USA > Pennsylvania > Blair County > Biographical and portrait cyclopedia of Blair County, Pennsylvania > Part 3
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None with certainty can tell. Cusick gives us Indian tradition, that the Indians drove them south 2,000 years before Columbus came, and that the Mound-builders came from the south; which might have been Louisiana or Mexico; but there are many things to impair the story. Theory favors, but certainly does not stamp, the conclusion that the Mound-builders were the ancestors of the Aztecs and Toltees, and obeying a migratory impulse, sweeping forward and southward to the plains of Mexico and
Peru, established themselves und'er the reign of emperor and the rule of inca.
Leaving this country, these mounds may have been the rude model structures of ideas they developed into those wonderful structures that greeted the greedy eyes of Cortez and Pizarro. The introduction of stone into their mound-structures here must have represented an idea of progress-an experimental mode of a proposed change, whose consummation might have been achieved in the great halls, cities, temples, and aqueduets of the Montezumas.
In these Mound-builders, whom he calls fort builders of centuries ago, Mr. School- craft finds the " Ancient Alleghans" who left their name upon the Allegheny moun- tains. He says: "This ancient people who occupy the foreground of our remote abor- iginal history, were a valiant, noble and populous race, who were advanced in arts and the policy of government, and raised fortifications for their defense. While they held a high reputation as hunters, they cultivated maize extensively, which enabled them to live in large towns; and erected those antique . fortifications which are ex- tended over the entire Mississippi valley, as high as latitude 43 degrees and the lake country.
The Mound-builders of Blair county seem to be of that nation or tribe which left its works in the Wyoming valley, where the ruins of mound and fort were plain to be seen by the carly settlers of that part of Pennsylvania. The absence of forts would indicate that the Mound-builders in this county were merely induced to occupy the Juniata valley as a hunting-ground, and not. for the purpose of permanent settlement. The early settlers paid but little attention to the Mound-builders' ruins, as they were
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merely regarded as the work of the Indian ; while unfortunately the historians of the county made no research concerning them, and thus has been lost so far all trace of the ruins of tomb-mounds, which were said to have been in the county at the time of its early settlement.
Savage Period: Indians .- One theory credits the Indians as being descendants of the Jews. Succeeding theories blended them with the Carthagenians, traced them to the Phimicians, derived them from the Egyp- tians, rendered them of the Grecians, established them of the Romans, gave them origin of the Northmen, made them natives of the soil, and held them to be descendants of the Mound-builder.
A plausible theory of their origin is that they are of the Mongolian extraction; that while the wave of population in the old world was from east to west, in the new world it was from north to south ; that the Indian was the second wave of population from Asia, following in the track of the first wave-the Mound-builder.
The first fact in favor of the Indians being of Mongolian extraction, is that all their traditions state that they came from the North.
The second is the grammatical affinity of all the Indian languages constituting the sixth or American group of languages, which, in principle of formation and gram- matical construction, bears unquestionable resemblance to the Tartar, or third group of languages, which is one of the two great language families of the Mongolian race.
The Indian occupation of the United States admits of two theories : first, a peace- able possession; second, a forcible posses- sion. The first is the most likely, as the Mound-builders were a semi-civilized race,
and, from their great works, it is fair to pre- sume, as strong in numbers as the Indian invaders. But, it is fair presumption, that between the inferior-advancing and the su- perior-retreating races, the clash of mortal conflict would be inevitable. The with- drawal of the Mound-builder from the field of battle after repulsing his Indian foe, to resume his southward journey, would give to the Indian the idea that his enemy had fled; and on this his tradition of conquest, repeated to white prisoners in 1754-55, was undoubtedly founded.
The Indian copied after the Mound- builder. He used flint to make his arrow and spear-heads, and stone to make his tomahawks, hammers, pestles, and orna- ments; clay and shells to make his pottery- ware, but failed to work copper, and had lost all trace of the mines left by the Mound- builders. The stone-grave chamber of the Mound-builder suggested the stone-pile grave of the Indian. Stones of memorial constitute the second class of Indian stone heaps. They were thrown up in heaps at the crossing of trails, and on the summit of some mountain, and each Indian that passed added a stone. "Lawson's Carolina," pub- lished in 1709, at page 309, makes mention of the Indians in the South piling up these memorial heaps. They were piled up in Asia by the Hindoos, according to "Cole- man's Hindoo Mythology," page 271.
Stone circles existed as the third class of the Indians' stone-heaps, being stones piled in a great circle and sometimes placed standing, inside of which the East Virginia Indians gathered and went through a great many ceremonies, according to Berkley's History of Virginia, page 164.
The Indians east of the Mississippi were tall, and straight as arrows, with long,
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coarse, black hair, which they generally kept shaved off, except the scalp lock; high cheek bones, and black, piercing eyes. Their limbs were supple by exercise and their muscles hardened by constant exposure to the weather.
Their dress was the skins of wild animals, smoked or tanned with the brains of the animals killed. Their wigwams were poles stuck in the ground and bent together at the top, covered with chestnut and birch bark. Their weapons, war-clubs, bows and arrows and stone tomahawks, until they procured iron tomahawks and guns from the white traders. Their boats were log and birch bark canoes.
Their religion was the worship of the Great Spirit, and they believed there was a happy hunting-ground in the spirit-land beyond the mountains of the setting sun, where brave warriors went at death and pursued the chase for ever and ever; and where no coward was ever permitted to enter.
Each tribe had its chief, and medicine man, who, with the old men, taught the young brave never to forgive an injury or forget a kindness. They taught him that sternness was a virtue and that tears were womanish, and if captured and burning at the stake to let no torture draw a groan or sigh from him; but to taunt his enemies, recite his deeds of prowess, and sing his death-song. He was also taught that the great object of life was to distinguish him- self in war and to slay his enemies. IIe was taught to be faithful to any treaty he made; and to use any deceit or practice any treachery upon an enemy was honor- able, and that it was no disgrace to kill an enemy wherever found, even if unarmed.
John Bach McMaster, in his History of
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the People of the United States, speaks of the Indian as follows :
"The opinion which many careful and just-minded persons of our time have formed touching the Indians, of whom the settlers in the border-land then stood in constant dread, is a singular mixture of truth and romance. Time and absence have softened all that is vile and repulsive in his char- acter, and left in full relief all that is good and alluring. We are in no danger of being tomahawed. We are not terrified by his war-whoop. An Indian in his paint and feathers is now a much rarer show than a Bengal tiger or a white bear from the Polar sea. Of the fifty millions of human beings scattered over the land (1880), not five millions have ever in their lives looked upon an Indian. We are therefore much more disposed to pity than to hate. But, one hundred years ago there were to be found, from Cape Ann to Georgia, few men who had not many times in their lives seen numbers of Indians, while thousands could be found scattered through every State whose cattle had been driven off, and whose homes had been laid in ashes by the braves of the Six Nations, who had fought with them from behind trees and rocks, and carried the scars of wounds received in hand-to-hand encounters. In every city were to be seen women who had fled at the dead of night from their burning cabins; who had, perhaps, witnessed the destruction of Schenectady; or were by a merciful providence spared in the massacre of the Minisink; whose husbands had gone down in the universal slaughter of Wyoming; or whose children had, on that terrible day when Brant came into Orange county, stood in the door of the school-house when the master was dragged out, when their play-
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BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
mates were scalped, when their aprons were marked with the black mark which, like the blood upon the door-posts, a second time staid the hand of the Angel of Death. The opinions which such men and women held of the noble red man were, we may be sure, very different from those current among the present generation, and formed on no better authority than the novels of Cooper, and the lives of such warriors as Red Jacket and Brant.
"Of the true character of the Indian it is difficult to give any notion to those who are acquainted with it only as it appears exalted or debased in the pages of fiction. In him were united in a most singular manner all the vices and all the arts which form the weapons, offensive and defensive, of the weak, with many of those high qualities which are always found associated with courage and strength. He was, essentially, a child of nature, and his character was precisely such as circumstances made it. ITis life was one long struggle for food. His daily food depended not on the fertility of the soil, or the abundance of the crops, but on the skill with which he used his bow; on the courage with which he fought, single- handed, the largest and fiercest of beasts; on the quickness with which he tracked, and the cunning with which he outwitted the most timid and keen-scented of creatures. His knowledge of the habits of animals surpassed that of Audubon. The shrewd devices with which he snared them would have elicited the applause of Ulysses; the clearness of his vision excelled that of the oblest sailor; the sharpness of his hearing Was not equalled by that of the deer.
"' Yet this man whose courage was un- questionable, was given to the dark and crooked ways which are the resort of the
cowardly and the weak. Much as he loved war, the fair and open fight had no charms for him. To his mind it was madness to take the scalp of an enemy at the risk of his own, when he might waylay him in an ambuscade, or shoot him with a poisoned arrow from behind a tree. He was never so happy as when, at the dead of night, he roused his sleeping enemies with an un- earthly yell, and massacred them by the light of their burning homes. Cool and brave men who have heard that whoop, have left us a striking testimony of its nature ; how that no number of repetitions could strip it of its terrors; how that, to the very last, at the sound of it the blood curdled, the heart ceased to beat, and a strange paralysis seized upon the body."
In the above description McMaster has painted the Indian truthfully, except that he has not allowed him credit for his honor- able treatment of the Quaker, who bought his land; nor criticized the Puritan, Patroon and Cavalier for not adopting the policy of Penn, and averting nearly all of the Indian wars of the colonial period.
The Indian was a terrible and cruel foe. On their own ground in the woods they were far more formidable than the best European troops. Although inferior in numbers, they defeated Braddock's grena- diers and Grant's highlanders. The finest drilled veteran troops of the world failed when led against the dark tribesmen of the forest. When on their own ground, and any ways near equal in numbers, the Indians were never defeated by any enemy except the backwoodsmen of the Alleghenies, who won their most notable victory over the Indians at the battle of Point Pleasant, or the Great Kanawha, in 1774.
The Huron-Iroquois family of nations
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was the most powerful of any dwelling on this continent at its discovery. Of these, the most formidable were the Iroquois. They were the most intelligent and ad- vanced, and also the most terrible and ferocious. Such was their eloquence and energy of character, and the extent of their conquest, that Volney, the French historian, called them "The Romans of the West." Parkham says : The Iroquis were the Indians of Indians-a thorough savage, yet a fin- ished and developed savage. Ile is perhaps an example of the highest elevation which man can reach without emerging from his primitive condition of the hunter. The Iroquis were often called the Five Nations, and after they were joined by the Tusca- roras, the Six Nations. They called them- selves Ho-de-no-sau-nee, or People of the Long House. Their original home was wholly in New York.
"The Iroquois were bound together by a remarkable league, which was the secret of their power and success. They constituted a confederacy, in some respects like our federal union, in which the nations repre- sented States, to which were reserved gen- eral powers of control, that the several na- tions exercised with great independence of each other, while certain other powers were yielded to the confederacy as a whole.
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"In each nation there were eight tribes, which were arranged in two divisions, and named as follows :
Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Turtle, Deer, Snipe, Heron, Hawk.
The division of the people of each nation into eight tribes, whether pre-existing, or perfected at the establishment of the con- federacy, did not terminate in its object with the nation itself. It became the means of effecting the most perfect union of separate
nations "ever devised by the wit of man." In effect, the Wolf tribe was divided into tive parts, and one-fifth of it placed in each of the five nations. The remaining tribes were subjected to the same division and dis- tribution ; thus giving to each nation the eight tribes, and making, in their separate state, forty tribes in the confederacy. Be- tween those of the same name-or, in other words, between the separate parts of each tribe-there existed a tie of brotherhood which linked the nations together with in- dissoluble bonds. The Mohawk of the Bea- ver tribe recognized the Seneca of the Bea- ver tribe as his brother, and they were bound to each other by the ties of consanguinity. In this manner was constructed the Tribal League of the Hodenosaunee; in itself, an extraordinary specimen of Indian legisla- tion, and it forms an enduring monument to that proud and progressive race, who reared, under its protection, a wide-spread Indian sovereignty."
The Six Nations, who claimed ownership over the territory of Blair county and the Juniata valley, traversed the whole length of the Apalachian chain, and descended like the enraged yagisho and megalonyx on the Cherokees and Catawbas. Smith encoun- tered their warriors in the settlement of Virginia, and La Salle, on the discovery of Illinois. Such was the prowess of the Iro- quois, or Six Nations. The first of the In- dians to occupy the territory of Blair county, was the Leni Lenape, or Delaware na- tion, a branch of the Algonquin family; and, when the white pioneers came into the Juniata valley, they found there the Monsey, Conoy and Nanticoke tribes of the Delawares, together with a few Shawnees and Tuscaroras, and some Mingoes of the Iroquois nation. The Delawares had a
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BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
tradition of coming from the west, and after crossing the Mississippi, encountered the Allegewi, or Mound-builders, whom they vanquished and drove southward. At some time between 1677 and 1684 the Delawares were conquered by the Five Nations, or Iroquis confederacy, which in 1712 became the famous Six Nations, by the admission of the Tuscaroras, of North Carolina and Virginia. The Pennsylvania authorities made treaties and purchased land at first from the Delawares, and afterwards of the Six Nations. In 1742 the Indians com- plained of white men settling on their territory on the Juniata river, and two years later they murdered John Armstrong, an Indian trader, and two of his companions, at Jack's Narrows. In 1750, in response to continued complaints of the Six Nations concerning the occupation by white men of their unceded territory on the Juniata, the lieutenant-governor of Pennsylvania sent out an armed expedition, which burned the cabins of several intruders whom they cap- tured. The title to the territory of Blair county and the Juniata valley was purchased of the Indians in 1754, and re-confirmed to the Pennsylvania authorities by the treaty of 1758.
Indian Trails. - The Tuscarora path is said to have passed through the south-east- ern part of the county, and the Kittanning path that passed over the site of Frankstown was the great Indian highway from Kittan- ning, on the Allegheny river, to the eastern part of the State. There were several branch or minor trails from these two main paths, that passed out of the county, but of which no account is given in any published work of the county. The great Catawba war-path that ran from the Carolinas to
New York passed close to the western boundary of the county.
Indian Villages. - Assunnepachla, meaning a meeting of many waters, or the place where the waters join, was the name of the Indian village which was situated on the site of Frankstown, and was known to the Indian traders as early as 1730.
The Delaware Indians remained peaceable at Assunnepachla until 1754, when they became dissatisfied with the treaty of that year, made between the whites and the Six Nations at Albany, whereby the Juniata valley, including all the territory of Blair county, was transferred to the authorities of Pennsylvania for four hundred pounds. The Delawares having their land thus sold without their consent, became angry, and the larger part of the warriors at Assunne- pachla, in 1755, dug up the tomahawk and joined the French at Ft. Duquesne. In 1758 a considerable portion of them returned to the Juniata valley, but in a few days after their return General Forbes marched up the Raystown branch, in his expedition, which resulted in the capture of Ft. Du- quesne, and the spies sent out from Assun- nepachla went back with such alarming reports of the size and war-like appearance of the English and colonial force under Forbes, that the Indians resolved upon leaving the Juniata valley. They broke up their villages, crossed the Alleghenies by the Kittanning path, and were never seen again upon the territory of Blair county, only when engaged in raids upon the white settlers during the revolutionary war.
While Assunnepachla was the center and metropolis of Indian power in the valley of the Little Juniata, yet undoubtedly there were small villages in different parts of
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OF BLAIR COUNTY.
Blair county, although no account of them can be found.
Anglo-Saxon Pioneers. - At the opening of the eighteenth century, the Alleghenies constituted the western boundary of English colonial territory, but in the mountain val- leys, between the tide-water regions of the south and the Alleghenies, and in the same longitudinal mountain valleys between the Susquehanna river and the Allegheny mountains, arose a wonderful class of peo- ple, whose arms and whose courage won the great west from the Alleghenies to the Rio Grande and the Pacific. They will be known in the future as the backwoodsmen of the Alleghenies, a name applied to them by Roosevelt in his work entitled, "The Winning of the West."
The backwoodsmen were American by birth and parentage, and of mixed race, Irish, German, Scotch, English, Welsh and Scotch-Irish. But the dominant strain in their blood was the Scotch-Irish, whose preachers taught the creed of Knox and Calvin. The English element of this backwoods race was represented by Daniel Boone, and its Cavalier spirit had fitting exemplification in Clarke and Blount, while the German element produced the Whetzels, and the Welsh contributed the Morgans.
The first settlers of Blair county are rightfully entitled to the name of back- woodsmen, and many of their sons and grandsons were in the tide of the back- woodsmen of the Alleghenies who won the great Mississippi valley and the far west. Tradition asserts that Stephen Frank, a German and an Indian trader, was the first man to settle temporarily in the county. lle settled at Frankstown in 1756, if not carlier. In 1744 Lazarus and James Lowry were licensed as Indian traders, and were
temporary residents, before 1754. James Lowry received the first land warrant issued for the upper part of the Juniata valley in the purchase of 1754. It was granted February 3, 1755, for three hun- dred acres of land, which was located at or near Frankstown. Adam and William Holliday settled at Hollidaysburg in 1768, and shortly after this Samuel Moore and his seven sons and two daughters came to Scotch valley, from which they were driven by the Indians in 1778. James, the second son, was killed by an Indian during their retreat. In 1780 Samuel Moore returned with a colony of Scotchmen, consisting of the Crawfords, Irwins, Fraziers, Stewarts, McPhersons, and others, and numbering from twenty-five to thirty persons, all clad in full Highland costume, with bonnet and kilt, and armed with claymores and Queen Anne muskets.
Between 1763 and 1775 Jacob Neff, Mar- tin and Jacob Houser, and Christian Hoover settled in Taylor township. About 1770 the Ives, Divelys, Lingenfelters, and Nich- olas' settled in Greenfield township, while prior to 1776 the Colemans had come to Logan township, and the Brumbaughs, Clappers, Rhodes', Shirleys, and some others had settled in Huston township. A list of the pioneer settlers, as full as can be ob- tained, will be given in this volume under the history of the respective townships in which they settled.
The early settlement of the county re- ceived a check from Pontiac's war, in 1763. In that year Pontiac led the Indian tribes north of the Ohio against the English forts from Detroit to Ligonier. Colonel Bouquet was dispatched to the relief of the forts of western Pennsylvania. Ile raised the siege of Fort Ligonier, and marched to the relief
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BIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
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of Fort Pitt with a force of five hundred Scotch Highlanders and colonial volunteers. On August 5, 1763, near the site of Harri- son City, Westmoreland county, he was drawn into an Indian ambuscade. Dark- ness saved his army from terrible defeat, and on the next day, by masterly strategy, he drew the Indian force into an ambuscade by a feigned retreat, and finally routed them with great slaughter. This battle, so nearly lost on the first day by the carelessness, and so brilliantly won on the second day by the masterly generalship of Col. Henry Bou- quet, is classed by Parkman ( the historian ) as one of the "decisive battles of the world;" for mighty Pontiac's grand dream of Indian empire was wrecked when his warrior hosts were crushed and scattered at Bushy Run.
Frankstown. - This town was the earliest center of trade in the Little Juniata valley, and around its site and name eling romantic memories of Indian and revolutionary times. It rose on the site of Assunnepachala, the seat of power and the metropolis of Dela- ware dominion in the territory of Blair county. Before the Indian had left its site, tradition says that Stephen Frank had become a temporary resident among the bark wigwams, yet it seems that he never became a permanent settler by purchasing land; and after his death we have two ac- counts for the name of Frankstown, as applied to the village by the whites. Ac- cording to one authority, it was named for Stephen Frank, and by the other for the Indian chief Frank. The first account, which seems most probable, states that the Indian chief as well as the town was named for Stephen Frank. Lazarus Lowry seems to have been the leading citizen if not the principal founder of Frankstown ; and what
the old Assunnepachala was to the Indians and the Kittanning path, Frankstown be- came to the early white settlers, and the first highway across the Alleghenies, which was named after it, was known all through the State as the old Frankstown road.
Revolutionary War. - On June 14, 1775, Congress authorized the raising of six com- panies of -expert riflemen in Pennsylvania, to join the Continental army near Boston. One of these companies was raised from Bedford county, passed the Hudson river above West Point about August 1, 1775, and reached the vicinity of Boston in a few days thereafter.
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