope broke and they were not sure that he was dead, but there was a storm coming on and he was hurried into the grave near the gallows.

“The Public Square was only partly cleared then, and had many stnmps and bushes on it. At night the doctors went for the body with the tacit consent of the Sheriff. O’Mic was about 21 years of age, and was very fat and heavy. Dr. Long did not think one man could carry him, but Dr. Allen, who was very stout, thought he could. He was put upon Dr. Allen’s back, who soon fell over a stnmp and O’Mic on top of him!

“The doctors dare not laugh aloud for fear they might be discovered, but some of them were obliged to lie down on the ground and roll around there, before they came to the relief of Dr. Allen.”

Mrs. Long’s account illuminates an otherwise dark page in Cleveland’s history, and makes it clear that there can be a light side even to body-snatching. Furthermore, her words explaining the disappearance of O’Mic’s body are supported by other accounts, including testimony from the descendant of Dr. Allen- Dudley P. Allen, author of Pioneer Medicine on the Western Reserve.

Speaking of poor O’Mic’s remains, Allen said: “The skeleton was placed below a spring, on the bank of the lake, east of Water Street, and remained there for about one year, after which time it was properly articulated. The skeleton was for a long time in the possession of Dr. Long, but was later in Hudson in the office of Dr. Town. From there, it was supposed, it was carried to Penn, near Pittsburgh, to Dr. Murray, a son-in-law of Dr. Town. The writer has made every effort to discover its whereabouts and restore the bones to Cleveland, which should be their proper resting place, but all efforts to this end have proved fruitless.”

There can be no real doubt that O’Mic had his final comeuppance in the Public Square that fateful day in 1812, but there still are historians who claim that he made good his escape from the clutches of the white man’s law. It doesn’t matter much any more, one way or the other, but it proves that he was one interesting Indian. A lot of Clevelanders are very proud today that O’Mic was a local boy, and while they haven’t memorialized him with a plaque or a statue or anything like that, the city has established a free-speech rostrum on the approximate Public Square site of O’Mic’s hanging. Considering all the talking that O’Mic did before consenting to be hanged, the rostrum isn’t entirely inappropriate.