USA > New York > The Pennsylvania and New York frontier : history of from 1720 to the close of the Revolution > Part 14
USA > Pennsylvania > The Pennsylvania and New York frontier : history of from 1720 to the close of the Revolution > Part 14
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NOTES-CHAPTER SIXTEEN
1. Paris Documents XVI, reprinted in N. Y. Col. Docs. X, 925 to 937.
2. Ibid, 937.
3. Frontier Forts, 2, 103 to 109.
4. Pa. Archs. 3, 668, 669.
5. Ibid, 674.
6. Ibid, 707; Rupp's History of Cumberland County, 158 to 161.
7. N. Y. Col. Docs. 7, 395, 396.
8. French account, see Journal of the Siege of Fort Niagara, Paris Docu- ments, N. Y. Col. Docs. 10, 977 to 992; English account, N. Y. Col. Docs. 7, 402, 403 ; Prideaux-Johnson Orderly Book and Johnson's letter, Johnson Papers 3, 48 to 113; Johnson's Diary in Stone's Life of Johnson 2, 394 to 425.
9. Parkman, who is partial to him, exalts Montcalm, but he probably merited some of the criticism of Vaudreuil and others. He was brilliant, well educated and of amiable social qualities, but as a soldier undecided and uncertain. At Ticonderoga, his greatest victory, he was undecided where to fight and only adopted the superior position, he barricaded, upon the advice of his officers. His triumph was largely due to the incapacity of Abercrombie. In the capture of Fort William Henry, he had vastly superior forces and equipment. He has been criticised for attacking Wolfe at Quebec too soon, but it would seem he had to fight. His conduct at Fort William Henry, in permitting the massacre, is inexcusable.
Wolfe was a military genius of great daring, but cautious in his actions. He measured Montcalm accurately and anticipated he would fight immediately, when he discovered his plan of defense was disarranged, by the occupation of the Plains of Abraham.
Amherst had been criticised, because he did not move more rapidly. He was slow but sure. Until he mastered Lake Champlain, he could not advance, and even then the season was too far advanced to invade Canada.
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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE INDIAN UPRISING OF 1763 (PONTIAC'S WAR)
₹
Francis Parkman immortalized Pontiac as the projector and con- spirator of the war, but later writers have doubted he was so consequential. Pontiac was only one of the Ottawa chiefs and Croghan does not mention him as one of the prominent Indians, who welcomed him in 1760, when he visited Detroit.1 It is doubtful, that Pontiac sent ambassadors to all the western tribes, as stated by Parkman, whose hypothesis of the "Con- spiracy of Pontiac," is largely based on the statement, of Robert Rogers to whom the French forts were surrendered, and written after Pontiac had flared into fame by his spectacular siege of Detroit.
After the French and Indian war, the Indian attitude was that of smoldering discontent. To appease the eastern Indians, the Pennsylvania authorities held conferences with them at Easton, in 1761 and at Lan- caster in August, 1762, and they were mollified by liberal donations of presents.2 Teedyuscung's land claims were settled by Sir William Johnson, at Easton, in June 1762, when the proprietary agents outsmarted Pember- ton and the Quakers by securing a paper signed by Teedyuscung, to the effect, that the charge, the deed of 1686 was forged, was a mistake into which he was led by statements of his ancestors. He, however, insisted Marshall's walk was unreasonably performed. This ended the land con- troversy.
Intruding settlers, who followed the English victories, aroused Indian animosity. This intrusion was anticipated by the Delaware chiefs, who said to Post, in 1758: "We have good reason to believe you intend to drive us away and settle the land." This distrust has existed since the first settle- ments, and the English thirst for land has caused every general Indian uprising. The so-called Indian land purchases were only disguised thefts and a salve for tender consciences. The Indians, a simple, trusting people, when they realized the wrong done them, retaliated and carried their vengeance, in 1763, into every nook and corner of the frontier. The French forts in the west and the amiable habitants, living about them, had made the western tribes devoted allies of France and they had gone down with the crushing fall of the French. No longer able to balance their power
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between England and France, they bitterly realized their future impotency. They were constantly incited by the French traders and habitants, who inspired them with the belief and hope a great French army was coming to redeem the land from the hated English.3
In 1762, a prophet arose, among the fickle Delawares, always prone to superstitous excitement, who preached abandonment of European weapons and utensils and return to stone implements and the bow and arrow, whereby they would rejuvenate themselves and recover possession of the land of their fathers.4 This Delaware hope of redemption spread among the other nations and changed the despair of defeat into a surge of discontent.
Premonition of the coming conflict was the visit of two Seneca chiefs to the Indians about Detroit, in 1761, and their endeavor to incite them to seize the place; but Captain Campbell, the commandant detected and exposed their design and frustrated the plot. The Senecas had lost no land, but the malign influence, over them of Chabert Joincaire and his sons, and the close proximity of their villages to Fort Niagara had wooed them to France.
Until May, 1763, though secretly nourishing the Seneca plan, the Indians about Detroit remained quiet. Pontiac, who had become their leader, sought admittance to the fort, under pretence of holding a confer- ence with Gladwin the commander, who the night before was, probably, informed by Baby, a friendly French habitant, of Pontiac's plot. In the morning, the Indians were admitted, but the troops were mustered in line and posted at strategic points. Foiled in his scheme, Pontiac dared not order an outbreak and retired in silent fury. Other subterfuges were employed, but Gladwin was too wary; and May 9th, Pontiac began the war by murdering the English found outside the works and by investing the fort. The news, of the siege, was soon known by all the Indians, and in a few weeks, every western outpost except Detroit was in their hands.
Captain Simeon Ecuyer,commander of Fort Pitt, had reported he was surrounded by dangerous rascals and that the French had incited the savages. Colonel William Clapham, who had built Fort Augusta and retired from the army, had made a plantation near Pittsburg. May 28th, the Indians killed Clapham and massacred every one in his house. The next day, two of the garrison of Fort Pitt were killed in a sawmill nearby. Calhoun, a trader reached Pittsburg, June 1st and reported, that all of his party of fourteen had been killed near Big Beaver creek, except him- self and three others who escaped.
Ecuyer placed all the cattle and oxen near the fort and organized two militia companies of eighty or ninety men, under the command of Trent, the trader, who was a great help to him. He gathered all the people within the fort, erected two ovens and a forge, destroyed the lower town and burned the upper town. All the powder of the merchants was placed in the king's magazine, the works were strengthened and beaver traps placed to entrap the Indians, if they attempted to scale the ramparts. Barrels of water were placed about the fort and the women instructed how to quench
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the flames, in case of fire. The garrison of Fort Pitt was two hundred fifty men of equal numbers of regulars and militia. June 1st, the place was com- pletely surrounded and all intercourse eastward shut off.
About the same time Fort Ligonier was attacked. Its commander, Lietuenant Archibald Blane had previously removed the inhabitants of Bushy Run and Stony Creek there, and detained a number of packhorse men, which considerably reinforced the garrison. Blane succeeded in burning the houses near the fort, from which the Indians intended to pursue the investment. This destruction discouraged them- and they decamped.
Everything was uncertain and startling rumors traveled rapidly through the woods, eastward to Carlisle. Apprehension and terror pre- vailed. A wild panic seized the settlers and ninety-three frontier families fled to Fort Bedford. Croghan wrote, from Shippensburg to Boquet at Philadelphia, a long letter, containing vague rumors and indefinite sug- gestions. Both he and Sir William Johnson, whose duty was to keep tabs on the Indians, had received no intimations of the uprising. General Am- herst, who despised the power of the Indians, could hardly credit the tidings, but he dispatched the available troops, two companies from New York, to Boquet at Philadelphia.4
The strongest part of the fortification, at Presque Isle, on the site of the present city of Erie, was a large blockhouse, with projecting upper story ; and to this the garrison retired, when the place was surrounded by the Indians, on June 20th. The shingle roof was set on fire by lighted arrows, but the flames were extinguished and resistance continued until midnight, when the assault ceased. In the morning the firing was renewed and lasted into the night. The water casks were exhausted and the roof on fire again but it was saved by tearing off the burning shingles. One of the assailants hailed Ensign Christie, the commander and assured him their lives would be spared, if they surrendered. The soldiers were exhausted and unable, to longer, continue the fight and Christie complied. The captives were divided among the different tribes and all were killed, except Christie, a soldier and a woman, who were taken by the Wyandots to Detroit, and turned over to Gladwin.5
Fort Le Boeuf was on the west fork of French creek, about fifteen miles south of Lake Erie, at the head of the portage to Presque Isle, in what is now Waterford, Erie county.6 Ensign Goerge Price was in com- mand of the garrison of thirteen soldiers. It was attacked, June 18th, and during the day a spirited defense was made, but at night the blockhouse was fired, and to escape suffocation, Price and his men fled to the woods. He and seven men reached Pittsburg, and later six others arrived there.7
On his way, Price passed Venango, which he found had been burned. This fort was near the old French fort, Machault; and Elk street in the present city of Franklin runs through what was the center of Fort Ven- ango.8 According to intelligence received by Sir William Johnson, a band of Senecas, under the guise of friendship, gained admittance, then closed the gates and butchered all within, except Lieutenant Gordon, the com-
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mander. He was compelled to write a statement of the grievances which caused the war and then tortured to death.9
Fort Pitt was assailed on the three land sides, June 22nd, but the cannon fire from the fort dispersed the Indians. In the fort at the time, were the garrison of three hundred thirty-eight men, one hundred four women and one hundred six children.1º Fort Ligonier was unsuccessfully attacked June 21st.11
The woods of Cumberland county were full of lurking devils, not organized bands of warriors, but little groups of four or five murderers, who sneaked out of the forest like tigers, fell on their prey, scattered farm houses, butchered the occupants and vanished in the dense, dark woods.
Boquet wrote from Carlisle, July 1st: "The list of people known to be killed, from forty to within six miles of this town, amounted last night to nineteen, besides wounded and increases very fast, every hour. The despair of those who have lost their parents, relatives and friends, with the cries of distressed women and children, who fill the streets from a series of horrors painful to humanity and impossible to describe."12
According to "Loudon's Narrative," in what is now Perry county, the savages came to the house of William White, where a number of reapers were gathered and murdered all of them, except a boy who leaped through a window and escaped. They then went to Robert Campbell's on Tuscarora creek and killed several harvesters. George Dodd, who was sleeping in an adjoining room, seized his gun and shot one of the Indians and got out of the house by the chimney. Near William Dickson's in Sherman's Valley, the Indians killed William Anderson, an old man, as he sat reading his Bible, also his son and a girl belonging to the family. A squad in pursuit of the Indians was ambushed and William Robison, Thomas Robison, John Graham, Charles Elliott and Edward McConnell were killed. John Logan, Charles Coyle and William Hamilton were slain, while pursuing another band of Indians.
Fort Bingham, in the Tuscarora Valley, was occupied by Ralph Ster- rett, an Indian trader, who, one day, gave a straggling and hungry Indian, food, rum and tobacco. After the outbreak of hostilities, those, in the fort, were startled one night by the rattling of the gate of the fort; and per- ceived it was an Indian making the noise. The occupants wanted to shoot him, but Sterrett restrained them. It was the Indian he had previously fed, who manifested his gratitude by informing him, the Indians were as plenty as pigeons in the woods, that they had entered the Tuscarora Valley and next day by noon, they would be at Fort Bingham determined to kill all the inmates and burn the place. Sterrett gathered all the neighboring settlers and before daybreak, they were on their way to the Cumberland Valley. Over eighty persons escaped by the timely warning of the grateful Indian, as the next night a large band of savages burned the fort.13
The Indians attacked Colonel Cresap's place, killed a man and
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wounded another, but were beaten off and retreated toward Bedford, burn- ing all the houses along Wills creek.14
William Thompson, a missionary residing at Carlisle wrote as follows :
"We find the number of the distressed to be seven hundred and fifty families, who have lost their crops, and some their stock and furniture ; and besides these we are informed, that about a hundred women and chil- dren are coming down from Fort Pitt. The unhappy sufferers are dispersed through every part of the county ; and many have passed through to York. In this town and neighborhood, there are upwards of two hundred families, and having the affliction of smallpox and flux to a great degree."15
When the news of the Indian outbreak reached Philadelphia, Governor Hamilton convened the assembly. As usual, the Quaker legislators nig- gardly complied, providing only seven hundred soldiers, and limiting their operations to the defense of the frontier inhabitants in the purchased parts of the province, during the time of harvest.
The man, who relieved Pittsburg, defended the frontier and crushed the Indian uprising, was a Swiss professional soldier, Henry Boquet.16 He was stern and arrogant, but honest, able and brave. On the frontier, since Braddock's days, he thoroughly understood the Indian method of warfare. He was so austere, that neither officers nor men liked or loved him, but he commanded their respect and complete cooperation. His stern attitude cowed the savages into an unprecedented submission.
Boquet left Carlisle, July 18th, with four hundred sixty men.17 Penn- sylvania, to her discredit, rendered no military assistance, although the farmers of the province engaged in the carriage service and their horses and wagons made up the supply train. He reinforced the garrison of Bed- ford with thirty of his men. Hostile spies hovered about his flanks, and the narrow defiles of the Alleghenies teemed with relentless foes, but he arrived at Ligonier without mishap. There he left thirty more of his men and all his wagons; and on August 4th resumed his march with four hundred men and four hundred packhorses laden with flour. That night he encamped on the road to Pittsburg, and the next morning proceeded toward Bushy Run, by which name the battle is known. At one o'clock in the afternoon, the Indians attacked his column, and in superior numbers swarmed about the English regulars, who repelled them, but the convoy being imperiled, they fell back to a hill and encircled the packhorses huddled together, there. Some of the wounded horses broke loose and ran among the troops threatening to break their ranks, but the officers held them steadfast, and timely darkness ended the day's engagement. Boquet wrote Amherst, a letter, containing dismal forebodings of the next day's battle. The wounded were gathered on the crest of the hill and protected by a rampart built of the bags of flour. The cattle and horses were placed next and all were encircled by the troops.
Early, the morning of the 6th, the Indians, who had surrounded the camp, renewed the attack. Perceiving it was useless to beat off the
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savages and pursue them, as the warriors lost themselves in the woods, and came back to their cover, when the troops fell back, Boquet devised a stratagem. Two of the advanced companies were withdrawn within the encircled camp, the main line parting and covering the flanks. The Indians conceiving this movement, the beginning of a general retreat, uncovered themselves, came into the open and made a spirited assault. Then, Major Campbell with two companies of grenadiers, concealed behind a spur of the hill, fell on the Indian's right flank, and with great intrepidity pursued them. The enemy's left wing awed into inaction by the superior English force massed before them, and seeing the warriors of the right flank over- whelmed, broke and fled. The English victory was complete, and the losses were only fifty killed and sixty wounded. The march to Pittsburg was resumed without obstruction, and the wagon train from Ligonier arrived there, August 22nd, without interference.18
During the summer, Sir William Johnson obtained assurances of loyalty from most of the Six Nations, and the Canadian Indians, who attended the conferences and were decidedly loyal, demanded that they compel the Senecas to desist from their depredations.
A convoy, of ox teams and wagons, in charge of William Stedman and escorted by twenty-four soldiers, was attacked by the Indians, in September, while traversing the portage between what is now Lewistown and Fort Schlosser which was located above Niagara Falls. It was made at the point where the river makes an acute angle, and the road ran on the brink of the precipice, which descends perpendicularly eighty feet to a dip pit, called the Devil's Hole. Most of the men were killed at the first onslaught. Indescribable confusion prevailed and the scared and wounded oxen plunged over the bank to tangled destruction in the pit beneath. An Indian seized the bridle of Stedman's horse, but he severed the reins close to the bit, eluded the Indian's fire and raced his horse by a roundabout way to the fort, being the only one to escape, save a drummer boy, who fell over the precipice, and was saved by his drummer straps catching in the limbs of a tree. Soldiers, encamped near, started to relieve the convoy, but were ambushed and sixty were killed and eight wounded. Major Wilkins and a large force, from Fort Niagara, found the Indians had decamped and only the scalped dead and ruined convoy.19
According to Rev. John Heckewelder's account, a party of Delaware Indians, returning from Bethlehem, while stopping at the tavern of John Stenton, in the present Allen township, Lehigh county, were mistreated and despoiled of their goods. They went to Nescopeck and nourished their grievance, until the outbreak of the war, gave them the opportunity of revenge. An Indian named Zachary and his wife, and a woman called Zippora, Moravian converts were barbarously murdered, while sleeping in a barn at Lehigh Gap, by soldiers of Captain Nicholas Wetterhold's company. Lieutenant Dodge of the same company was also guilty of other fiendish atrocities against friendly Indians. These aggravations were enough to incite more patient and cultivated races, than the Indians.
The woods were "full of noises," and the western insurrection aroused
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the Delawares living along the Susquehanna and its tributaries. Captain Bull, son of Teedyuscung and a band of Delaware Indians, moving silently and swiftly, probably along the old trail from Nescopeck to the Lehigh, early in the morning of October 8th, surrounded the Stenton tavern. Cap- tain Jacob Wetterhold and a company of soldiers had tarried there, the night before. His servant sent for his horse was shot and killed, and he, as he opened the door, was fired upon and mortally wounded. A sergeant, as he drew Wetterhold within, was dangerously hurt. The door was closed before the Indians could enter, but Stenton was shot through a window, as he was getting out of bed. He rushed from the house and eluding the Indians ran for a mile and dropped dead. Wetterhold, in spite of his wound, made a successful resistance and the Indians decamped. He was removed to Bethlehem, where he died the next day.20
Before the attack on the tavern, the Indians killed Mrs. James Horner, while going to a neighbors, for live coals to light a fire. After leaving the tavern, the savages plundered James Allen's house and murdered Andrew Hazlet and his family. They crossed the Lehigh at the Indian Falls, a short distance above Seigfrids Bridge, and marched through Whitehall township to John Jacob Mickley's. Three of his children were gathering chestnuts and Barbara aged seven and Henry, aged nine were struck by thrown tomahawks and killed. Peter, aged eleven escaped to Dehler's Fort and gave the alarm.
In the afternoon, the Indians attacked the house of Nicholas Marks, but the occupants got to Deshler's Fort. A party, from the fort, found Hans Schneider, his wife and three children dead in a field, and two other persons wounded; and in another field, Mrs. Jacob Alleman and child dead and scalped.21
A small band of Indians perpetrated several murders in Berks county. Philip Murloff's house at the foot of the Blue Mountains was entered and, his wife, two sons and two daughters killed.22 John Fincher, a Quaker living back of the Blue Mountains, was visited by a scalping party ; and he expressed the hope, as a Quaker, they came as friends, but, notwith- standing, they murdered him and his family. A pursuing party found four Miller children murdered and two missing, but these were recovered. Frantz Hubler in Bern township, eighteen miles from Reading was wounded and his wife and three children captured. Three other children were scalped alive, two of whom died.23 In February, 1764, the Indians attacked John Russell's house, near the present Stroudsburg and one of his sons was captured and another killed.24
A considerable number of Connecticut settlers had, in 1762 and 1763, located on Mill creek, near the present city of Wilkes-Barre and within the Susquehanna Purchase. On Saturday, October 15th, 1763, Captain Bull and his band of warriors, returning from their depredations on the Lehigh, descended from the mountains to the Wyoming Valley, and fell on this settlement. The men were working on the flats in what became Wilkes-Barre, Kingston, Plymouth and Hanover townships, which closely
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join together. Parshall Terry, one of the settlers made an affidavit, in 1794, and contained in Hoyt's Brief of Title, page 136, in which he stated :
"The settlers, being in a scattered condition on their respective farms, were attacked by the savages upon surprise in every part of their settle- ment, and all at or near the same time; that near twenty were killed of the settlers, the others taken and dispersed. The whole of the property of the settlers, then on the ground fell into the enemies hands. The depo- nent recollects the names of several that were killed, viz: Rev. William Marsh, Thomas Marsh, Timothy Hollister, Timothy Hollister Jr., Nat- haniel Hollister, Samuel Richards, Nathaniel Terry, Wright Smith, Daniel Baldwin and his wife, Jesse Wiggins and a woman by the name of Zeriah Whitney. The deponent also recollects that Isaac Hollister, one Mr. Shep- herd and a son of Daniel Baldwin were taken prisoners as he understood. Several others were killed, whose names he does not recollect."25
The New London Gazette, of September 14, 1764, published an account and stated the attack was made by the famous Captain Bull. The government of Pennsylvania dispatched Major Asher Clayton with a body of troops, to disperse the Connecticut settlers, but when he arrived at Wyoming, he found the savages had made a more effectual ejectment, as reported in the Pennsylvania Gazette of October 27th: "They found no Indians but found the New Englanders had been killed and scalped, a day or two before they got there. They buried the dead, men and women, who had been most cruelly butchered. The woman was roasted and had two hinges in her hands-supposed to be red hot and several of the men had awls thrust into their eyes and spears, arrows and pitchforks sticking in their bodies."
Captain Bull, having finished his deviltry went to the Delaware ren- dezvous on Sing Sing creek, a tributary of the Chemung river. A large force of Six Nation warriors sent by Sir William Johnson, in January 1764, captured Captain Bull and forty-one of his warriors. Bull and thir- teen other Indians were sent to New York and confined in the jail there.26
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