The Seneca Indians called it the Ohi:yo' (pronounced oh-hee-yoh), literally the “Good River.”
When French explorer La Salle first saw the Ohio in 1669, he described it as La Belle Rivière, " the Beautiful River.”
Thomas Jefferson echoed their sentiments, calling the Ohio “the most beautiful river on earth” in his book, Notes on the State of Virginia, even though he had never seen it.
In the negotiations to end the Revolution, John Adams insisted that the Ohio territory must belong to the new nation. He was painted a few years later in 1788 by Mather Brown. Boston Atheneum.
However it was described, the Ohio River became the primary means to venture west for the early European settlers, allowing them to float through largely roadless forests from Williamsport or Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania to the Mississippi, and then on down to New Orleans and the land of the ten-dollar bank note known as “le Dixie.”
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