Cincinnati did not happen simply by chance. The location of the land and the land itself invited settlement. The invitation to here was written long, long ago.
The Indians that once inhabited Southern Ohio were the Moundbuilding Peoples. The tribes that fell into this category were the Adena Indians, the Hopewell Indians, the Fort Ancient Indians, and most notably the Shawnee Indians (Blue Jacket, Tecumseh) who left behind the Great Serpent Mound. All together more than three hundred earthworks can be found in Hamilton County alone. The tribes made their living building villages and getting their food by hunting, fishing, and farming.
When the United States Congress devised the Northwest Ordinance in 1787, the vast amount of land between the Allegheny River and the Mississippi River was opened up. Soon settlers seeking the more land began to move into the newly claimed territories. On October 15, 1788, John Cleaves Symmes was granted a charter to search and survey the land between the Great and Little Miami Rivers. The charter and the land are known as the Miami Purchase. Settlement of the area started soon after. On November 18, 1788 Benjamin Stites led a party of 26 settlers to the opposite side of the Ohio River to a site about one mile west of the Little Miami River. They called the settlement Columbia. On December 28, 1788 Mathias Denman along with 25 other settlers settled on the land opposite of the Licking River, which they aptly named Losantiville. A month or so later John Cleaves Symmes and his family settled on the land to the east of the Great Miami River and called it North Bend.
In 1789, the new United States government decided to build Fort Washington by Losantiville to provide protection from the Indians for the new settlements on the western lands. In 1790, General Arthur St. Clair, Governor of the Northwest Territory arrived at Fort Washington for inspection, and ended up renaming the settlement Cincinnati in honor of the Society of Cincinnati, an organization of Revolutionary War officers to which he belonged.
