USA > Pennsylvania > Chronicles of Pennsylvania from the English revolution to the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1688-1748, Vol. I > Part 10
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A statement in Volume 8 of the Maryland Archives, pp. 517 and 518, may mean that a party of Shawnees, fleeing from the Twightwees, passed up the Susque- hanna about 1687, and joined the Iroquois. The "Sat- tanas" having been at war with the Five Nations, one hundred warriors of the former went on a deputation to the latter to make peace, and had reached the Dela- ware River-Hanna says, probably near the Falls-by August, 1692. Hanna, in the book which has been men- tioned, shows how communication with the Province of New York and settlement in New Jersey followed. It is probable that the fear of the strange Indians called
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Shallna-roonas felt by the Schuylkill Indians in 1693 was owing to the movement of larger bodies than the group which settled on the Susquehanna. Those Shawnees who came to the western side of the Delaware near the Water Gap about the time of, but indepen- dently of, the Shawnee immigration to the Susque- hanna, had lived in New Jersey. Whether or not Martin Chartier, as Eshleman supposes, had been a trader on the Susquehanna before 1692, it is clear that Chartier, who had fled years before from Canada, and more re- cently from Fort St. Louis, brought a band from the Shawnee village near Fort St. Louis to the Chesapeake in 1692; in which year the Susquehanna Indians and some southern Indians, called, according to the record, "Stabbernowles," claiming to be in league with the Mohawks, who were friends of Maryland, asked per- mission of the government of that province for the Stabbernowles to settle on the lands of the Susque- hannas, but were informed that the lands were within the limits of Pennsylvania, but that Maryland, however, would not disturb the Stabbernowles as long as they lived peaceably. They continued there, a Maryland officer in June, 1697, finding thirty "Shevanor" men, besides women and children, living "four miles below Cones- toga," paying tribute to the Susquehannas and Senecas, and the Maryland Archives in 1696 and 1698 speaking of that Province being at peace with the Shawnees. In later generations, the officials of Pennsylvania had no knowledge of any immigration of Shawnees prior to 1697 or 1698, and did not distinguish those who came at other times or to other places from those now about to be mentioned. Lieutenant-Governor Gordon, in a let- ter endorsed as having been written in December, 1731 (Penna. Archives, 1st Series, Vol. I, p. 302), said that he had found by the records that, about thirty-four years previously, numbers of Shawnees had come to Susquehanna, and obtained leave first of the Cones-
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togas, and afterwards of Lieutenant-Governor Mark- ham, to settle on Pecquea (Pequea) Creek. As it was said by another authority that sixty families came in 1698 to Conestoga, it is probable that a sufficient re- inforcement came in that year to raise the Shawnees in what is now Lancaster County to such number, and perhaps the reinforcements came more directly from the Cherokee country. Defeats by the Cherokees and Catawbas had stopped the spread of the nation further south. The coming to Pennsylvania has been reported as a fleeing before one of these enemies.
The Shawnees about the lower Susquehanna and the Conestoga Indians, or Seneca-Susquehannas, being on the frontier, were molested both at their homes and in the hunting grounds by the Naked Indians (Miamis, or Twightwees). In the Fall of 1699, some runaway servants, including a woman nearly related to a Twight- wee King, were harbored by Conodahto, or Conno- dagtoh, King of the Conestogas, and Mecallona, King of these Shawnees. Mecallona conceived the project of redeeming the woman from service, and sending her to the Twightwees, as an act of kindness which must result in peace. This was frustrated by certain white men reclaiming the servants. The threats of bringing a large force, and cutting off all the Indians under Mecallona and Connodagtoh, not only brought about the surrender of the runaways, but put the two tribes into such trepidation that they did not plant corn the next Spring, and they prepared to move. The petition of the two Kings to Penn for favor and protection is dated May 1, 1700, at Brandywine, where they got a white man to write it, and is printed in Vol. I of The Penn and Logan Correspondence, page 1. The heading is correct, but in the body of the petition the name Savino, i.e. Shawnee, is misprinted as "Gavino." Mecallona may not have been the only king of these tribesmen; for on Aug. 29, Ophesaw (Opessa), or, as he is called
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in Penn's treaty the next year, Wopaththa, as King of these Shawnees, joined the Delaware King and the representative of the Susquehanna Indians in a treaty of peace and alliance with Maryland.
The Proprietary of Pennsylvania was put in the position of protector, guide, suzerain, and, moreover, monopolizer of the trade of the Indians within two hun- dred miles westward of the white settlements by a treaty of April 23, 1701, between William Penn for him- self and his heirs and successors, and the following Indians for themselves and their successors and na- tions and people, viz: Connodagtoh, described in the Council Minutes as "King of the Sasquehannah Min- quays or Conestoga Indians," but in the articles called "King of the Indians inhabiting upon and about the river Susquehannah in the said Province," and Wi- daagh, alias Orettyagh, Koqueeash, and Andaggy Junk- quagh, chiefs of the said nations, Wopaththa, King, and Lemoycungh and Pemoyajooagh, chiefs, of the Shawnees, and Ahookassoongh, brother of the Em- peror, in behalf of the Emperor, i.e. the great King of the Onondagas, and Weewhinjongh, Cheequittagh, Tak- yewsan, and Woapackoa, chiefs of the Ganawese, called in the articles "the nations of the Indians in- habiting in and about the northern part of the River Powtowmeck." There was to continue a firm peace between the Christian inhabitants of the province and the several peoples aforesaid, and no injury should be done to any one on either side; the Indians were to behave according to the laws of the government while they lived near the white people, and were to have the privileges and immunities of the laws, they acknowledg- ing the authority of the Crown and the Provincial Government; they were not to aid, assist, or abet any one not in amity with said Crown and Government; both sides were to notify of all rumors of each others' evil designs; the kings and chiefs and their successors
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were not to allow any strange Indian nations to settle on the western side of the Susquehanna or about the Potomac other than those already seated, or bring other Indians into the province without the consent of the Proprietary; no person was to trade with the Indians without a license under the hand and seal of the Pro- prietary or his Lieutenants ; and Penn, his heirs and suc- cessors were to take care to have the Indians "furnished with all sorts of necessary goods for their use at rea- sonable rates;" the Potomac Indians aforesaid were allowed to settle upon any part of the Potomac River within the bounds of the province; the Indians of Cones- toga and upon and about the Susquehanna River, and especially their said King, Connodagtoh, should be at all times ready to confirm and make good the sale to Penn, now ratified, of the lands lying near and about the said River; and the Indians of the Susquehanna were to answer for the behavior and conduct of the said Indians, and for their performance of the articles; Penn and his heirs and successors were to assist with advice and directions-notice, not with arms-and, in all things reasonable, befriend all said Indians behav- ing as aforesaid, and submitting to the laws of the Prov- ince.
The Shawnees of Pechoquealon in the region known as Lechay (Lehigh), were not strictly a party to the treaty of April 23, 1701, but made some overtures for trade shortly afterwards, and seem to have been thence- forth considered as embraced within the Proprietaries' guardianship, just as, when all Pennsylvania Shawnees came to be within easier reach of one another, the Five Nations appointed one viceroy or superintendent over them all.
In accordance with Penn's suggestion, the Governor of New York, making, in 1701, a treaty with the Five Nations, made their promises of peace extend to all the
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other English Colonies as well as New York, and to the Indian tribes within the respective provinces.
The Nanticokes, who appear in the records of Penn- sylvania a few years later, were at this time in Mary- land. They are called in subsequent New York records Tochwoghs, the name by which they are mentioned in Smith's Description of Virginia. The Wolam Olum of the Delawares speaks of the Nentegoes as well as the Shawanis separating from the rest of the nation in early times, and going south. The Maryland Archives mention various "Emperors" of the Nanticokes. The Nanticokes who met Evans in 1707 understood English so well that no interpreter was employed. They gave the date of their peace with the Five Nations as twenty- seven years before, although the Maryland records speak of a war between them in 1681.
Among the tribes mentioned by John Smith were the Kuskarawaoks about half way down the eastern shore of the Chesapeake. They have not been supposed to be the same as the Iroquois bearing the almost identical name of Tuscaroras; but if they were the same, could they not have been the Black Minquas? The Tusca- roras, about 1701, reached in the Carolinas the south- ernmost point of their wanderings, and will be men- tioned later. They had been enemies of the Shawnees.
The courtesies required at the Colony's hands by the Indian tribes, mostly the interchange of visits in which the Province gave more valuable presents than it received, and the maintenance of the visiting Indian families, were a small price to pay for peace. The Proprietaries paying the expense of those meetings which were for the purchase of land, the public outlay, until the treaty in 1722 at Albany, was for many years less than 50l. authorized in 1705 to be annually ex- pended for treaties and messages.
CHAPTER V.
THE PEOPLE.
The small number of Swedes and Dutch-The Church of Sweden and its Ministers on the Dela- ware and Schuylkill-Decline of Swedish families in prominence-Welsh Tract-German Town- French settlement in Chester County-Pennsyl- vania practically a colony of Englishmen-Prepon- derance of Quakers-Early Meetings for Business -Philadelphia's oldest meeting-houses-Quaker Ideas-Jews-harps Benjamin West-Baptists- Advantages of the Society of Friends and political importance of its leaders-Previous social rank of the settlers-Education among them-Penn's rela- tives and his father's companions in arms-Mark- ham and his family-Baron Isaac Baner, Lady Newcomen, and James Annesley-Little recogni- tion of Caste-No landed oligarchy-Sale of real estate to pay debts-Distribution of inheritance- Attractiveness of Penn's dominions as a place of residence.
A few surnames and a few churches, now Protestant Episcopal, are nearly all the vestiges in Pennsylvania or Delaware of the colonization promoted by the House of Vasa, and the name of the Schuylkill River is prac- tically the only thing that has survived among us from the time of the authority of their High Mightinesses, the Estates General of Federate Belgium, or the United Netherlands. Moreover, there lurks in our local speech, as far as the author can recall, not a word, unless brought into it much more recently, of the language of the subjects of either of those two powers. The use
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of English for colloquial purposes became a necessity as soon as the immigration of Englishmen became considerable, although Swedish survived in sermons and church services for a good many years, and, in fact, Dutch was reintroduced for such uses among those whose grandfathers had spoken it. From the retire- ment of Dutch officials after the final surrender to England, until New Yorkers, in the days of Penn, be- gan to come to Bucks County, there was scarcely a Dutch family in the region now called Pennsylvania, and so small a proportion were the Swedes and Dutch of its population during the period of these Chronicles that we might disregard those races, had they not been strong in the region now called Delaware, and there- fore of weight in the politics of Penn's dominion. Although there was some influx of Englishmen both before and after the Duke of York's deed to William Penn, the greater part of the population of New Castle, Kent, and Sussex Counties was of other nationality than English at the Revolution of 1688, particularly if Scotland was to be reckoned a separate nation. There were even quite a number of Frenchmen.
Of the three races, Swedes, Finns, and Dutch, the Swedes were greatly in the majority on Delaware Bay and River.
The Swedish settlers and their children were not dissenters from their National Church, which, although classified as Lutheran, was, like the Church of England, liturgical, presided over by bishops, and controlled by the State; nor had the Dutch any of those peculiarities which separated some Anabaptists and the Quakers from other Protestants. When language was not a barrier, aliens who recognized the Bible as their Di- rectory in faith and morals, not placing greater con- fidence in the individual conscience, whose ministers were trained, who took an oath when the magistrate required it, whose leading men wore swords, and of
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whom the poorer men were ready to use pikes and guns, were more congenial to the ordinary Englishman than his Quaker compatriots. There will be mentioned the likelihood of such an Englishman, at least before 1696, attending the houses of worship established by the Swedes, and partly maintained by the Dutch, where at times there ministered an Anglican clergyman.
In the year with which this history begins, the Swedes were assembling for worship at Tranhook on Christiana Creek in New Castle County (church now known as Holy Trinity, Wilmington), and on Tinicum Island (church soon afterwards abandoned), and at Weccacoe, for which the congregation afterwards built the edifice now standing, dedicated July 2, 1700, known as Gloria Dei Church (on Delaware Avenue above Washington Avenue in Philadelphia). Rev. Jacob Fabritius, living above Penn's capital town, and com- ing down the river in a canoe, tended all the congrega- tions, and even went into Maryland. He had been blind since 1682, and was led about by some one who preceded him with a staff. Acrelius says that this dominie, by birth a German or a Pole, and called from New York by the non-English whites on the Delaware, preached mostly in Dutch. It may be supposed that he was never one of the clergy of the country of Sweden, although his Lutheranism was undoubted. When he was not present at Tinicum, Andreas Bengt- son (Andrew Bankson) read Möller's Postilla.
King Charles XI of Sweden, not in the exercise of any superintendence over English subjects of Swedish descent, but out of zeal for the Evangelical religion, upon hearing of the need of ministers and books, sent over the Rev. Andreas Rudman, Rev. Eric Tobias Biorck, and Rev. Jonas Auren, who all arrived in June, 1697, when Rudman took the churches in Pennsylvania proper. He was invested with a commissaryship or vice-episcopal dignity, whereby, after he had given up
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his charge in Philadelphia, he presided at the ordina- tion there by himself, Biorck, and Sandel of Justus Falckner on Nov. 24, 1703 (Sachse's German Pietists), Rudman had, on July 19, 1702, preached his farewell sermon in Weccacoe Church, in accordance with leave to return home; but, after laboring among Lutherans on the Hudson, he for some time served Anglican churches in Penn's dominions, and he died in Phila- delphia. He had been succeeded in his Swedish charge by the Rev. Andreas Sandel, picked out by the Con- sistory of Upsala, and ordained by Archbishop Ben- zelius of that see. In Sandel's time there were enough Swedes and other Lutherans at Pennypack and Amas- land and Kalcon Hook, as well as at Manatawny, as about to be mentioned, for him occasionally to preach at those places. When, in 1719, Sandel returned to Sweden, the Rev. Jonas Lidman took charge of Wecca- coe and Kalcon Hook; and the Rev. Samuel Hesselius, of Neshaminy and Manatawny. Lidman, upon being recalled, left his congregation in 1730 to the care, says Acrelius, of Mr. John Eneberg, who was then preach- ing for the Germans. Rev. Gabriel Falk, who came in 1733, was obliged to leave Weccacoe by being found guilty of slander, and sentenced to heavy damages; but, retiring to Manatawny (of which name Molatton ap- pears to be a variation), he for a number of years served what has since been called St. Gabriel's, Mo- latton (now the Protestant Episcopal Church at Doug- lassville). Rev. Johan Dylander came to Weccacoe in 1737, and served until his death in 1741. During the visits of Whitefield and Zinzendorf, the Church of Sweden in Pennsylvania was badly broken up. After the arrival of Mühlenberg-see a later chapter-there was an attempt to unite the Swedes and the German Lutherans ecclesiastically; but the Rev. Gabriel Naes- man, who had been sent from Sweden as Dylander's successor, refused to join, as being subject to the Arch-
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bishop and Consistory of Upsala. Naesman was shep- herd of the diminished flock in the year when this history ends. Under his successors, the Swedish church edifices and congregations of Pennsylvania became three in number only: Gloria Dei at Weccacoe, and what is now St. James's at Kingsessing, and Christ Church in Upper Merion (Bridgeport). In Delaware, there was Holy Trinity Church. An ecclesiastic called "Provost," sometimes the minister at Holy Trinity being appointed such, presided over all the Swedish missionaries on the Delaware, and one of the arch- bishops or bishops in Sweden had the general care of the mission. Pastors were sent from Sweden until after the American Revolution. When subsequent va- cancies occurred, the congregations began calling clergymen of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States of America.
When the early purchasers from Penn arrived in Pennsylvania, they found the choicest land in the pos- session of those who had come under other authority, mostly Swedes. Penn, at his second visit, offered to such Swedes in exchange lands at Manatawny (partly in Montgomery and partly in Berks County on the Schuylkill), at a quit rent of a bushel of wheat per 100 A. He set apart 10,000 acres thus to be a Swedes Tract, somewhat like the tracts to be mentioned for persons of other nationalities respectively. Although Acrelius says that only a few accepted the offer, Swedes were afterwards reputed owners of that number of acres in the aggregate there. Swedes also bought con- siderable land from Welshmen owning the same on the western side of the Schuylkill around about the present town of Bridgeport, Montgomery Co.
In addition to Swedish ideas of public policy, there were, as have been mentioned in a preceding chapter, some Swedish grievances real or supposed; so there may be said to have been at a certain time a Swedish
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Party, as well as several Swedish neighbourhoods. The sympathy, before alluded to, between the non-Quaker English and the persons of other nationality, made, in- dependently of any personal interests, the prevailing sentiment in the Lower Counties strongly opposed to that in the Upper, or Pennsylvania proper.
While certain ideas were derived from the Swedes and Dutch, and they controlled politics in some locali- ties, they, even in Delaware, were not the leading ex- ponents of their views, and their importance did not outlast their relative numerical strength. It marked contrast with certain Dutch families in New York, the progenitors of some of which, to be sure, received enor- mous territory, and resembled Penn as landlord, but not as Governor, it is noticeable that the pioneers on the western banks of our river and bay secured no financial, social, or political advantages over those who came later. The commanders of the colony not vice- gerents under an officer at Manhattan left no sons; yet there were chief men who joined Penn in inaugurating his government who left families; but their children succeeded to no political importance in the Upper Coun- ties, and, in fact, their grandchildren, to very little in the Lower; for Delaware in good time became English, although not strongly Quaker. As a class, collection of families, or group, the Swedes and Dutch are oblit- erated from the history of Pennsylvania after Penn's second visit. The non-Quakers of different nationali- ties intermarried, and many of the most influential persons of later Colonial times had, through some female line, a strain of Swedish blood: but John Mor- ton, signer of the Declaration of Independence, was the only person of Swedish patronymic known outside of a county court or the House of Assembly, until, in more modern times, a number of individuals have by their abilities recalled to us this old race to which they in the male line belong.
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William Penn, besides his sales to the early English purchasers, made some effort to secure the taking up of tracts by persons outside of, even across the seas from, England, and in some cases indulged those of a particular nationality by putting their acres together in rather large districts apart from other people's. The earliest instance of this was for a race almost with- out a taint of Anglo-Saxon blood, speaking a language very different from English, but in closer political union than the Scotch or the Irish with the Crown and Parliament of England. Before coming over to Penn- sylvania, Penn, according to a memorial of the inhabi- tants of the Welch Tract (Pennsylvania Archives, Vol. I, p. 108), stipulated with his purchasers from Wales and, as it elsewhere appears, certain purchasers, prob- ably Welshmen, from Herefordshire, Shropshire, and Cheshire that they should have their lands lying to- gether, and that within the bounds of the district thus formed, all causes, quarrels, crimes, and titles should be determined by men of their own language. On arriving, he issued a warrant for 40,000 acres, and accordingly what was supposed to be that quantity was set apart as the "Welch Tract," taking in the present townships of Haverford, Radnor, Lower Merion, &ct., where geographical names from the British principality are found to-day. About eighty settlements had been made by the latter part of 1690, when the Commis- sioners of Property summoned one of the purchasers to show cause why the part not portioned off or settled and improved should not be treated as forfeited, and be disposed of as other unallotted land in the province. The Commissioners wished each purchaser who had not taken out a patent under the usual quit rent, to do so, and required a speedy compliance, declaring the me- morial presented by Griffith Owen and others in answer insufficient. The Welsh on 3rd mo. 2, 1691, stated their willingness to pay the future quit rent, but not the past,
9
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on the whole 40,000 acres, but this was declared not satisfactory. Thomas Allen Glenn, in "Merion in the Welsh Tract," says that soon afterwards the Welsh agreed to pay the entire back rent of the whole tract, but the minutes of the Commissioners for 4, 27, 1691, speak of the repeating of the old offer. The Commis- sioners answered that it was too late to change the decision, and that the matter had been settled. Thus considerable land within the tract was confirmed to persons not Welsh. The racial isolation of the chief immigrants representing the ancient Britons was some- what bridged over by their being of a social class hav- ing genealogical charts showing a line of descent from the Norman barons or kings, and thus in touch with the history of England, and, as to most of the individuals, taught the medium of communication with the people beyond the twelve shires of Wales. The tenants or servants of these freeholders and the free countrymen who followed them made the Welsh settlers quite nu- merous by 1700.
There was another Welsh Tract in Penn's dominions, viz: 30,000 acres, mostly within the present limits of Delaware, bought by Welsh Baptists in 1703, but this settlement was not accorded any independence of the county authority.
A more successful project of putting a foreign dis- trict in the Province was connected with the early ar- rival of some German-speaking persons from Crefeld or from within the borders of the Netherlands. The place for their residence was called Germantown (now within the City of Philadelphia), and the Bailiffs, Burgesses, and Commonalty of German Towne were incorporated by patent from Penn dated Aug. 12, 1689, and issued under the great seal of the Province on 3, 30, 1691, with power to hold market, impose fines, &ct., but the origi- nal settlers and those who soon joined them, although long intermarrying among themselves, were connected
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