protected from hostile Indians. Bands of these "associators" were
organised to obtain their allotments in the new country and to settle upon
them. They would "plant a brave, a hardy, and respectable race of people
as our advanced post," wrote Washington in presenting the project to
Congress. "A settlement formed by such men would give security to our
frontiers; the very name of it would awe the Indians."

One body of men, styling themselves "The Ohio Company of Associators,"
composed of ex-Revolutionary officers and privates residing in and
about Boston, sent a botanist-parson, the Reverend Manasseh Cutler,
to the Congress in the summer of 1787, to urge a proposition they had
advanced for the purchase of a large tract on the Ohio River. These
"adventurers," as they styled themselves, were desirous of driving a
good bargain in a low price for the land and also of gaining certain
guarantees from Congress which would give them as much personal liberty
and protection in the new home and under the National Government as
they enjoyed in their present residences under their State Governments.
Cutler, provided with forty-two letters of introduction to members of
Congress and prominent citizens of New York city, reached the seat of
government in due time. "At 11 o'clock," he wrote in his private
journal, "I was introduced to a number of members on the floor of
Congress Chamber, in the City Hall, by Colonel Carrington, member from
Virginia. Delivered my petition for purchasing lands for the Ohio
Company, and proposed terms and conditions of purchase." Fortunately
there was a quorum in Congress, the first in nearly two months. A few
days later, Cutler was sent a copy of the Johnson ordinance then
pending. To this he proposed "several amendments." Three days afterward,
the celebrated Ordinance of 1787, for the government of that portion
of the territory north-west of the Ohio, was completed and adopted to
Cutler's satisfaction. "It is in a degree remodelled," he wrote in his