USA > Pennsylvania > Philadelphia County > Philadelphia > Annals of Philadelphia, and Pennsylvania in the olden time; being a collection of the memoirs, anecdotes, and incidents of the earliest settlements of the inland part of Pennsylvania, Vol. II > Part 15
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A letter from John Harris, at Paxton, October 29, 1755, to Edward Shippen, Esq., Lancaster, says :
" We expect the enemy upon us every day, and the inhabitants are abandoning their plantations, being greatly discouraged at the approach of such a number of cruel savages, and no present sign of assistance. I had a certain account of fifteen hundred French and Indians being on their march against us and Virginia, and now close
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Pennsylvania Inland .- Harrisburg, &c.
upon our borders; their scouts scalping our families on our frontiers daily. Andrew Montour and others at Shamokin, desired me tc take care, that there was a party of forty Indians out many days, and intended to burn my house and destroy myself and family. I have this day cut loop holes in my house, and am determined to hold out to the last extremity if I can get some men to stand by me. But few can be had at present, as every one is in fear of their own families being cut off every hour. Great part of the Susquehanna Indians are no doubt actually in the French interest, and I am Informed that a French officer is expected at Shamokin this week with a party of Delawares and Shawnese, no doubt to take posses- sion of our river. We should raise men immediately to build a fort up the river to take possession, and to induce some Indians to join us. We ought also to insist on the Indians to declare for or against us, and as soon as we are prepared for them, we should bid up the scalps, and keep our woods full of our people upon the scout, else they will ruin our province, for they are a dreadful enemy! I have sent out two Indian spies to Shamokin; they are Mohawks [John Harris went up with a party of forty. men to make discoveries, and to fight as far as Shamokin, they there saw strange Indians painted and dancing, and received advice from Andrew Montour to hasten back, and by the longest route on the eastern side, but they chose the western, and were attacked, and lost half a dozen of their men, &c.]
Paxton was the earliest name ; it at first embraced several town- ships now nearest to it. The present Thomas Elder, Esq., remem- bers when there was but one German family in all the country. The first settlers were all Scotch-Irish. Their minister, Mr. Elder, was also a colonel at the same time-thus showing what a fighting race they must have all been against the heathen.
I visited Paxton church, built of lime-stone, quite old. The graveyard near, is surrounded by a good stone wall, and has many head-stones. The tombstones of marble, were of James and John Harris, William M'Clay, William Wallace, Hugh Wilson, Gel. Simpson, Thomas Forster, Krauch, Kelso. The Re .. John Elder had a double width of marble. There are headstones of Duncans, Stephens, Acols, Fulton-this last, perhaps, of steam memory! Older stones were of red slate stone, and the inscriptions illegible and rude. I thought many of these may have been of persons killed in Indian wars.
In this church there have been several cases of public confession, before the congregation, of fornication, saying, after the covenanters' way, " for my own game, have done this shame, pray restore me to my lands again," &c. The present Thomas Elder has seen these things of both sexes! Mr. Walters also saw it done up the Juniata, Mifflin county. The church is near to the woods, behind and aside of it; and its front opens to a beautiful cultivated country, lying VOL II-Q 11
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Pennsylvania Inland .- Harrisburg, &c.
below it. It is three miles from Harrisburg, near the turnpike to Lebanon.
The tombstone of Gen. Simpson says that his family settled in Paxton in 1720. It must have been earlier than any lands were sold on patent.
In continuation with Harrisburg, we may pertinently mention that even Carlisle, a few miles off, though settled so late as 1750, was so far a frontier then, as often to be subjected to Indian alarms in its vicinage, and to have had many characteristics of a frontier town. It was a place originally noted for its " beaver dams," probably form ed out of the Le Tort creek; a name it received from James Le Tort, once a noted French trader and interpreter, as early as 1712. This was once his frontier and home. When this town was begun, it was then the Shawnese home, they dwelling until then round and about the " beaver pond." They moved off, leaving only one of their families behind, in the wigwam of "Doctor John." Doctor John and his family were all killed in 1768, by some of his neigh- bours, and it excited much indignation among the better portion of the white settlers.
Many aged persons, still alive in Carlisle, remembered very well when all the carriage of goods and stores westward from Carlisle was done wholly on pack horses, coming and going in whole companies. Only as long as twelve years ago, there were not more than three wagons in all Shearman valley-all was drawn on sleds, in summe. as well as winter.
A Mrs. Murphy, who died in that valley in 1830, aged nearly one hundred years-having lived a long life there among the In dians. She remembered seeing the first wagon arrive at Carlisle, and the indignation it excited among the packers, as likely to ruin their trade !- even the widening of the roads, when first ordered. offended them! The pack-horses used to carry bars of iron on their backs, crooked over and around their bodies-barrels were hung on them, one on each side. She remembered that the first Indian tract to go westward, was to cross at Simpson's, four miles below John Harris' (Harrisburg) ; then across Canodoquinet, at Middlesex ; thence up the mountain across Croghan's gap, (now Sterrett's) ; thence down the mountain and across Shearman's creek at Gibson's , then by Dick's gap ; then by Shearman's valley by Concord, to the Burnt Cabins ; then to the waters of the Allegheny, and down the river.
Shearman's valley was named after an Indian trader, who lost his life in fording it, with his horse and furs. In this valley I saw a real "leather stocking," in the person of a Mr. Stewart :- twenty-five years ago he had killed as many as sixty-three deer in a season ; he goes out in snow time in preference, and lays out all night. It was in this valley that I heard of Wm. Penn's iron spur, left on his visit to Susquehanna, near Columbia, and now in the possession of Lewis Pennock, in London grove, Chester county.
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Pennsylvania Inland .- Wyoming. Wyoming and its Massacre.
Among the claims set up by the state of Connecticut was the following,-that by their charter they owned all lands lying between those parallels of latitute forming the northern and southern boundary of their state, and extending west to the Pacific ocean. This claim, it will readily be perceived, would cover a large portion of the southern part of New York, and of the northern parts of Penn- sylvania and Ohio. In prosecution of this claim, a colony from Windham, in Connecticut, obtained a state grant for a large tract of land, lying along the Susquehanna, in the state of Pennsylvania, whither they removed. The valley they occupied was called Wyoming, said to mean " field of blood ;" so called on account of a bloody battle fought in the neighbourhood of the settlement by the Indians, at a period anterior to the removal of the whites.
The following account of the battle and massacre is taken from an interesting history of Wyoming, written by Isaac Chapman, Esq., late of Wilkesbarre. Judge Chapman lived upon the spot, and could hardly have failed to collect accurate materials, and to give & correct narrative of the events which transpired there during the revolutionary war. The inhabitants had collected in Forty fort- the principal fort in the valley. The number of men in the fort was three hundred and sixty-eight.
On the morning of the 3d of July, 1778, the officers of the gar- rison at Forty fort held a council to determine on the propriety of marching from the fort, and attacking the enemy wherever found. The debates in this council of war are said to have been conducted with much warmth and animation. The ultimate determination was one on which depended the lives of the garrison and safety of the settlement. On one side it was contended that their enemies were daily increasing in numbers; that they would plunder the settlement of all kinds of property, and would accumulate the means of carrying on the war, while they themselves would become weaker; that the harvest would soon be ripe, and would be gathered or destroyed by their enemies, and all their means of sustenance during the succeeding winter would fail ; that probably all their messengers were killed, and as there had been more than sufficient time, and no assistance arrived, they would probably receive none, and conse- quently now was the proper time to make the attack. On the other side it was argued, that probably some or all the messengers may have arrived at head quarters, but that the absence of the commander- in-chief may have produced delay ; that one or two weeks more may bring the desired assistance, and that to attack the enemy, superior as they were in number, out of the limits of their own fort, would produce almost certain destruction to the settlement and them selves. and captivity, and slavery, perhaps torture, to their wives and children. While these debates were progressing, five men belonging to Wyoming, but who at that time held commissions in the conti-
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Pennsylvania Inland .- Wyoming.
nental army, arrived at the fort; they had received information that a force from Niagara had marched to destroy the settlements on the Susquehanna, and being unable to bring with them any reinforce- ment, they resigned their appointments, and hastened immediately to the protection of their families ; they had heard nothing of the messengers, neither could they give any certain information as to the probability of relief.
The prospect of receiving assistance became now extremely un- certain. The advocates for the attack prevailed in the council, and at dawn of day, on the morning of the 3d of July, the garrison left the fort, and began their march up the river, under the command of Colonel Zebulon Butler. Having proceeded about two miles, the troops halted for the purpose of detaching a reconnoitring party, to ascertain the situation of the enemy.
The scout found the enemy in possession of fort Wintermoot, and occupying huts immediately around it, carousing in supposed security ; but on their return to the advancing column, they met two strolling Indians, by whom they were fired upon, and upon whom they immediately returned the fire without effect. The settlers hastened their march for the attack, but the Indians had given the alarm, and the advancing troops found the enemy already formed in order of battle, a small distance from their fort, with their right flank covered by a swamp, and their left resting upon the bank of a river. The settlers immediately displayed their column and formed in cor- responding order ; but as the enemy was much superior in numbers, their line was much more extensive. Pine woods and bushes covered the battle ground, in consequence of which, the movements of the troops could not be so quickly discovered, nor so well ascer- tained. Colonel Zebulon Butler had command of the right, and was opposed by Colonel John Butler, at the head of the British troops, on the left ; Colonel Nathan Denison commanded the left, opposed by Brant at the head of his Indians on the enemy's right. The battle commenced at about forty rods distant, and continued about fifteen minutes, through the woods and brush, without much execution. At this time Brant with his Indians having penetrated the swamp, turned the left flank of the settlers' line, and with a ter- rible warwhoop and savage yell, made a desperate charge upon the troops composing that wing, which fell very fast, and were imme- diately cut to pieces with the tomahawk. Colonel Denison having ascertained that the savages were gaining the rear of the left, gave orders for that wing to fall back. At the same time Colonel John Butler, finding that the line of the settlers did not extend as far toward the river as his own, doubled that end of his line which was protected by a thick growth of brushwood, and having brought a party of his British regulars to act in column upon that wing, threw Colonel Zebulon Butler's troops into some confusion. The orders of Colonel Denison for his troops to fall back, having been under- stood by many to mean a retreat, the troops began to retire in much
Pennsylvania Inland .- Wyoming. 125
disorder The savages considered this a flight, and commencing a most hideous yell, rushed forward with their rifles and tomahawks, and cut the retiring line to pieces. In this situation it was found impossible to rally and form the troops, and the rout became general throughout the line. The settlers fled in every direction, and were instantly followed by the savages, who killed or took prisoners who- ever came within their reach. Some succeeded in reaching the river, and escaped by swimming across, others fled to the mountains, and the savages, too much occupied with plunder, gave up the pursuit. When the first intelligence was received in the village of Wilkes- barre that the battle was lost, the women fled with their children to the mountains, on their way to the settlements on the Delaware, where many of them at length arrived, after suffering extreme hard- ships. Many of the men who escaped the battle, together with their women and children, who were unable to travel on foot, took refuge in Wyoming fort, and on the following day, (July the 4th,) Butler and Brant, at the head of their combined forces, appeared before the fort, and demanded its surrender. The garrison being without any efficient means of defence, surrendered the fort on articles of capitu- lation, by which the settlers, upon giving up their fortifications, prisoners, and military stores, were to remain in the country un- molested, provided they did not again take up arms.
In this battle about three hundred of the settlers were killed or missing, and from a great part of whom no intelligence was ever afterward received.
The conditions of the capitulation were entirely disregarded by the British and savage forces, and after the fort was delivered up, all kinds of barbarities were committed by them. The village of Wilkesbarre, consisting of twenty-three houses, was burnt; men and their wives were separated from each other, and carried into captivity ; their property was plundered, and the settlement laid waste. The remainder of the inhabitants were driven from the valley, and com- pelled to proceed on foot sixty miles through the great swamp, almost without food or clothing. A number perished in the journey, principally women and children ; some died of their wounds; others wandered from the path in search of food, and were lost, and those who survived called the wilderness through which they passed the shades of death, an appellation which it has since retained.
Catrine Montour, who might well be termed a fury, acted a con- spicuous part in this tragedy. She followed in the train of the vic- torious army, ransacking the heaps of the slain, and with her arms covered with gore, barbarously murdering the wounded, who in vain supplicated for their lives. She lived and died in New York state.
Halleck, in allusion to the massacre of Wyoming, has the follow- ing interesting lines :
" There is a woman, widow'd, gray and old, Who tells you where the foot of battle stept Upon their day of massacre. She told
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Pennsylvania Inland .- Wyoming.
Its tale, and pointed to the spot, and wept, Whereon her father and five brothers slept Shroudless, the bright dream'd slumbers of the brave, When all the land a funeral mourning kept. And there, wild laurels planted on the grave By Nature's hand, in air their pale red blossoms wave."
We find in a Connecticut paper, of 1831, an account of the recent decease of Mrs. Esther Skinner, of Torringford, in the one hundredth year of her age. Mrs. S. lost a husband, a brother, and two sons, in the war of the American revolution. She, with her family, was a resi- dent of Wyoming, at the massacre of its inhabitants by the British, and the Indians and tories. Her two sons fell beneath the toma- hawk, but the mother, almost by miracle, escaped with six of her children. Her son-in-law was the only man that escaped, out of twenty, who threw themselves into the river, and attempted to hide themselves beneath the foliage that overhung the banks. All the others were successively massacred as they hung by the branches in the river. He alone was undiscovered. The mother travelled back to Torringford, where she has led a useful life ever since-often cheerful, though the cloud of pensiveness, brought on by her sor- rows, was never entirely dissipated. But one of her children sur- vives her.
It would seem that Campbell, the poet, did not deem himself justified by the facts in the case, to picture, so severely as he did, the doings of the chieftain Brant, in the tragic massacre. In January, 1822, he addressed a letter to John Brant, Esq., of the Grand river, son of the Indian chief, wherein he makes his apologies for sundry severities upon the memory of the father ; upon the ground, that he had been misinformed in following the usual printed stories of the fight ; and conceding to the son, that he, the son, had convinced him of sundry misrepresentations. The truth is, that Brant, the chief, was extremely desirous of retaining the character of a humane man, and inculcated the avowal in his family, that he never did any thing savage and cruel personally ; and also restrained and checked his adherents, when he could. The son declares that his father was not present at the scene of the massacre at all ; but was in the rear at some distance.
When Brant was in England, after the peace of 1783, the most distinguished individuals of all parties and professions treated him with the utmost kindness and attention. In Canada the memorials of his moral character represent him as naturally ingenuous and generous ; and from the premises, Campbell concludes with the assurance, that " he deems them sufficient to induce him to believe that he often strove to mitigate the cruelty of Indian warfare, and that, therefore, his opinion about him is changed."
Brant was a full-blooded Mohawk, born on the Mohawk river and educated at an Indian school in New England.
John Butler, also, often endeavoured to exculpate himself indivi
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Pennsylvania Inland .- Pittsburg.
dually, from the imputation of barbarity, and it was admitted by those who knew him before the war in Sir John Johnson's neighbour- .ood, that he bore the character of a gentle man, and that his son, an officer under him, who was killed at the crossing of Wood creek, was far more cruel than his father.
The Delaware chief, Tedyuscung, was settled at Wyoming in 1758, at the public expense, intending thereby to place him and his people as a frontier defence. They sent on a force of fifty men, as carpenters, masons and labourers, who erected ten or twelve houses, of fourteen by twenty feet, and one for himself, of sixteen by twenty-four feet. He was an artful, wily chief, of more than common selfishness and intrigue for an Indian, and withal was intemperate and aspiring.
As early as 1742, Count Zinzendorf visited the Shawnese, then settled at Wyoming, with a missionary's wife as his interpreter. He remained among them twenty days, and while there sitting by a fire, and writing in his temporary hut, his leg was crossed by a rattlesnake, seeking to warm itself by the fire.
Wyoming, the name given by the Delaware Indians, expressed the Large plains, and is a corruption of the original name of Maughwau-wame. The Six Nations called it Sgahontowano, the large flats, wano meaning a large ground without trees. It came to be called Wauwaumia, Wiomic, and then Wyoming. The Susque- hanna, on which its rests, was so called to express muddy or riley river, the word hanna meaning a stream of water.
The last survivor of those who were in the action of the Wyoming massacre, was Major Roswell Franklin, who after having become the first settler of Aurora, New York, in 1787, died there in 1843. He had fought at that battle along side of his father, and had seen his mother and sister butchered near him, and then himself and his other sister were taken off prisoners, himself, for a service of three years, and his sister for eleven years.
Pittsburg and Braddock.
In the olden time, Fort du Quesne and Fort Pitt, and the thou- sand tales of " Braddock's defeat," were the talk of all the land, and formed the tales of all the nurseries, scaring the hearers as oft as the tales were told.
"The mind, impressible and soft, with ease Imbibes and treasures what she hears and sees- The tale, at first but half received, Till others have the fearful facts believed !"
Such facts and relations as we have occasionally gathered, and not to be found in the ordinary histories, we purpose now to give in a desultory manner, in the following pages :
Previous to the year 1753, the country west of the Allegheny mountains, and particularly the point which Pittsburg now occupies, was the subject of controversy between Great Britain and France .-
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Pennsylvania Inland .-- Pittsburg.
In the early part of that year, a party of Frenchmen from Presque Isle, now Erie, seized three English traders at Loggstown, and carried them back with them as prisoners. In the fall of that year, Robert Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, despatched George Washington, then in the 22d year of his age, to the French commander on Le Bœuf, to demand that he should desist from further aggression. In performance of this duty, Washington arrived at "the Forks," on the 23d of November, 1753. While here he examined the site im- mediately at the junction of the rivers, and recommended it as a suitable position for a fort. On the next day he proceeded from this place, and called on King Shingass, near M'Kee's rocks, who ac- companied him on his way to Loggstown, where they met Monaka- toocha, and other Indian chiefs, and held several councils with them.
While at Loggstown, it became a question which road he should take on his way to the French commandant at Le Bœuf, and Shin- gass advised him not to take the road by Beaver, because it was low and swampy. Proceeding on his journey, he arrived at Le Bœuf, and learned from the French commandant that they were determined to take possession of the Forks in the spring. With this answer he left the French commandant, in company with Gist, his guide, on foot, and arrived at the Allegheny river, below the mouth of Pine creek, on the 28th of December. The next day they spent in mak- ing a raft with tomahawks, and towards evening embarked, and at- tempted to cross the river ; but the ice driving very thick, they made very little progress, and were finally compelled to take refuge upon Herr's or Wainwright's island, where they were nearly frozen.
During the night it froze so hard, that they crossed on the ice in the morning. This circumstance affords a pretty strong inference that it must have been Wainwright's island; it lying close to the eastern shore, the narrow passage between it and the shore would be more likely to freeze in one night, than the wide space opposite Herr's island. Having crossed the river they proceeded without de- lay to Frazier's, at the mouth of Turtle creek. On the 31st of De- cember, while Gist and the other men were out hunting the horses, Washington walked up to the residence of Queen Allequippa, where M'Keesport now stands. She expressed much regret that he had not called on her as he went out. He made her a present of a watch-coat, and a flask of rum, and in his journal he states that the latter present was much the most acceptable.
We here give a poetic description of first scenes at Pittsburg, viz. .
How changed the scene since here the savage trod, To set his otter-trap, or take wild honey, Where now so many humble printers plod, And faithful CARRIERS hunt a little money !
How things have alter'd in this misty plain, Since Allequippa hunted and caught fish, Where Mrs. Oliver and her gentle train Now read of Indians in the Wish-ton-Wish!
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Pennsylvania Inland .- Pittsburg.
How short the time, but how the scenes have shifted, Since WASHINGTON explored this western wild-land And with his raft, and Gist, his pilot, drifted Upon the upper end of Wainwright's island !
'Tis seventy years ago, since that bold knight, With blanket, cap, and leggings, then the tippey, Attended by his 'squire, the aforesaid wight, Paid his respects to good Queen Allequippa.
Her warlike majesty was quite unhappy, To think our courtier had not sooner come : He soothed her feelings with a blanket capo, And touch'd her fancy with a flask of rum.
What changes, since from yonder point he scann'd The meeting streams with his unerring eye, And, 'mid primeval woods, prophetic scann'd This great position and its destiny !
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