USA > Massachusetts > History of the early settlement of the Juniata Valley : embracing an account of the early pioneers, and the trials and privations incident to the settlement of the valley ; predatory incursions, massacres, and abductions by the Indians during the French and Indian wars, and the War of the Revolution, &c. > Part 9
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roused to their feet, a proper number, under sundry officers, were ordered to take the end of the hill at which we then lay, and march along the top of the said hill at least one hundred perches, and so much farther (it then being daylight) as would carry them opposite the upper part, or at least the body, of the town. For the lower part thereof and the corn-field, presuming the warriors were there, I kept rather the larger number of men, promising to postpone the attack in that part for eighteen or twenty minutes, until the de- tachment along the hill should have time to advance to the place assigned them-in doing of which they were a little unfortunate. The time being elapsed, the attack was begun in the corn-field, and the men, with all expedition possible, despatched through the several parts thereof, a party being also despatched to the houses, which were then discovered by the light of the day. Captain Jacobs immediately then gave the war-whoop, and, with sundry other Indians, as the English prisoners afterward told, cried the white men were at last come, they would then have scalps enough; but, at the same time, ordered their squaws and children to flee to the woods. Our men, with great eagerness, passed through and fired in the corn-field, where they had several returns from the enemy, as they also had from the opposite side of the river. Pre- sently after, a brisk fire began among the houses, which from the house of Captain Jacobs was returned with a great deal of resolu- tion, to which place I immediately repaired, and found that from the advantage of the house and portholes sundry of our people were wounded and some killed; and, finding that returning the fire upon the house was ineffectual, I ordered the contiguous houses to be set on fire, which was performed by sundry of the officers and soldiers with a great deal of activity, the Indians always firing whenever an object presented itself, and seldom missing of wound- ing or killing some of our people -- from which house, in moving about to give the necessary orders and directions, I received a wound with a large musket-ball in the shoulders. Sundry persons, during the action, were ordered to tell the Indians to surrender themselves prisoners, but one of the Indians in particular answered and said he was a man, and would not be a prisoner; upon which he was told, in Indian, he would be burnt. To this he answered he did not care, for he would kill four or five before he died; and, had we not desisted from exposing ourselves, they would have killed a
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great many more, they having a number of loaded guns by them. As the fire began to approach and the smoke grew thick, one of the Indian fellows, to show his manhood, began to sing. A squaw in the same house, and at the same time, was heard to cry and make a noise, but for so doing was severely rebuked by the man ; but by- and-by, the fire being too hot for them, two Indian fellows and a squaw sprang out and made for the corn-field, who were imme- diately shot down by our people then surrounding the houses. It was thought Captain Jacobs tumbled himself out at a garret or cockloft window at which he was shot-our prisoners offering to be qualified to the powder-horn and pouch there taken off him, which they say he had lately got from a French officer in exchange for Lieutenant Armstrong's boots, which he carried from Fort Gran- ville, where the lieutenant was killed. The same prisoners say they are perfectly assured of his scalp, as no other Indians there wore their hair in the same manner. They also say they know his squaw's scalp by a particular bob, and also know the scalp of a young Indian called the King's Son. Before this time, Captain Hugh Mercer, who, early in the action, was wounded in the arm, had been taken to the top of a hill above the town,-to whom a number of the men and some of the officers were gathered, from whence they had discovered some Indians pass the river and take the hill, with an intention, as they thought, to surround us and cut off our retreat, from whom I had sundry pressing messages to leave the houses and retreat to the hills, or we should all be cut off. But to this I would by no means consent until all the houses were set on fire. Though our spreading upon the hills appeared very neces- sary, yet did it prevent our researches of the corn-field and river- side, by which means sundry scalps were left behind, and doubtless some squaws, children, and English prisoners, that otherwise might have been got. During the burning of the houses, which were near thirty in number, we were agreeably entertained with a quick succession of charged guns gradually firing off as reached by the fire, but much more so with the vast explosion of sundry bags and large kegs of gunpowder, wherewith almost every house abounded; the prisoners afterward informing us that the Indians had fre- quently said they had a sufficient stock of ammunition for ten years' war with the English. With the roof of Captain Jacobs's house, when the powder blew up, was thrown the leg and thigh of
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an Indian, with a child of three or four years old, to such a height that they appeared as nothing, and fell in an adjoining corn-field. There was also a great quantity of goods burnt, which the Indians had received in a present but ten days before from the French. By this time I had proceeded to the hill, to have my wound tied up and the blood stopped, where the prisoners which in the morning had come to our people informed me that that very day two bateaux of Frenchmen, with a large party of Delaware and French Indians, were to join Captain Jacobs at the Kittaning, and to set out early the next morning to take Fort Shirley, or, as they called it, George Crogan's Fort; and that twenty-four warriors, who had lately come to the town, were set out the evening before, for what purpose they did not know,-whether to prepare meat, to spy the fort, or to make an attack on some of our back inhabitants. Soon after, upon a little reflection, we were convinced these warriors were all at the fire we had discovered but the night before, and began to doubt the fate of Lieutenant Hogg and his party. From this intelligence of the prisoners,-our provisions being scaffolded some thirty miles back, except what were in the men's haversacks, which were left, with the horses and blankets, with Lieutenant Hogg and his party,-and having a number of wounded people then on hand, by the advice of the officers it was thought imprudent then to wait for the cutting down the corn-field, (which was before de- signed,) but immediately to collect our wounded and force our march back in the best manner we could ; which we did, by collect- ing a few Indian horses to carry off our wounded. From the appre- hension of being waylaid and surrounded, (especially by some of the woodsmen,) it was difficult to keep the men together, our march, for sundry miles, not exceeding two miles an hour; which appre- hensions were heightened by the attempt of a few Indians, who, for some time after the march, fired upon each wing and imme- diately ran off; from whom we received no other damage but one of our men being wounded through both legs. Captain Mercer-being wounded, was induced, as we have every reason to believe, by some of his men, to leave the main body, with his ensign, John Scott, and ten or twelve men, they being heard to tell him that we were in great danger, and that they could take him into the road a nigh way-is probably lost, there being yet no account of him, and the most of the men come in. A detachment was sent back to bring
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him, but could not find him; and upon the return of the detach- ment it was generally reported he was seen, with the above num- ber of men, to take a different road. Upon our return to the place where the Indian fire had been discovered the night before, we met with a sergeant of Captain Mercer's company, and two or three other of his men, who had deserted us that morning, imme- diately after the action at the Kittaning. These men, on run- ning away, had met with Lieutenant Hogg, who lay wounded in two different parts of his body by the road-side. He there told them of the fatal mistake of the pilot, who had assured us there were but three Indians, at the most, at the fire place; but when he came to attack them that morning, according to orders, he found a number considerably superior to his, and believes they killed or mortally wounded three of them the first fire, after which a warm engagement began, and continued for above an hour, when three of his best men were killed and himself twice wounded. The residue fleeing off, he was obliged to squat in a thicket, where he might have lain securely until the main body had come up, if this cowardly sergeant and others that fled with him had not taken him away.
They had marched but a short space when four Indians ap- peared, on which these deserters began to flee. The lieutenant then, notwithstanding his wounds, as a brave soldier, urged and commanded them to stand and fight, which they all refused. The Indians pursued, killing one man and wounding the lieutenant a third time, through the belly, of which he died in a few hours, but, having some time before been put on horseback, rode some miles from the place of action. This last attack of the Indians upon Lieutenant Hogg and the deserters was by the before-mentioned sergeant represented to us quite in a different light, he telling us that there was a far larger number of the Indians there than ap- peared to them, and that he and the men with him had fought five rounds; that he had there seen the lieutenant and sundry others killed and scalped, and had also discovered a number of Indians throwing themselves before us, and insinuated a great deal of such stuff as threw us into much confusion; so that the officers had a great deal to do to keep the men together, but could not prevail upon them to collect what horses and other baggage the Indians had left after the conquest of Lieutenant Hogg and the party
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under his command in the morning, except a few of the horses, which some of the bravest of the men were prevailed on to collect ; so that from the mistake of the pilot who spied the Indians at the fire, and the cowardice of the said sergeant and other deserters, we here sustained a considerable loss of our horses and baggage. It is im- possible to ascertain the exact number of the enemy killed in the action, as some were destroyed by fire, and others in different parts of the corn-field; but, upon a moderate computation, it is generally believed there cannot be less than thirty or forty killed and mor- tally wounded, as much blood was found in sundry parts of the corn-field, and Indians seen in several places crawl into the woods on hands and feet,-whom the soldiers in pursuit of others then over- looked, expecting to find and scalp them afterward,-and also several killed and wounded in crossing the river. On beginning our march back, we had about a dozen of scalps and eleven English prisoners ; but now we find that four or five of the scalps are missing, part of which were lost on the road, and part in possession of those men who, with Captain Mercer, separated from the main body, with whom went also four of the prisoners, the other seven being now at this place, where we arrived on Sunday night, not being sepa- rated or attacked through our whole march by the enemy, though we expected it every day. Upon the whole, had our pilots under- stood the true situation of the town and the paths leading to it, so as to have posted us at a convenient place where the disposition of the men and the duty assigned to them could have been performed with greater advantage, we had, by divine assistance, destroyed a much greater number of the enemy, recovered more prisoners, and sustained less damage, than what we at present have. But though the advantage gained over this our common enemy is far from being satisfactory to us, yet we must not despise the smallest de- grees of success that God is pleased to give, especially at a time of such general calamity, when the attempts of our enemies have been so prevalent and successful. I am sure there was the greatest inclination to do more, had it been in our power, as the officers and most of the soldiers, throughout the whole action, exerted themselves with as much activity and resolution as could be ex- pected. Our prisoners inform us the Indians have for some time past talked of fortifying at the Kittaning and other towns.
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The following is a list of the killed and wounded, re- turned in Colonel Armstrong's official report of the ex- pedition :-
LIEUTENANT-COLONEL JOHN ARMSTRONG'S COMPANY .- Killed-Thomas Power, John M'Cormick. Wounded- Lieutenant-Colonel Armstrong, James Caruthers, James Strickland, Thomas Foster.
CAPTAIN HAMILTON'S COMPANY .- Killed-John Kelly.
CAPTAIN MERCER'S COMPANY .- Killed-John Baker, John McCartney, Patrick Mullen, Cornelius McGinnis, Theophilus Thompson, Dennis Kilpatrick, Bryan Carrigan. Wounded-Richard Fitzgibbons. Missing-Captain Hugh Mercer, Ensign John Scott, Emanuel Minskey, John Taylor, John Francis Phillips, Robert Morrow, Thomas Burk, Philip Pendergrass.
CAPTAIN ARMSTRONG'S COMPANY .- Killed-Lieutenant James Hogg, James Anderson, Holdcraft Stringer, Ed- ward Obrians, James Higgins, John Lasson. Wounded- William Findley, Robert Robinson, John Ferrol, Thomas Camplin, Charles O'Neal. Missing-John Lewis, Wil- liam Hunter, William Barker, George Appleby, Anthony Grissy, Thomas Swan.
CAPTAIN WARD'S COMPANY .- Killed -William Welch. Wounded-Ephraim Bratton. Missing-Patrick Myers, Lawrence Donnahow, Samuel Chambers.
CAPTAIN POTTER'S COMPANY .- Wounded-Ensign James Potter, Andrew Douglass.
CAPTAIN STEEL'S COMPANY .- Missing-Terence Can- naherry.
Total killed, 17; wounded, 13; missing, 19. All the
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missing, with one or two exceptions, reached their homes, and nearly all of the wounded recovered.
The loss on the part of the colonists was severe, when we consider that they had three hundred and fifty men en- gaged in the action, while the Indian force did not consist of over one hundred warriors. The ignorance of the pilot, and the great error of some of the officers in persisting in trying to dislodge the enemy from the houses by discharge of fire-arms, was no doubt the direct cause of the death of many of the brave men; for all must admit that the ex- pedition was well planned, and admirably carried out, as far as circumstances would permit.
In speaking of the horrible Indian massacres which followed the defeat of Braddock, Drake, in his Indian history, says :-
Shingas and Captain Jacobs were supposed to have been the principal instigators of them, and a reward of seven hundred dollars was offered for their heads. It was at this period that the dead bodies of some of the murdered and mangled were sent from the frontiers to Philadelphia, and hauled about the streets, to inflame the people against the Indians, and also against the Quakers, to whose mild forbearance was attributed a laxity in sending out troops. The mob surrounded the House of As- sembly, having placed the dead bodies at its entrance, and de- manded immediate succor. At this time, the above reward was offered.
King Shingas, as he was called by the whites, (who is noticed in the preceding paragraph,) but whose proper name was Shingask, which is interpreted Bog-meadow, was the greatest Delaware warrior at that time. Heckwelder, who knew him personally, says, "Were his war exploits
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all on record, they would form an interesting document, though a shocking one." Conococheague, Big Cove, Sher- man's Valley, and other settlements along the frontier, felt his strong arm sufficiently to attest that he was a " bloody warrior,"-cruel his treatment, relentless his fury. His person was small, but in point of courage, activity, and savage prowess, he was said to have never been exceeded by any one. In 1753, when Washington was on his expe- dition to fight the French on the Ohio, (Alleghany,) Shin- gas had his house at Kittaning.
King Shingas was at Fort Duquesne when Lieutenant Armstrong destroyed Kittaning; but there is no doubt whatever that Captain Jacobs fell in the engagement, not- withstanding Hans Hamilton, in a letter to the council, dated at Fort Lyttleton, April 4, 1756, said, "Indian Isaac hath brought in the scalp of Captain Jacobs." This Indian Isaac claimed, and we believe received, the reward offered for killing and scalping Captain Jacobs, and yet Captain Jacobs lived to do a great deal of mischief before his scalp fell into the hands of the English colonists.
Not only was Captain Jacobs a great warrior, but it would appear that all his family connections were Indians of note. In a letter from Colonel Stephen to Colonel Armstrong, it is stated, on the authority of a returned captive from Muskingum, that
A son of Captain Jacobs is killed, and a cousin of his, about seven foot high, called Young Jacob, at the destroying of Kittan- ing, and it is thought a noted warrior by the name of The Sunfish, as many of them were killed that we know nothing of.
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There is no doubt that Armstrong's return did not embrace half the actual loss of the enemy, including women and children; but it was a mistake in Stephen or his informant to include the warrior Sunfish among the slain, for he was a hale old chief in 1781.
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CHAPTER XI.
OLD INDIAN TOWN -INDIAN PATHS-AUGHWICK - MURDER OF JOHN ARMSTRONG AND PARTY - CAPTAIN JACK, THE WILD HUNTER OF THE JUNIATA - GEORGE CROGAN, ETC.
As we ascend the river, the nearer we approach the base of the Alleghany Mountains the fewer places we find even mentioned in quite early history. On the flat eight or nine miles west of Lewistown, near a large spring, stood an old Shawnee town. It is mentioned as early as 1731, in a report of the number of Indians accompanying the deposition of some traders. The town was called Ohesson, on the "Choniata," and supposed to be sixty miles distant from the Susquehanna. As this is Indian computation, some allowance must be made, for in the same connection we notice the Indian town of Assunnepachla set down as being distant one hundred miles from Ohesson by water and fifty miles by land. Assunnepachla was the Indian name of Frankstown; and no person, by following the most sinuous windings of the river, can make the distance to Lewistown over eighty miles.
These places were probably never visited by any but Indian traders previous to Braddock's defeat, and the
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consequence is that we are without any record of Ohesson, which was evidently destroyed and abandoned at an early day. Assunnepachla, however, stood for many years, but it lost its name before it became a place of importance to the whites.
Aughwick, it is said, had the honor of receiving the first white settlers, in 1749, that came within the present limits of Huntingdon county. Of course, they were in search of choice lands, and there is reason to believe they found them, too, notwithstanding the proprietors and their man Peters, in a year thereafter, ousted them by burning their cabins over their heads. Aughwick Valley is in the extreme southern part of Huntingdon county, and, if not a regular continuation of the Tuscarora Valley, is at least one of the chain of valleys through whose entire length ran the celebrated Indian path from Kittaning to Phila- delphia,-the great western highway for footmen and pack-horses.
This path, traces of which can yet be plainly seen in various places, and especially in the wilds of the moun- tains, must have been a famous road in its day. It commenced at Kittaning, on the Alleghany River, and crossed the Alleghany Mountains in a southeastern di- rection, the descent on the eastern slope being through a gorge, the mouth of which is five or six miles west of Hollidaysburg, at what is well known as Kittaning Point. From this it diverged in a southern direction until it led to the flat immediately back of Hollidays- burg, from thence east, wound round the gorge back of the Presbyterian graveyard, and led into Frank's old town. From thence it went through what is now called
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Scotch Valley, Canoe Valley, and struck the river at Water street. From thence it led to Alexandria, crossed the river, and went into Hartsog Valley; from thence to Woodcock Valley; from Woodcock Valley, across the Broadtop Mountain, into Aughwick; from thence into the Tuscarora Valley, and from thence into Sherman's Valley, by Sterritt's Gap.
At Kittaning Point, this path, although it is seldom that the foot of any one but an occasional hunter or fisher treads it, is still the same path it was when the last dusky warrior who visited the Juniata Valley turned his face to the west, and traversed it for the last time. True, it is filled up with weeds in summer-time, but the indentation made by the feet of thousands upon thousands of warriors and pack-horses which travelled it for an unknown number of years are still plainly visible. We have gone up the Kittaning gorge two or three miles, repeatedly, and looked upon the ruins of old huts, and the road, which evidently never received the impression of a wagon-wheel, and were forcibly struck with the idea that it must once have been traversed, without knowing at the time that it was the famous Kittaning trail. In some places, where the ground was marshy, close to the run, the path is at least twelve inches deep, and the very stones along the road bear the marks of the iron-shod horses of the Indian traders. Two years ago, we picked up, at the edge of the run, a mile up the gorge, two gun-flints,-now rated as relics of a past age. At the time we supposed that some modern Nimrod lost them. Now, however, we incline to the belief that they fell from the pocket of some weary soldier in Arm- strong's battalion, who lay down upon the bank of the
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brook to slake his thirst, nearly a hundred years ago. The path can be traced in various other places, but no- where so plain as in the Kittaning gorge. This is owing to the fact that one or two other paths led into it, and no improvement has been made in the gorge east of "Hart's Sleeping Place," along the line of the path.
Aughwick was an Indian town, located probably near where Shirleysburg now stands, and for a long time was an important frontier post. The name of the place figures extensively in the Colonial Records, first as a place where many conferences were held, and afterward as Fort Shirley.
Previous to actual settlers coming into the Juniata Valley, every inch of it was known to the traders-or, at least, every Indian town in it; and how long they traf- ficked with the red men before actual settlers came is unknown. Thus, for instance, six or seven years before the settlement of Aughwick, a trader named John Arm- strong, and his two servant-men, were murdered at what is now Jack's Narrows, in Huntingdon county. As there are several narrows along the Juniata, we should have been at a loss to locate the scene of the murder, had we not accidentally noticed in the Archives a calculation of distances by John Harris, wherein he says-" From Aughwick to Jack Armstrong's Narrows-so called from his being there murdered,-eight miles." At the time of the massacre, the British colonists and the Indians were on the most friendly terms of intimacy, and Armstrong was a man of some standing and influence, so that the mur- der (the first one of so atrocious a nature in that region) created the most intense excitement. Along with Arm-
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strong, his servant-men, James Smith and Woodward Ar- nold, were also murdered. The charge was laid to a Dela- ware Indian, named Musemeelin, and two companions. Seven white men and five Indians searched for the bodies, found and buried them. The Indian was arrested and taken to Lancaster, and from there removed to Phila- delphia for trial, but whether convicted or not the record does not say. Allumoppies, King of the Delawares, Shickallemy, and a number of other Indians of standing and influence, were brought before the council in Phila- delphia, when the friends of Armstrong produced the fol- lowing affidavit of those who searched for the bodies :-
Paxton, April 19, 1744.
The deposition of the subscribers testifieth and saith, that the subscribers, having a suspicion that John Armstrong, trader, to- gether with his men, James Smith and Woodward Arnold, were murdered by the Indians, they met at the house of Joseph Chambers, in Paxton, and there consulted to go to Shamokin, to consult with the Delaware king and Shickcalimy, and there council what they should do concerning the affair. Whereupon the king and council ordered eight of their men to go with the deponents to the house of James Berry, in order to go in quest of the mur- dered persons; but that night they came to the said Berry's house three of the eight Indians ran away; and the next morning these deponents, with the five Indians that remained, set out on their journey, peaceably, to the last supposed sleeping-place of the deceased; and upon their arrival, these deponents dispersed them- selves, in order to find out the corpse of the deceased; and one of the deponents, named James Berry, a small distance from the aforesaid sleeping-place, came to a white-oak tree, which had three notches on it, and close by said tree he found a shoulder-bone, which the deponent does suppose to be John Armstrong's,-and that he himself was eaten by the Indians,-which he carried to the aforesaid sleeping-place, and showed it to his companions, one of whom handed it to the said five Indians to know what bone it was ;
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