As with many stories and lore, not all facts can be substantiated 200-plus years later... some may be accurate, others may not. But all make for interesting reading and most certainly, some of what follows is true.

Back almost beyond memory in the late 18th century - about 1790 - a Shawnee Indian named Silverheels lived along the Elk Eye (Muskingum River), near present-day Stockport, Ohio. At that time, Ohio was not yet a state and this recently-opened land west of the Ohio River was called the Northwest Territory. White settlers were moving into the area which was already populated by several tribes of Indians and there were many skirmishes and killings on both sides.

According to legend, Silverheels was tall and statuesque with the bearing of a chief (his brother may have actually been a chief) and he was said to have been friendly to the settlers and even escorted white traders from New York to Ohio.

In early 1790, despite unrest with the Indians in the area, settlers moved north along the Muskingum to an area called Big Bottom -just across from a natural riffle in the river to a level area on the east side south of present day Stockport. - and erected a block house along with several small homes. On January 2, 1791, several Indians crossed the river at the now Silverheels Riffle, attacking the settlement, burning the houses and the block house and massacaring nine men, one woman and two teenage boys. It is said that one teenage lad escaped and fled through the woods to Marietta, where he reported the disaster. It is important to note that this massacre is viewed by many to be the start of the Indian wars which raged nearly four years in the Northwest Territory ending with the signing of the Treaty of Greenville.

One story says that Silverheels was on the high ridge on the west side of the river and observed this attack but did not participate in it since he had befriended the settlers and helped them from time to time.

In any event, in 1794, a settler named Abel Sherman, who lived in a settlement called Olive Green north of Beverly, had gone toward Ft. Frye to look for his strayed cattle. As evening approached, residents at Ft. Frye urged him to spend the night there and not return to his home due to unrest among the Indians of the area. Despite these warnings he headed back up the river toward home.

Around sundown, people living in the Olive Green blockhouse heard gunfire! Abel's son, Ezra, grabbed a weapon and ran toward the source of the sound. About a quarter mile away, he found his father dead and scalped. Abel's shirt was filled with mandrakes (May apples) which many thought he was gathering to bring back to the children of the garrison. His body was buried at the mouth of Sherman's Run, also known as Dead Man's Run.

Some years later, in 1798, at a salt well near present day Chandlersville, Silverheels joined several of the men of the area in a bout of drinking. He became very talkative and boasted of killing a man who was gathering May apples near Stockport. It so happened that one of the men in the group was Josiah Sherman, son of the murdered settler. He questioned the Indian further and Silverheels reported that the man had a jacket filled with May apples and almost had a double crown, which divided, brought him $50 in Detroit from the British. He also shared that he had hidden the man's gun in a hollow tree log.

In the following days, Josiah returned to the spot where his father had been murdered and, in fact, found the log with Abel's rifle inside it. Not many days later two hunters found Silverheels, dead by his campfire on the river bank, shot through the heart.

Able Sherman's grave stone is preserved at Campus Martius Museum in Marietta. The inscription reads:

A monument to Silverheels was placed in the Stockport cemetery at the base of the flagpole in 1979 and reads: