USA > New York > The Pennsylvania and New York frontier : history of from 1720 to the close of the Revolution > Part 6
USA > Pennsylvania > The Pennsylvania and New York frontier : history of from 1720 to the close of the Revolution > Part 6
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However, the principal settlers east of the river were Germans. The first Palatines came from Schoharie to Tulpehocken in 1723, and were soon followed by many more. They established well cultivated farms and good dwellings, some of stone. These German settlements were orderly communities and not of the usual border type. Due to the proximity of the Kittatinny mountains, which hovered over them to the north and afforded lurking places for the Indians, they were vulnerable to attack.
There may have been isolated settlements along the Schuylkill, as far north as Schuylkill Haven. In 1747, George Godfried Orwig located near Orwigsburg and several families gathered around him. The Moravians, in 1746, founded Gnadenhutten, on the north side of Mahoning creek near its junction with the Lehigh. Christian Rauch and Martin Mack were the first missionaries, and many Indian families resided there. In 1754, the Indians were removed to a new setlement, near the present Weissport, called New Gnadenhutten.
Frederick Hoeth and others, in 1754, made a settlement on the Pocopoco sometimes called Hoeth's or Big Creek, in the fine open valley, near the present Kresgeville, Monroe county. To the east, John McMichael located on the creek which bears his name. Daniel Brodhead, evidently an Indian trader, came from Ulster county, New York, and in 1735, estab- lished his plantation, called Brodhead's Manor, at the junction of McMichael's and Brodhead's creeks, near the present East Stroudsburg. He was the father of Charles, Garrett, John and Luke, prominent in' colonial times, and General Daniel Brodhead a famous Revolutionary soldier.7
Along the Delaware, for a distance of forty miles north of the Water Gap, were settlements much more ancient, than any others on the Pennsyl- vania frontier. Probably, in the latter part of the Seventeenth Century, pos- sibly, during the Dutch occupation of New Netherlands, miners made their
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way, from Esopus on the Hudson by a road, they built, called the "Old Mine Road," to copper mines they opened on the New Jersey shore of the Delaware, nearly opposite the mouth of Bushkill creek.8 Dutch farmers followed them and from the Indians purchased the lowlands, known as the "Minnisink Flats" on the Pennsylvania side of the river. They reared comfortable dwellings and barns, well tilled the fertile soil, planted orchards and had horses, herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, when in 1730, they were discovered by Nicholas Scull surveyor general of Pennsylvania and his assistant, who came to survey and claim the land. The poor Dutch farmers hardly sensed, what it was all about, for they knew not a word of English and had never heard there was such a place as Philadelphia. Their Indian neighbors, who could converse in the Delaware language with the surveyors, realized they had come to "steal," as they termed it, their friends farms, and in no uncertain terms, told the surveyors "to tie up their iron string and go home." Of course in due time, the farmers had to pay the Penns for, the lands they had made valuable by their toil or be evicted by the force of law and government.9
The streams, entering the Delaware in this vicinity, are called "kills," the Dutch word for creeks, as Bushkill, Ramskill, Sawkill etc. There were among these ancient Dutch families, Van Ettens, Van Campens, Vander- lises and Hyndshaws, and some of their descendants still occupy the fertile farms, their ancestors settled on so long ago.
Samuel Depui, a French Huguenot, was the most prosperous resident of the region. He married a Dutch girl at Esopus and made his plantation at Shawnee, a few miles above the Water Gap, where he purchased, from the Indians, an extensive tract of land, including two fertile islands. About 1727, he began the erection of a large stone mansion, which in 1754 was a conspicuous land mark on the frontier and in the subsequent Indian troubles was a place of importance.10
The Proprietors of Pennsylvania, in 1748, laid out the Wallenpaupack Manor, contaiing 12,000 acres. It was situated along the Wallenpaupack creek, a placid stream which meandered for miles through a wide valley of rich alluvial land.11 A family named Carter settled on it, in 1753, and it was the most northeasterly outpost of the Pennsylvania frontier.
In 1754, the North Branch of the Susquehanna bore no traces of civilization. From Otsego Lake to Shamokin, it raced its rapid course of 316 miles through an unbroken wilderness. Its tributaries drained the endless hills and mountains. It was a land as nature made it, of maple, oak, and beech, hemlock, spruce and pine, lurking with elk, and deer, bear and beaver, panther and wolf. Now and then, an Indian trader or mis- sionary had crept along the narrow trails and penetrated the vastness of the forest. Conrad Weiser was the only white man, who knew the whole region well. It was the choice hunting ground of the Six Nations. In the fall, Iroquois hunters made their way, from the little Indian villages along the river, back through the mountains to the deer licks, they knew so well; and found refuge, from bleak November rains and early December snows, in the rock shelters of the hills.12 And when winter came, laden with furs
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and dried venison, they toiled by trail and river back to their homes. The winter clogged the streams with ice and deep snows blocked the paths by which no warrior ventured to travel. When corn was short and deer scarce, starvation stared within every Indian hut and long house. Weird was winter time, when deep gloom and dreary desolation descended on all this vast land.
The Conoy or Ganawese Indian village was at Catawissa; and at Nescopeck a band of Delawares, under their chief Nutimus, had settled about 1743 after their eviction from the Delaware. Wapwallopen was another small Indian town.
Wyoming is the most celebrated valley in the United States. Between two high mountain ranges, which rise to the east and west, early travellers had noted its fine situation and picturesque beauty. The Susquehanna, breaking through these mountains by two narrow gaps at the north and south, meanders through lowlands as level as the prairies and with an alluvial soil as rich as the valley of the Nile. Underneath were the richest deposits of coal in the world, richer than gold and diamond fields. It was prized by the Iroquois as their most valuable conquest, which they vowed never to sell. White men and red men, Yankee and Pennsylvanian shed their blood for its possession. Its annals and legends have been recounted in history and tales of romance, and sung in verse by English and Amer- ican poets.
The Wyoming Valley was not permanently occupied by the Indians in historic times, the Six Nations, only, assigning it to some of the subject tribes, as a temporary asylum. The first Indians there of whom we have knowledge were the Shawnees, whose village Wyjomic was near the present Coal street in Plymouth Borough.13 "Hither, it is said, they were invited, at some earlier day, by the Six Nations, who were confident that they could place no custodians more reliable than the ferocious Shaw- anese in charge of that lovely valley among the hills." Shikellimy ordered these to remove to the Ohio, and a small band of Shawnees, under their chief Kackawatcheky, to take their place. They remained until 1744, when they removed to Logstown and were succeeded by others of the same tribe under the famous Paxinosa.
A few Nanticoke Indians remained a short time near the present city of Nanticoke, and, then, migrated to what is now Owego and Binghamton. About 1743, many of the Indians evicted from the forks of the Delaware located in the present Firwood section of Wilkes-Barre, but on account of an epidemic relocated their town in what is now Plains. In 1754, Teedyuscung14 and his followers from Gnadenhutten built their village in the present Tenth ward of Wilkes-Barre; and Abraham, a Christian Indian joined the old Mohegan settlement on the banks of Abraham's creek in the now Forty Fort borough. As early as 1748, there was a Minsi village, called Asserughney, at the junction of the Lackawanna river with the Susquehanna. 15
There were small Indian villages at Tunkhannock and probably at Mehoopany and Meshoppen. In 1752, Papunhank, a Minsi chief built a
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well constructed Indian village of twenty families at Wyalusing. At the mouth of Sugar creek, just north of Towanda, where the great Sheshequin trail began, was a village.
Tioga Point, at the confluence of the Tioga or Chemung river with the Susquehanna, was the site of Diahoga, the great southern door of the "Long House of the Iroquois." There a considerable band of warriors always dwelt as a garrison of this strategic outpost of the Six Nations. It was on the narrow peninsula, rising well above the rivers on either side, and overlooking, to the southward, a broad expanse of lowland. It was like Iroquois villages of the time, composed of huts and long houses, ill- arranged, and was a dirty and unkept town. However, it is not to be judged by its physical aspects, but by its importance in the history of the frontier.
There were villages of Iroquois and other Indians at Owego and Otseninky (Binghamton) .; but of all the towns beyond Diahoga. the principal one was Oquaga. It was built on both sides of the river and the part, located on the west side, is now the site of Windsor. Not far from the Delaware river, it was easily accessible to the Indians living on the Susquehanna and its tributaries. Because of the commingling there of the various tribes, it was missionary and trading post of considerable importance.
Rev. John Sergeant, of the Stockbridge Indian mission, was the first New England missionary in the Susquehanna valley.16 He was followed by Elihu Spencer, who stayed at Oquaga, a short time, and later became president of Princeton College.17 Halsey, in "Old New York Frontier," says : "In 1745, he (Brainerd) appears to have gone to Oquaga, since he preached on the Susquehanna to Indians, whom he had known at Stock- bridge." This is, evidently, a mistake. David Brainerd, the great mission- ary, according to his journal,17 made only four trips to the Susquehanna valley viz : in 1744 to Wapwallopen ; in September, 1745 to Shamokin ; in 1747 to the Great Island (Lock Haven) ; and one, in May, 1745, to the mouth of the Juniata. From there, he went up the river about a hundred miles, which would take him no farther than Wyoming, where he preached to some Mohegan Indians, he had known in a mission he formerly con- ducted near Stockbridge. These are the Indians alluded to by Halsey, but the preaching was at Wyoming and not Oquaga.
In 1753, Rev. Gideon Hawley, an instructor at the Stockbridge mis- sion, was appointed, by the Boston Commissioners for Propagating the Gospel, missionary at Oquaga. In May, accompanied by Timothy Wood- bridge, superintendent of Indian affairs at Stockbridge18 and Benjamin Ashley and his wife Rebecca Kellogg Ashley as interpreter,19 Hawley made his celebrated journey to Oquaga.20
William Johnson had a profitable trading house at Oquaga, where he sold the Indians plenty of rum. Mr. Hawley's mission continued for some years and so did Johnson's trading house and rum.
Cherry Valley was the first English settlement on the North Branch and its tributaries and was made, in 1740, by John Lindesay, who obtained
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a patent for 8000 acres.21 The location is a pleasant one, in a little valley of fertile and rolling land on the headwaters of the creek, which flows southward to the Susquehanna. He enlisted the assistance of Rev. Samuel Dunlop, a Scotch Presbyterian clergyman, who, at Londonderry, New Hampshire, induced his fellowcountrymen, David Ramsay, William Galt, James Campbell, William Dickson and others to remove to Cherry Valley. On a gentle incline west of the village, he erected a log house, to which he brought his bride, whom he went back to Ireland and wedded. Mr. Dunlop, while writing a letter, inquired of Lindesay, where he should date it. The latter suggested a Scottish place, but Mr. Dunlop pointed to the cherry trees, which grew in abundance there, and said let's give it an appropriate name, and it was named Cherry Valley. In 1754, Lindesay sold his farm to John Welles and moved away. The place grew slowly, but, in 1754, was a prosperous community with church and school.22 East were the previously described Schoharie settlements.
Along the Hudson, north of Troy were Mechanicville and Saratoga, now Schuylerville, which French Indians destroyed, in 1745, killing and capturing many.23 At Crown Point, the French, in 1745 erected Fort St. Frederick.
The Mohawk valley west of Schenectady was the real New York frontier. A little above the present Amsterdam was William Johnson's stone mansion; and on the opposite side of the river was Fort Hunter, a square stockaded fort. On the same side of the river to Cannatchocari, about thirty miles, were a hundred farms. On the north bank westward from Johnson's were five hundred houses many of them built of stone. This territory included, Tribes Hill, Stone Arabia, and Caughnawaga, near where Dow Fonda located. The Walter Butler house, still standing was on the hill, two miles away.25
Continuing, on the south side, from Cannatchocari to Fort Herkimer, some nine miles, were about twenty houses. There was only a foot path, on the north side, to Little Falls. Palatine village, consisting of thirty houses, was nine miles above Little Falls, and opposite Fort Herkimer, called by the French, Kouari, which was the palisaded stone house of the Herkimer family. This vicinity was known as the German Flats. Fort Williams was located at the present Rome, and was the carrying place to the head of Wood creek. Boats passed down it, a distance of nine miles, to Oneida Lake through it and thence by its outlet, the Oswego river to the English trading post at Oswego.26
The French, in 1725, erected Fort Niagara at the head of Lake On- tario, and this spurred the activities of the English. In the spring of 1727, Governor Burnet of New York sent workmen to build a trading post on Lake Ontario at the mouth of the Oswego river. This was done to counter- act the French and divert the western fur trade from the post at Niagara. The trading house was built of stone and garrisoned by a detachment of sixty soldiers and officers. In 1741, provision was made for a stone wall around the trading house, with a blockhouse in each corner. English traders, in great numbers, flocked to Oswego and, for years, it absorbed
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a large part of the western fur trade. It was, in 1754, the most western outpost of the New York frontier, and the English fortification of greatest strategic importance in the impending conflict.
NOTES-CHAPTER SIX
1. Day, Historical Collections of Pa., 266.
2. Egle, History of Pa., 463.
3. Col. Recs. 6, 149.
4. Egle, History of Pa., 649.
5. Day, Historical Collections, 274.
6. Egle, History of Pa., 644, 645.
7. Harvey, History of Wilkes-Barre, 1, 258; Egle, History of Pa. 947; Day, Hist. Colls., 475; Frontier Forts, 1, 247.
8. Many years ago, the writer inspected these ancient mine openings. At the foot of the mountain was a tunnel, a more recent development, which we entered for some distance and found thin veins of copper. The older and probably Dutch openings were on the summit of the mountain and were pits sunk on the uplifted outcropping rock. They were filled with water and rubbish and bore evidence of great age.
9. Letter of Samuel Preston, in Hist, Colls; and Egle's History, 947, 1050.
10. The Depui mansion, when visited by the writer, many years ago, had not been materially changed, and was a large rectangular stone building two stories high.
11. Situate in Pike and Wayne counties, and this valley and all its improvements have been obliterated by a power dam, which impounds the Wallenpaupack.
12. Shallow caves and overhanding rocks.
13. Memorials of Moravian Church, 104.
14. Teedyuscung, according to his own statement, was born east of Trenton, New Jersey, about 1700. The statement, often made, that he was born on the Pocono mountains, is due to the fact his father Captain Harris and his clan left New Jersey, about 1730 and located their village on Pocopoko creek, near the present Bordheadsville, Monroe county. Teedyuscung came under the influence of the Moravian missionaries, who reluctantly admitted him to their fold, although they regarded him "as unstable as water and like a reed shaken before the wind." His wife's name was Elizabeth and they had sons, the motorious Captain Bull, said to be one of them. William Parsons said of him: "He is a lusty raw bon'd man, haughty and very desirous of Respect and Command; he can drink three quarts or a gallon of Rum a day without being drunk." The Quakers adopted him as their ward, and he has been given undeserved glory.
15. Harvey History of Wilkes-Barre, 1, chapters 4 and 5.
16. Halsey, Old New York Frontier.
17. Memoirs of Brainerd, 419.
18. Timothy Woodbridge was born, in 1709, at West Springfield, Mass., son of Rev. John Woodbridge and his wife Joanna Eliot, granddaughter of John Eliot, "Apostile of the Indians." He was teacher in the Indian mission school at Stock- bridge and became superintendent of Indian affairs, there. He was justice for Berkshire county, Judge of the Court of Common Pleas and member of the Gov- ernor's Council.
19. Rebecca Kellogg, with her brothers Martin and Joseph was abducted by the Indians, when Deefield was sacked in 1703, and taken to the Canawauga town
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above Montreal, where they remained until grown up. They thoroughly learned the Mohawk language and when released were the most proficient interpreters in New England, rivalling Conrad Weiser in mastery of the Iroquois tongue.
20. Hawley's Narrative, Doc. Hist. of N. Y. 3, 103.
21. Map, Doc. Hist. of N. Y. 1, 420.
22. Campbell, Annals of Tryon County.
23. Doc. Hist. of N. Y. 1, 429.
25. This house is still standing and occupied as a farm house; and was the home of Col. John Butler of Wyoming Massacre infamy and his son Walter responsible for the Cherry Valley Massacre.
26. Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, 1, chapter 12. For the best con- temporary description, see French account in Paris Docs. 8, reprinted in Volume 1. page 524 Doc. Hist. of N. Y.
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CHAPTER SEVEN
SIR WILLIAM JOHNSON
No history of the frontier would be complete without an account of Sir William Johnson. He was not only a leading officer of the French and Indian War, but the principal Indian negotiator during it and the years that followed. William Johnson represented frontier life in all that was highest and lowest. He debauched the Indians with rum as a trader and openly consorted with squaws. Yet, he had attributes that raised him far above the level of the pioneer. Many have written of him, some with adulation, others with denunciation and a few with critical judgment. His adulators have had a hard task to make him either a great hero, a great statesman, a great soldier or a great man. He was a lucky opportunist. Parkman deals with him in considerable detail, as a favorite child of fortune, who garnered more fame than he won ; but deservedly praises him as an Indian negotiator, the field in which he was singularly successful, on his own merits.
William Johnson was born in County Meath, Ireland in 1715. His parents, Christopher Johnson and Anne Warren belonged to the middle class or lesser gentry, and were both Protestant Irish. The Warren side of his parentage was, perhaps, a little higher in the social scale, certainly more affluent. Peter Warren, his maternal uncle was a captain in the British navy, and by fortunate prize captures, accumulated a considerable fortune. While stationed at New York, he married Susan De Lancey belonging to an influential and aristocratic family of that colony. At this time, he made two investments, the erection of a fine mansion in New York, and the purchase of a large tract of wild land on the south side of the Mohawk river, east of the mouth of Schoharie creek.
Johnson never cared to relate anything of his early life. It is certain, however, that he arrived in New York, at the age of twenty-three years. Whether, he sought the help of his uncle or was selected by him to develop his wild lands, is unknown. All talk, by Johnson's adulators about his being a courtly young Irish gentlemen, who fascinated the exclusive society of New York, may be true, but more probably, it is glamorous gush and strutting imagination. He was, merely, the poor relation of the prosperous Captain Warren, and no relation, at all, of the haughty De Lanceys.
In due time, Johnson was sent up the Hudson in a sloop, together
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with a collection of tools to clear the wild land, and a quantity of mer- chandise to stock an Indian store. He was an untamed Irish youth, and as usual with strong young men, sought his pleasure in drinking carousals and sensuality, but his passions were curbed by an unusually acquisitive nature which saved him from dissipation. By day, he endured the drudgery of clearing land and trading, at four hundred per cent profit, Indian traps and rum for stinking peltry ; and by night, he indulged in drinking bouts and sexual revels with Indian squaws. As all these whimseys are related by his admirers, they must be taken for granted. Soon tiring of the squaws, he bought, of a neighbor, a poor young German indentured servant girl, named Catherine Weissenburg. By her, he bred three children; Anne or Nancy, who married Daniel Claus; John, who later succeeded him as Sir John Johnson ; and Mary or Polly, who married her cousin, Guy Johnson. There is no evidence, he ever married Catherine Weissenburg; and as she died, in some five years after her purchase, a vague tradition or more likely invention has come down through the generations, that he married her on her deathbed. Johnson mentioned her, in his will, as "my beloved wife Catherine," but as intimated by a biographer, he may have lied to assure the legitimacy of their children. If so, it is rather a commendable lie.
Within a year of her death, he took as his mistress, a comely squaw, Caroline, daughter of Abraham Peters, and niece of Hendrick, chief of the Mohawks. By her, he begat a natural son (as he calls him in his will), the well known "William of Canajoharie," and it is supposed two daughters, Caroline and Charlotte. William was educated by his father at the Indian school conducted by Rev. Thomas Barton at Lancaster, Pennsylvania ; and he, probably, bore a part on the Tory side in the border warfare, during the Revolution. Caroline is said to have married Henry Randall, an English soldier, who settled in America, joined the Continental army and was killed at the battle of Monmouth. It is claimed Charlotte married Michael Byrne, a commissary in the Indian service at Oswego. Whether Caroline Peters died or left Johnson is unknown.
There is a pretty story, to the effect, that one day at a regimental muster, an Indian maiden sprang lightly on the back of a horse, behind the saddle of an officer, who was racing in the open field. She clung to the crupper and with her long dark tresses streaming in the breeze, her dazzling black eyes, her gay garb and shapely figure, won the admiration of the crowd, and of Johnson, who forthwith chose her as the successor of Caroline. This was the celebrated Molly Brant mother of Johnson's eight halfbreed children living at the time of his death. As long as he lived, she remained with him, being named in his will, as "my prudent and faithful housekeeper, Mary Brant."
Johnson's domestic relations scandalized the pious and shocked the conventional, occasioning much criticism during his lifetime. That he was an unrestrained libertine and had a hundred halfbreed children, as some unfriendly critics have asserted, seems improbable. That he was a man of fine sensibilities and elevated thought is also improbable. He certainly dis- regarded the marital rules and customs of well ordered society. Having
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lived an irregular life, he frankly assumed the obligations of his irregulari- ties. He boldly proclaimed in his will, the white woman with whom he lived, his wife and required that her remains should be buried by the side of his own. He liberally provided Molly Brant with money and lands. He publicly acknowledged as his own, his halfbreed natural children, educated them and left each a rich inheritance. This was bold, honest conduct, dis- playing no ignoble trait of character and commends admiration.
Johnson was a successful trader from the start. He had the Irish characteristics of affability and adaptability, consorted on equal terms with all sorts of people, white and red, thus winning their patronage and sup- port. He early sensed that Oquaga was a suitable place for a trading post and established, there, a very profitable business. Like all traders, he sold plenty of rum, but in later years, when he had amassed an enormous for- tune through the Indian trade, he attempted to restrain other traders from supplying rum to the Indians.
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