Roundhead, Jean-Baptiste, and Rhinophyma

In extreme southwestern Hardin County, tucked between a level plain (once marshland) and the hummocky terrain adjoining the Scioto River, lies the community of Roundhead. Though platted in July 1832 (and, thus, the county's oldest surviving settlement), Roundhead contains few buildings worthy of note — numerous late-19th-century frame dwellings (most altered), one intriguing hybrid store-residence, a Methodist church, and a school gymnasium. The locality's name, no doubt, is its oddest feature. What inspired this curious moniker?

According to the 1883 History of Hardin County, Ohio, the community (1) received its name from the township in which it exists, which, in turn, "is said to have been named in honor of the Indian chief of that name" (not the Parliamentarians, as one might suspect). The Wyandot chief Roundhead — or Stiaha — participated in Tecumseh's War, and perished during the Battle of the Thames in 1813. Apparently, Roundhead once occupied a village at the present site of the community bearing his name.

A few years ago, when I first read about Roundhead, I discovered the following passage in Henry Howe's redoubtable Historical Collections of Ohio:

Roundhead, whose Indian name was Stiahta [sic?], was a fine-looking man. He had a brother named John Batisse [sic], of great size and personal strength. His nose, which was enormous, resembled in hue a blue potatoe, was full of indentations, and when he laughed it shook like jelly. These Indians joined the British in the late war [i.e., the War of 1812], and Batisse was killed at Fort Meigs.

Amused (and a bit disconcerted) by Howe's description, I filed the reference in my mind's card catalog. A year or two later, I browsed The History of Champaign County, Ohio, and discovered, with great surprise, a corroborating account of Jean-Baptiste's appearance:

'Roundhead' was much of the time at McPherson's, and was a troublesome Pottawatomie Chief [sic!]. 'Battecast' [Jean-Baptiste] was also at McPherson's and along Mad River a considerable portion of the time. He had a remarkable nose; it covered his face and hung down over his chin. (2)

Jean-Baptiste surely suffered from rhinophyma, an inflammation of the nose associated with untreated rosacea. Alas, Howe's and Black's descriptions no doubt contain hyperbole. Nonetheless, the image of a massive man; with a jiggling, purplish, ponderous proboscis; inspires far more delight than its medical reality warrants. I can't help but think of Sancho Panza's meeting the Squire of the Wood:

But as soon as the light of day made it possible to see and distinguish one thing from another, the first thing that appeared before Sancho Panza's eyes was the nose of the Squire of the Wood, which was so big it almost cast a shadow over the rest of his body. In fact, it is recounted that his nose was outlandishly large, hooked in the middle, covered with warts, and of a purplish color like an eggplant; it came down the width of two fingers past his mouth[.] (3)

Jean-Baptiste, the true rhinophymic, (4) died, as noted above, during the 1813 Siege of Fort Meigs in modern Perrysburg, Ohio. Other than a few mentions in biographies about Roundhead, Jean-Baptiste has received scant attention from historians. He'll be remembered (by those few who read about him) not for his military prowess, but for his nose.

1) I hesitate to use the word "village." By Ohio law, "[m]unicipal corporations, which, at the last federal census, had a population of five thousand or more . . . are cities. All other municipal corporations are villages." Roundhead, being unincorporated, is not truly a village.

2) Account provided by James Black (1798–1882), an early resident of Champaign County.

3) From Edith Grossman's translation.

4) In Don Quixote, the Squire of the Wood is, in fact, Tomé Cecial, a neighbor enlisted to coax Don Quixote into sanity. To disguise himself, Cecial dons a prosthetic nose.

Scioto, or Sciota, or Siota? A Bit of Ohio Philology

The tribes who populated Ohio before permanent settlement by Europeans—the Delaware, Erie, Miami, Huron, and Shawnee, among others—lacked written languages and, thus, standardized spellings. White explorers and settlers transcribed their words in higgledy-piggledy fashion: Chalakatha (or Chalahgawtha) became Chillicothe; Pekowi was transformed into Piqua and Pickaway; mshkikwam evolved into Muskingum; and so on.

The name of Ohio's longest interior waterway—the Scioto River—is a particularly interesting example of this phenomenon. Even though anglicized (and, one presumes, simplified from its original form), its spelling differs slightly from its pronunciation. Residents of towns and neighborhoods named for the river can be forgiven for their ire when non-Ohioans, having never heard of the stream, mispronounce it as "skee-OH-toe."

Sandy Nestor's Indian Placenames in America describes the meaning of Scioto, but fails to provide a spelling (or pronunciation) for the word from which it was derived:

It is a Shawnee word meaning 'hairy,' descriptive of the shedded hair from herds of deer that drank from the river. It was also interpreted as 'deer.'

Thomas Aquinas Burke, in Ohio Lands: A Short History, uses the spelling scionto, while Wikipedia prefers skɛnǫ·tǫ’ (which I'll transliterate as skenno-toh). According to The Wilderness Trail, "[e]arly forms of the name applied to the Scioto River included Souyote, Sonnioto, Sonontio, Cenioteaux, St. Yotoc [ha!], Chianotho, and Sikader." The corruption of the final vowel in Scioto (from "oh" to "uh"), evidently, began well before Ohio received its first settlers—indeed, well before the American colonies broke from Britain!

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, travelers and mapmakers disagreed about the proper way of writing Scioto. Joel Barlow's 1785 map of the Northwest Territory uses Scioto, the modern spelling, but Thomas Hutchins (1778) and Guy Johnson (1762) write Sioto, and Noah Webster (1806) labels the river Siota. Prince Carl Bernhard's Travels Through North America, During the Years 1825 and 1826 (admittedly a translated work) misspells Scioto as Sciota.

The currently accepted spelling, Scioto, was likely determined on March 24, 1803, when the Ohio legislature formed Scioto County from Adams County. Had the First Ohio General Assembly chosen Sciota (or another variant) instead of Scioto, our state would seem a very different place, indeed. (I write with the utmost sarcasm.)