At the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers, Marietta arose on land made available by the Northwest Territory Ordinance of 1787 and purchased by the Ohio Company of Associates for resale and settlement. Many of its pioneers were Revolutionary War veterans who first named the city Adelphia, meaning Brethren, before renaming it Marietta in honor of Marie Antoinette and in gratitude for French aid during the American Revolution. Fort Harmar, built in the fall of 1785 and occupied by the First American Regiment under Major John Doughty, helped secure the site and influenced the Ohio Company’s choice of location. On April 7, 1788, Rufus Putnam and a vanguard of pioneers arrived to establish the first permanent settlement in the Northwest Territory, towing their river craft back into the Muskingum after missing the intended landing point and coming ashore near the site shortly after noon, where about 70 Indians led by the Delaware chief Captain Pipe welcomed them. At the point where the rivers met, the settlers pitched tents and built temporary dwellings, and a business district quickly emerged; by 1791 about 20 families lived there, along with the territory’s first tavern or hotel, first store, first United States Post Office, and first rental property. Because the settlement stood across the river from Fort Harmar, the pioneers at first did not surround it with a stockade, but when the Indian Wars began in 1791 they erected stout pickets on the exposed sides, giving the place the name The Picketed Point. In the summer of 1788, Campus Martius was built about a mile up the Muskingum as a 180-foot-square fortified enclosure with corner blockhouses to protect settlers in case of Indian attack, and during the Indian wars of 1791 to 1794 armed sentries guarded it day and night; it also served as headquarters for the territorial government and as the site of the first Civil Court in the Northwest Territory. Across the river, in what was Virginia in 1770, Samuel Tomlinson made a 400-acre tomahawk claim, and in the spring of 1787 Isaac and Rebecca Tomlinson Williams established a permanent settlement there; in 1790, after late planting and early frost ruined crops on the Ohio side, their better harvest helped save the Marietta settlers from famine. The area also preserves older earthworks: Quadranaou, a rectangular archaeological complex enclosing 50 acres with several small mounds and the graded way called Sacra Via leading to the Muskingum, is believed to have been built by the Hopewell Indians between 100 B.C. and A.D. 600, while to the southeast a 27-acre square includes Conus, the Great Mound, thought to be Adena in origin and dating between 800 B.C. and A.D. 100. Nearby Duvall’s Island, later known by several names and now Buckley’s Island, was home in pioneer times to Hamilton Kerr, and his father Matthew Kerr was killed by Indians as he landed his canoe at the foot of the island on June 16, 1791.