Editing Ottawa, Ohio (section)

==History==
[[File:C25073-18.jpg|thumb|left|President [[Ronald Reagan]] visiting Ottawa on a whistle stop tour in 1984]]
The region was long inhabited by the Iroquoian-speaking [[Wyandot tribe|Wyandot]] and Algonquian-speaking [[Ottawa tribe|Ottawa]] tribes, who settled along the [[Blanchard River]]. In 1792 President [[George Washington]] sent Major Alexander Truman,<ref name="google">{{cite book|title=Historical Register of Officers of the Continental Army During the War of the Revolution, April 1775, to December, 1783|author=Heitman, F.B.|date=1914|publisher=Rare book shop publishing Company, Incorporated|url=https://archive.org/details/historicalregis00heitgoog|page=549|access-date=December 6, 2014}}</ref> his servant William Lynch, and guide/interpreter William Smalley on a peace mission to the tribes. Truman and Lynch were killed; the date of their deaths was apparently prior to April 20, 1792, at Lower Tawa Town, an Ottawa village. (The Ottawa County Courthouse stands on the site of their killings) A similar mission led by Colonel [[John Hardin]] ended with Hardin and his servant Freeman being killed in [[Shelby County, Ohio|Shelby County]]; the tribes resisted European-American encroachment.

During the [[War of 1812]] between the US and Great Britain, numerous tribes allied with the British in the hope of keeping European Americans out of their territories. Unable to resist the continued pressure, in 1817, the tribes ceded a large tract of land in Northwestern Ohio to the United States. [[Blanchard's Fork Reserve, Ohio|Blanchard's Fork Reserve]] was established. The tribes ceded this Reserve in 1831, during the era of [[Indian Removal]], and their land claims in the state were extinguished.<ref>{{USStat|7|160}} and {{USStat|7|359}}</ref> The Ottawa population on that Reserve removed to Indian Territory in present-day Kansas in 1832.<ref>David M. Stothers, Patrick M. Tucker. ''The Fry Site: Archaeological and Ethnohistorical Perspectives on the Maumee River Ottawa of Northwest Ohio.'' Lulu.com, 2006, p. 80.</ref>  Within the Reserve, two Ottawa villages existed, of which the Lower Tawa Town was the site of what developed as the village of Ottawa, Putnam County, Ohio.

===European-American settlement===
Among the early settlers of the Ottawa area was Henry Kohls, who arrived in 1835 and settled with his family in the village of Glandorf. In the early 1900s, his grandsons, Charles and Frank Kohls, were each elected Putnam County treasurer in successive two-year stints. Notably, while serving as treasurer, they each appointed the other as their chief deputy.<ref>Kinder, Putnam. ''History of Putnam County: Its People, Industries, and Institutions''. [[Indianapolis]]: B.F. Bowen, 1915, p. 1383–1387.</ref>

Ottawa was incorporated as a village in 1861, during the first year of the [[American Civil War]].<ref>{{cite news | url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=EVlOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=dgAEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4050%2C7521455 | title=Blanchard River Brought Pioneers To Putnam | work=Toledo Blade | date=May 31, 1953 | access-date=April 30, 2015 | author=Warren, Robert | pages=3}}</ref>