USA > Pennsylvania > Chronicles of Pennsylvania from the English revolution to the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1688-1748, Vol. II > Part 24
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the land east of the Susquehanna were on this visit de- livered, the sachems choosing to defer the delivery of the price for the land west of the river until a later visit.
The desire of the Pennsylvania government to punish offences against any Indian was illustrated before the sachems departed. News came from Allegheney of the death of a Mingo, or member of one of the Nations, from a blow given by Solomon Moffat, a blacksmith, in a quarrel. Moffat had fled. The Council issued a proc- lamation offering a reward for his capture, and ex- plained to the sachems that he would be hung, if the trial should determine that the killing was wilful.
It required considerable firmness in the officials of a colony without an army, and was possible for them be- cause of the long cultivation of good will, not to yield to various requests of the powerful confederacy. The sachems asked that all the traders be recalled from the Ohio and the branches of the Susquehanna : the Council declined to let the trade be abandoned to the people of other colonies. In later talks, the sachems said that the Governor of Maryland had written that he was in- structed by the King to see that the Indians were not wronged as to land, and he had heard that the govern- ment of Pennsylvania had wronged them, and he would write to the King to have justice done : the sachems de- sired that Penn and Logan write to the governors of Maryland and Virginia to make them pay for land their people had taken, for all the lands on Susquehanna and at Chanandowa had belonged to the Iroquois. The re- ply to this was that the Proprietary was not satisfied as to the Iroquois' title to such land. The sachems com- plained of the prices asked by the Pennsylvania traders, greater than the prices asked by the New York traders, and said, that, owing to the black dust in the powder from New York, the Pennsylvanians had a great oppor- tunity for selling good powder: the reply was that the
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traders made very little profit, and were under no regu- lation as to price. The sachems appeared to be satis- fied.
One of the last remarks of the sachems was that Civility had no power to sell any land, and, if he should attempt to do so, they would disown him.
To correct the ambiguity of the deed of October 11, nearly all the sachems, while on their way home, signed a supplemental deed, dated October 25, 1736, explaining that the meaning was to release all claim within the bounds of Pennsylvania beginning eastward on the Delaware as far northward as the Endless Mountains as they crossed Pennsylvania from eastward to the west. The sachems promised for themselves, their chil- dren, and their children's children that neither they nor any in authority in their Nations would ever sell or make over to any person white or Indian, except the Proprietaries, children of William Penn, or persons by them authorized, any lands within the limits of the gov- ernment of Pennsylvania.
The Germans against whom the Governor of Mary- land had sent his army, and to whom the army, on re- tiring, had granted time to decide whether to reac- knowledge Lord Baltimore as landlord, remained firm. Ogle, the Governor, started to put in possession of the lands which they had occupied others who would be de- pendable partisans. Apparently the first to have lots awarded to them were Thomas Thompson of London- grove, Chester County, and a few friends, Thompson being brother-in-law of the Rev. Jacob Henderson, the Episcopal Commissary of Maryland, who was supposed to have suggested that persons from that and adjacent townships should undertake the settlement. Henry Munday of Londongrove, who had been impoverished by proceedings in Pennsylvania's Court of Chancery, was brought into the movement, and drew up a paper, whereby thirty-one persons agreed, on receiving the
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lands of the Germans, not only to pay the usual fee or rent, but also to defend the title with life and fortune. Another promoter, Charles Higginbotham, also secured about twenty more adventurers. Not hesitating in compassion for those to be turned out of doors in the cold of November and December, Governor Ogle di- rected the deputy surveyor to lay out 200 acres for each of the fifty and more persons named by Munday and Higginbotham, and promised arms to at least such as were of the Church of England, and offered a reward for the apprehension of Blunston, Wright, and others. Arms, ammunition, drums, &ct. were sent to the house of Edward Rigby in Baltimore County : but, the project being discovered by persons loyal to the Penns, and a warrant obtained from one of the Provincial Judges of Pennsylvania, Munday was arrested on the very day appointed for a conference of some of the party, and Edward Leet, another adventurer, surrendered himself ; and both were brought to Philadelphia, but Higgin- botham escaped. Not to leave Cresap at large when the claimants under Maryland should arrive, the mag- istrates of Lancaster County, taking advantage of a charge against him of murdering Knolles Daunt, de- cided to have Cresap locked up. The Sheriff and twenty-four attendants, on November 24, besieged Cresap's house, he, surrounded by his family and five companions, refusing to surrender. This garrison mak- ing defence with powder and ball, the Sheriff, after giving warning, and making an offer to let the wife and children escape, which Cresap did not accept, set fire to the house. As all rushed out, Cresap and his com- panions shooting at the besiegers, Cresap was wounded, or had been wounded when in the house, and he and four of the other men were taken, the fifth being killed, perhaps by the bullet of one of his own party. Cresap was brought to Philadelphia, and put in irons, the Council deciding to deal leniently with the others con-
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nected with the project, even letting off without pros- ecution all who would on examination make candid con- fession and submission to the government, and give their own recognizance for good behavior.
Governor Ogle sent the Secretary and the Attorney- General of Maryland to represent the "inhumanity" of the capture of Cresap, and to ask for the punishment of those taking part. The Council, justifying the action of the latter, even refused to admit Cresap to bail, and the Maryland commissioners left Philadelphia, casting reflections upon Logan, because, while the Council's an- swer had been silent as to bailing three of Cresap's companions, and Logan had privately expressed him- self in favor of its being done, he had required applica- tion to be made to one of the Judges, and Dr. Thomas Græme, the one applied to, had decided that he could not do so legally, in view of the commitments.
During the visit of the commissioners, the Council and Assembly united, in a petition to the King, dated Dec. 11, 1736, to enjoin Lord Baltimore and those claim- ing authority under him from further acts of violence, and to make him, until the boundaries should be legally determined, confine himself to the line set by his grand- father.
Higginbotham, who had fled from arrest, received the appointment from Ogle of captain in the militia, and brought about eighteen persons to Conejohela in Decem- ber, with the intention of carrying out Ogle's purpose of dispossessing the Germans. Joined by various run- away servants and other disorderly characters, he had a force to enable him, as opportunity offered, to carry off to imprisonment in Maryland any who resisted him, and any of those who had joined in the "invasion" or "riot" which accomplished the capture of Cresap. Two persons had been attacked, when, on December 29, the Council ordered the Sheriff or some magistrate of Lancaster County with proper assistance to read the
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Riot Act, and to give warning to all who would not dis- perse, and to apprehend all who attempted to seize or turn out of possession any of the inhabitants. Neverthe- less, on that very day, some of Higginbotham's company seized six men, including four Germans, as they were digging a grave, and, in the coldest season known for years, took them on foot one hundred miles to jail, where they were kept without fire, and for twenty-four hours had nothing but a pint of boiled Indian corn. Higginbotham established a "fortress" or guard house, where, on being pursued, some who had broken into houses, and taken six prisoners, were sheltered. The wives and children of the captured Germans and other families sought refuge on the eastern side of the river, and Blunston submitted to the Council at Philadelphia whether it would be better to remove all those on the western side, or to defend them at the risk of bloodshed.
Logan, who was a Quaker by birth without the ex- treme views of a convert, was not thoroughly imbued with the peace principles spread through the Society of Friends; and several other Quaker Councillors, if they did not make the same distinction as he did between offensive and defensive, or lawful and unlawful, war, had no compunction about killing a man to maintain legal authority. The suggestion to avoid bloodshed by evacuating for a few years, pending the judicial deci- sion, found favor with only one of the Councillors con- sidering it, they being four Quakers and two Church- men. It was decided not to be consistent with the honor or safety of the Province to choose any other alterna- tive than opposing Higginbotham with ample force. However, by the Sheriff putting a strong guard on the western side of the river to watch the movements of the Marylanders, and by his restraining his own citizens from undertaking to storm the fortress, and by the rapid movements of the followers of Higginbotham either to the fortress or to the heart of Maryland, noth-
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ing happened more serious than an occasional carrying off to jail, and interference with the Germans plough- ing. Higginbotham offered, in the name of the Gov- ernor of Maryland, to pay for the improvements made by some of the Germans, and had told some that they would not be molested, if they remained neutral. The Germans were pretty well scared, and thought of going in a body to Annapolis, and of appealing to the Gov- ernor there for protection on his own terms. Their fail- ure to take part in the measures for their defence caused a delegation of them, which came to Philadelphia in April for advice, to be told that the German families must not give way until forced, in which case they would receive other locations upon paying a reasonable consideration.
A long correspondence between the two governments and a visit by Samuel Preston and John Kinsey as com- missioners to Maryland to effect a temporary accommo- dation, resulted in nothing. On Oct. 26, at midnight, John Charlton, Captain of the Maryland garrison at Conejohela, with about sixteen armed men, broke into the jail of Lancaster County, and set free and escorted towards Maryland four prisoners. On receipt of the royal order in Council of August 18, 1737, spoken of, as made on August 8, in the chapter on the Ascertainment of the Southern Boundary, the Pennsylvania govern- ment stopped all prosecutions arising out of the bound- ary dispute, and let its prisoners out on bail.
The Six Nations' deed of October, 1736, included Pechoquealon and other land then or formerly the seat of some Shawnees. On hearing of this, those of the tribe who still lived at Shamokin, or whose chief seat was there, sent in alarm a belt of wampum to the French Indians at Tuchsaghroudi, asking permission to dwell among them. They consented, and promised that when they received notice of the march, they with a number of Frenchmen would come with provisions to be an
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escort for the rest of the way. The Lieutenant-Gov- ernor of New York induced the Six Nations to under- take to divert the Shawnees from their project. About the same time the Shawnees at Allegheney, who were the largest part of the tribe within the charter limits of Pennsylvania, asked for arms and ammunition to with- stand their enemies, the Southern Indians; otherwise these Shawnees must yield to the persuasions of the French, who sent them every year powder, lead, and tobacco. The British colonies were in expectation of peace being made between the Southern Indians and the Six Nations, so that the Shawnees would not be molested by the former. The Council of Pennsylvania, fearing to send arms, which might be used against the Province, invited the chiefs to come on a visit to Philadelphia; and, to keep them in good humor, one horse laden with two half-barrels of powder and some bullets and a quantity of tobacco was sent in charge of George Miranda, a trader at Allegheney, son of Isaac Miranda, mentioned in another chapter.
These Shawnees may be counted as the first sovereign state or commonwealth in America to "go dry." Long, as has been seen, had the representatives of nations and villages of savages begged the civilized colony of Penn- sylvania for regulation of the liquor traffic with them, for a strict license system, for the enforcement of the tribe's option not to have any rum brought to certain localities, and for other measures to protect the chiefs from selling the clothes off their backs, and from being excited to the point of murdering. The laws and the officials' directions had failed to meet the case, the Councillors insisting upon the advisability of giving drinks at treaties, and the sachems rarely favoring total abstinence, and Indian women being sent to get what the traders did not bring. On March 15, 1737-8, the Shawnees at Allegheney held a council, one hundred strong, including the traders Peter Chartier and
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George Miranda, and decided that whatever rum or strong liquor was then in the town, or might thereafter be brought in, should be spilt in the presence of the whole town, and that four men be appointed in each town for four years to see that none be brought in. Accordingly all the rum at the towns, about forty gal- lons, was emptied into the street. A message was sent to Thomas Penn and James Logan on March 20, signed by Loyparcowah (who was Opehassah's son), Newche- conner, Deputy King, and Coycacolenne, Chief Council- lor, that they had a good understanding with the French, the Five Nations, the Ottawas, and all the French Indians; that the land reserved for themselves near the English settlements did not suit them at the date of writing, but they hoped that their not returning to it would not be taken amiss, it being sad for them to see the English settlements, where two of their brethren died; that, being ill provided, the chiefs could not visit Philadelphia that Spring, but would the following; that they did not desire to go further off, only to make a strong settlement to keep their young men at home for a year; that they had sent word to the French, the Five Nations, the Delawares, and the Shawnees on the Sus- quehanna to bring no more rum; and that they were endeavoring to bring the Ottawas, who recognized them as elder brothers, into trade with the Province. Two or three weeks after the sending of this message, three Indians passing by from war with the Maychepese nation, but having the scalps of three whites, King Newcheconner notified James Logan, so as to avert sus- picion against these Shawnees, the Delawares, or the neighbouring Indians. The carrying of liquor to these Shawnees was forbidden by the Pennsylvania author- ities; and a request was sent by the Shawnees to the French to follow the example of the English. The let- ter of March 20, perhaps because mentioning good re- lations with the French, was repudiated by Newchecon-
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ner at a treaty in Philadelphia in 1739, as having been written by "two white men"-evidently Chartier and Miranda-when "all were merry over a cup of good liquor." They must have saved this cupful when they emptied all the kegs, five days before! At the aforesaid treaty, Kakowwatchy and a number of Shawnees, hav- ing settlements scattered from the Great Island on the Susquehanna (near Lock Haven) to the Allegheny, met Thomas Penn and his new Lieutenant-Governor and the Council, Logan being present; and Thomas Penn and his Lieutenant-Governor signing for the Propri- etaries, on behalf of all the Christian subjects of the King of England in the Province, of the one part, and "Kaycowockecor," Newcheconner, Tomenebuck, and Meshemethequater (the last named not affixing his mark), on behalf of themselves and the "Shawonese" in America within the claims of the King of Great Brit- ain, of the other part, made an agreement in writing, dated August 1, 1739, that the union and friendship be- tween the subjects of said King and the Shawnee nation be preserved, that the agreement with William Penn of April 23, 1701, be observed, and that the Shawnees never join with any nation in acts of hostility to the subjects of the crown of Great Britain.
The year 1737 witnessed the consummation of the great Walking Purchase, in accomplishing which Thomas Penn, the son of the man most celebrated for humane and honest treatment of Indians, has been por- trayed as hurrying white men to their death to deprive the red men of a vast territory which had never been sold. As to each part of the representation, long the tradition of the anti-Proprietary country people, it is, in the first place, untrue that Thomas Penn was present during the great feat of pedestrianism. Moreover, when, twenty years later, there was an investigation, it was sworn that those who walked, were, before starting, directed by his orders not to overwalk themselves, as he
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did not care sufficiently about much land beyond certain mountains ; a strong hint, to be sure, to get well across them. If these mountains, the name of which is blank, were the great Kittatinny range, which, indeed, was crossed, the hint was for at least fifty miles. Nor is it true that any one of the walkers died in a few days : the one finishing the walk survived it fifty years; the others, between ten and twenty years. If the one who gave out on the second day, who is said to have drunk too much, did fall into one of the streams, there is only the weakest authority for his being "quite blind" when picked up. Nor-an unimportant detail-was the terminus ascertained by the walker who endured to the end casting himself headlong, and stretching out his arm to a sapling, and so gaining a few feet. He had, when time was called on the first day, clutched a sapling for support, saying that he was nearly "gone." Al- though Teedyuscung charged in 1756, and some Quakers believed, that Thomas Penn forged the docu- ment under which he was claiming, it is not to be sup- posed that he had the crude rascality, blind imprudence, or remarkable skill to do it. The document was not itself a deed, but an ancient writing which Rev. Richard Peters, Secretary of the Land Office, ascertained by comparison to be in the handwriting of Philip Th. Lehnmann, an official of Markham's and Holme's time, and the writing was endorsed in the handwriting of Holme. It appeared to be a copy of a deed dated Aug. 28, 1686, of which the original was not found, from Maykeerickkisho, Sayhoppy, and Taughhaughsey, Kings of the Northern Delawares, for a tract which by the description adjoined that conveyed by deed of July 15, 1682, mentioned on page 96. Neither tract had been entirely abandoned by the red men, and only that con- veyed in 1682 had been staked out. It was described in its deed, which was duly found among William Penn's papers, as beginning at a white oak in John Wood's
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land called The Gray Stones opposite the Falls of the Delaware, thence extending up that River to a spruce tree marked P at the foot of a mountain, and thence along the foot of said mountains west northwest to a white oak marked P by an Indian path leading "to an Indyan Towne called Playwickey and near the head of a Creek called Towsissinck" (evidently meaning that Playwickey was near the head of that Creek), thence west to the Neshaminy, down the Neshaminy to the Delaware, and up the Delaware to the place of begin- ning, the islands known as Mattinicunk, Sepassinck's Island, and Orecton's Island being also then conveyed (Penna. Archives, 1st Series, Vol. I, p. 47). This deed seems connected with the following item in Thomas Fairman's bill for services to William Penn, viz: "To furnishing Capt. Markham and Capt. Holme with horses and riding with them to Plake Wickon" (see Provincial Councillors of Penna., article William Mark- ham), on which ride we may suppose the white oak by the path was marked P. We can assume that later sur- veyors found these marks. The description in the sup- posed copy of a deed of 1686 called for a tract beginning upon a line formerly laid out from a corner spruce tree by the River Delaware, the line being described by the second and third courses in the deed of 1682, and the description continuing thus: "from which said line the said tract or tracts hereby granted doth extend itself back into the woods as far as a man can goe in a day and a half, and bounded on the westerly side with the creek called Neshameny or the most westerly branch thereof so far as the said branch doth extend and from thence by line [here was a blank] to the ut- most extent of said one day and a half's journey and from thence [here a blank] to the aforesaid River Delaware and from thence down the several courses of the said river to the first mentioned spruce tree." The copy purported to show an attestation, "Sealed and
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delivered to Thomas Holme to the use of the within named William Penn in presence of us," with the names of a number of Indians and a number of Christians, of whom Joseph Wood alone survived in 1735. Wood, when called upon, said in an affidavit that such a deed was witnessed by him, and William Biles, not named in the attestation, and very young in 1686, also testified that he was present at some such treaty, and saw the delivery of what might have been the goods agreed upon; but more convincing, we may think, than the recollection of an affair fifty years old was a page or two of a diary of William Markham, eaten away after the date, August 27, 1686, showing that he and Holme were holding interviews with the Indians in that month. Peters's theory must have been correct that the copy had been sent over by Holme to William Penn, who was then in England, and the original kept in Pennsylvania, and lost. Upon the main charge of cheating the Indians, some people will be in a hurry to acquit, because of the opinion expressed in 1758 by all the Governor's Councillors except two, Benjamin Shoemaker and William Logan, whose signatures were not sought, as the report threw the blame for the Dela- wares' war of 1755 upon the Assembly's refusal to sup- port them in fighting the French, and as the report in- sinuated that the Delawares' latest complaints against the walk had been suggested by the Quakers who at- tended various conferences with the Indians. The opinion, however, was an argument forwarded with testimony to the man of whom the signers were holding office, to enable him to exculpate himself. It would not be decisive, if it had been subscribed by one whose family had been as close to the Penns as William Logan's, but the absence of his signature and of Shoe- maker's weakens the force of the exoneration. Then, too, in the second place, Thomas Penn had salved the consciences of the signers by relinquishing before the
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giving of the opinion nearly half of the land in ques- tion, reducing the walk to what they figured to be forty- five miles, and cutting off the great L formed by the bending of the Delaware. This surrender by him was not a piece of belated magnanimity : it really came from fear to take more than the powerful suzerains of these Indians had released, the Six Nations having in 1742, as will be seen, declared that the whites had no right to settle northwest of the Kittatinnies, and having in a deed of August 22, 1749, granted to the Proprietaries only the land southeast.
The facts as to the great walk can be stated with full confidence. Either on the strength of the supposed con- veyance, or of some other agreement with Indians, or, in some cases, upon no title at all from them, settle- ments had been made up the Delaware, and in its neigh- bourhood, far beyond the limits of the genuine deed of 1682. Certain Lenni Lenape, among whom were Teeshakomen (Tishecunk, Tiscohan, or Captain John), living at Hockyondocquay on the Lehigh, some miles below Lehigh Gap, and Nootamis, living on the Dela- ware below Durham Creek, all of them independent of Sassoonan and the other Schuylkill Indians, complained of the whites' encroachments. To end such complaints, and to confirm and add to such settlements, partic- ularly as Durham iron-works had been started, and as land in the Minisink was wanted for the Founder's de- vise to William Penn Jr's. sons, there was need to ac- quire more territory, and to show a better title, than derived from the release, as far as the mountains below Lechay, by Sassoonan and others in 1718. For these purposes, the first step was to see how far the ancient writing and the apparently elastic dimensions set forth in it would answer. Soon after John Penn's arrival, the two Proprietaries met Teeshakomen and Nootamis at Durham, and renewed the league of friendship, while arranging for a meeting in the Spring of 1735 on the
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