History of Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, Part 3

Author: Smith, Robert Walter
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago : Waterman, Watkins
Number of Pages: 790

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From and after 1744, both the British and French governments claimed a large portion of the terri-

HISTORY OF ARMSTRONG COUNTY.

tory west of the Allegheny mountains, embracing portions of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia. In 1743, one Peter Chartier, a half-blood and trader, and a French spy, residing most of the time in Philadelphia, attempted to cause the Shawanee Indians on the Ohio, who had become hostile to the English and friendly to the French, to wage war against the Six Nations, who were in the main friendly to the English. With four hundred Shawanee warriors, he captured two provincial traders on the Allegheny, and, showing his com- mission as captain, granted by the French govern- ment, seized their goods, worth sixteen hundred pounds. Thus began open hostilities in the French and Indian war. The French authorities were watching, with a jealous eye, the settlements made by the Ohio Company and others on the disputed territory. The then governor of Canada, Gallison- iere, resolved to establish evidences of the claim and occupancy of the French to and of that disputed region. Hence he ordered one Louis Celeron, with a body of soldiers, to place plates of lead, whereon was inscribed the claim of France, in the mounds and at the mouths of the Ohio. Several of those plates were afterward found. On the one at the God-rock was this inscription, as translated from the French :

" In the year 1749, during the reign of Louis XV, king of France, we, Celoron, commandant of a detachment sent by the Marquis de la Gallisoniere, commander-in-chief of New France, to restore tran- quillity in some Indian villages of these districts, have buried this plate at the confluence of the Tch-a-da-koin,"-now called French Creek -- " this 29th of July, near the river Ohio, otherwise Beau- tiful River (Belle Riviere), as a monument of our having retaken possession of the said river Ohio and of those that fall into the same, and of all the land on both sides as far as the sources of said rivers, as well as of those which the preceding kings of France have enjoyed possession of and maintained, partly by force of arms, partly by treaties, espe- cially by those of Ryswick, Utrecht and Aix-la- Chapelle."

The Allegheny was then called Ohio, so that the claim mentioned in that inscription covered the tributaries of the Allegheny and the land in our county as well as elsewhere.

The English claim to the same territory was asserted thus : "That all the lands or countries westward from the Atlantic ocean to the South Sea, between 48° and 34° of north latitude, were expressly included in the grant of King James I, to divers of his subjects, so long since as the year 1606, and afterward confirmed in 1620 ; and under

this grant the colony of Virginia claims extent so far west as the South Sea, and the ancient colonies of Massachusetts Bay and Connecticut were, by their respective charters, made to extend to the said South Sea, so that not only the right to the sea-coast, but to all the inland countries, from sea to sea, has at all times been asserted by the Crown of England."

Thus it was that the territory of our county, in common with that of others, was disputed territory --- claimed by both French and English.

The French early and vigorously endeavored to fortify themselves along the Ohio and Allegheny rivers for the purpose of substantiating their claim and title to the contiguous territory.

From information derived by Washington while on his mission to Logstown and Venango, in 1753-4, and from prisoners who had escaped from the French and Indians, it became evident to the English that the French were making timely and vigorous efforts to establish a cordon of forts from Lake Erie to the Ohio, and thus hem in the English east of the Allegheny mountains. The conflict could be settled only by the wager of battle, to which neither party was eager to appeal, but each sought otherwise to fortify their claims, and gain over to their respective interests the favor, good will and aid of the Indians. The French appear to have been more adroit and successful in winning the Indians to their side of the contest than were the English. There was a misunderstanding between the Six Nations and the English as to the extent of territory embraced in the sale and pur- chase of the treaty made at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, June 22, 1744, which was produced at a meeting, or conference, held at Logstown, seventeen miles below Pittsburgh, June 9, 1752. When the sales, in pur- suance of that treaty, were urged as valid, the chiefs replied : " We have not heard of any sale west of the warriors' road, which runs at the foot of the Allegheny ridge." So intense was the feeling of the Indians respecting this matter, that William Fairfax said that in the conference with the Indians, held at Winchester, Virginia, in September, 1753, he had not dared to mention to them either the Lancaster or Logstown treaty.

The Shawanees had already gone over to the French, and the Delawares were just waiting for a favorable opportunity to follow them and wreak their vengeance on the English colonists for their instrumentality in forcing them to leave the forks of the Delaware-that is, the territory of North- ampton county between the Lehigh and Delaware rivers. When ordered off from their homes in the forks by the Six Nations, at the instigation of the

THE INDIANS.

colonists, they removed to Wyoming, carrying with them a keen sense of the wrongs which they conceived had been done them, among which was the famous walking purchase, or the Indian walk, a transaction which was said not to have been creditable to the proprietary government, and by which, it was alleged, the Indian title to the land in the forks was extinguished, and by which the Indians thought they were wrongfully overreached as to the quantity of land or extent of territory embraced in that sale and purchase. That was one of the prominent causes which incited the Dela- wares, Shawanees and Maumecs to become allies of the French in 1755 .*

THE INDIANS.

It is probable that the aboriginal inhabitants of the territory within the limits of this county be- longed mainly to the Lenni Lenape, who held that they were the original people and of western origin. The Delawares claimed that their ancestors lived, many hundred years ago, in the far distant wilds of the West, and were the progenitors of forty other tribes ; that after many years of emigration toward the rising sun, they reached the Mississippi river, where they met the Mengwe, who came from a very distant region and had reached that river higher up toward its source ; that they found a powerful nation east of the Mississippi, who were called Alligewi, and from whom originated the name of the Allegheny mountains ; that the Le- nape wished to settle near the Alligewi, which the latter refused, but allowed them to cross the river and proceed farther to the east ; that when the Al- ligewi discovered how multitudinous the Lenape were, they feared their numerical strength and slew the portion that had crossed the river, and threat- ened to destroy the rest if they should attempt to cross ; that the Lenape and Mengwe united their forces against the Allegewi, and conquered and drove them out of that part of the country ; that the Lenape and Mengwe lived together in peace and harmony for many years; that some of the

Lenape hunters crossed the Allegheny mountains, the Susquehanna and Delaware rivers, and ad- vanced to the Hudson, which they called the Mohi- cannituck river ; that on their return to their peo- ple they represented the country which they had discovered so far toward the rising sun to be with- out people, but abounding in fish, game, fowls and fruits ; that thus the Lenape were induced to emi- grate eastward along the Lenape-whittuck, the river of the Lenapes, also called Muck-er-isk-iskun, which the English named the Delaware, in honor of Lord de la Ware, who entered Delaware Bay in 1610 and was Governor of the Colony of Virginia from about that time until 1618. The Dutch and Swedes called it the South river to distinguish it from North river, which bears the name of Hudson.

That such was the tradition preserved by the Delawares is truthfully stated by Rev. John Heck- ewelder, a Moravian missionary, in his " Account of the History, Manners and Customs of the Indian Nations who once Inhabitated Pennsylvania and the Neighboring States," published, in 1819, under the auspices of the historical and literary commit- tee of the American Philosophical Society. The passing remark may here be made that Indian laws and historical events were not preserved on parch- ment, paper or in books, but by tradition they were handed down from one generation to another. William Rawle, in his able " Vindication of Heck- ewelder's History,"* pertinently says : "The ancient history of every part of Europe depends on such traditions, the probable truth of which is some- times supported by circumstances that are subse- quently authenticated. In the Lenapian history of the total extirpation of the Alligewi we see nothing inconsistent with that well-known ferocity of sav- age tribes which still unhappily continues to rage among them."

The Shawanees were driven out of Georgia and South Carolina, and came to the mouth of the Conestoga, within the present limits of Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, about 1677, and spread thence over what was afterward Cumberland county, along the west branch of the Susquehanna, in the Wy- oming valley, and thence to the Ohio. As early as, if not earlier than, 1719, Delaware and Shawanee Indians were settled on the Allegheny. About 1724, says Bancroft, the Delaware Indians, for the con- venience of game, emigrated from the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers to the branches of the Ohio; in 1728, the Shawanees gradually followed them, and they were soon met by Canadian traders, and Ioncaire, an adopted citizen of the Seneca

* A part of the evidence to the contrary was the statement of Nicholas Scull, Surveyor-General, made before the Provincial Coun- cil, Tuesday, January 25, 1757, in which he alleged that in September, 1737, he was present at the running of the line of the Indian pur- chase of those lands, and that he had reduced to writing what he remembered about it. His statement having been signed and affirmed by him before the Governor in council, it was duly entered. Hc affirmed that the day and a half's walk begun near Wrightstown, in Bucks county, and continued thence some distance beyond the Kit- tatinny mountains ; that he believed the whole distance walked did not exceed fifty-five statute miles; that Benjamin Eastburn, the then Surveyor-General, Timothy Smith, sheriff of Bucks county, and him- self, attended that walk from beginning to end ; that particular care was taken not to exceed eighteen hours; that he always thought and believed that walk to have been fairly performed, the walkers not having run or gone out of a walk at any time ; that he did not remember of any of the Indians then present making any complaint of unfair practice; and that Eastburn, he and others lodged the night after the walk was completed at the Indian town Poaeopokunk, where were Capt. Harrison, a noted man among the Indians, and many of the Delawares, none of whom did he remember as having made any complaint or ahown any uneasiness concerning that walk.

*Read at a meeting of the council of the llistorical Society of Pennsylvania, February 15, 1826.

HISTORY OF ARMSTRONG COUNTY.

tribe, used his power of intrigue to win them over to the French.

THE INDIAN TOWN OF KITTANNING.

The old Indian town of Kittanning was settled by the Delawares, prior to 1730 .* It subsequently be- came an important point. Shingas, king of the Delawares, on whom Washington called, in 1753, at his residence near McKee's Rock, in the vicinity of Pittsburgh, occasionally resided with Capt. Jacobs, at the Kittanning, on the left bank of the Allegheny, or, as it was then called, Ohio, which the Indians pronounced Oh-he-hu or Ho-he-hu, mean- ing beautiful or handsome, of which name the Sen- ecas are said to be very tenacious. In 1673, when Joliet and Marquette passed from Quebec, through the lakes, and down the Wisconsin to the Missis- sippi, there was no account of any white man visit- ing the head of the Ohio, that part of the stream below the mouth of the Wabash being then called Ouabache, or Wabash, and being so named on maps made before 1730. Heckewelder says : " Ohio, cor- rupted from Ohio-peek-hanne, signifying very deep and white stream, by its being covered all over with white caps." . It does not appear just when that part north of Pittsburgh received the name of Al- legheny,t which was derived from the Allegheny mountains. It is a general impression, so far as the writer has learned, that the meaning of Alle- gheny is clear or fair water. Benjamin Smith Barton, M. D., who had a very extensive knowledge of the aboriginal dialects, informed Rev. Timothy Alden, former President of Allegheny College, that Allegheny means " the great war path," which cor- responds with what the chiefs at the Logstown conference called " the warriors' road which ran at the foot of the Allegheny ridge." ( Vide infra, the sketch of the present Allegheny township.)

In consequence of the failures of the expeditions against Forts Niagara and Du Quesne, and espe- cially Braddock's terrible defeat in 1755, hundreds of miles of the frontier of Pennsylvania and Virginia were exposed to the ravages of the Indians. In the autumn of 1755, the inhabitants along the fron- tier of Pennsylvania were in constant peril from the attacks of scalping parties of Indians, who were

instigated to and assisted in their bloody attacks by the French. At a council held at Carlisle, Penn- sylvania, about the middle of January, 1756, at which Gov. Morris, James Hamilton, William Lo- gan, Richard Peters and Joseph Fox, commissioners, George Croghan and Conrad Weiser, interpreters, and Belt, Seneca George and other Indians were present, Mr. Croghan informed the governor and council " that he had sent a Delaware Indian, called Jo Hickman, to the Ohio for intelligence, who had returned to his house the day before he came away ; that he went to Kittanning, an Indian Delaware town on the Ohio" (now Allegheny), " forty miles above Fort Du Quesne, the residence of Shingas and Capt. Jacobs, where he found 140 men, chiefly Delawares and Shawanees, who had there with them above one hundred English prisoners, big and little, taken from Virginia and Pennsylvania. From the Kittanning Jo Hickman went to Logstown, where he found about one hundred Indians and thirty English prisoners ; that he returned to Kit- tanning, and there learned that ten Delawares had gone to the Susquehanna to persuade, as he supposed, those Indians to strike the English who might have been concerned in the mischief " then " lately done in Northampton." Mr. Croghan said he was well assured by accounts given by other Indians that the Delawares and Shawanees acted in this hostile measure by the advice and concur- rence of the Six Nations, and that such of them as lived in the Delaware towns went along with them and took part in their incursions."

King Shingas, who, Heckewelder says, was "a bloody warrior, cruel his treatment, relentless his fury, small in person, but in activity, courage and savage prowess unexcelled," heading a party of war- riors fell upon the settlements west of the Susque- hanna and committed the most cruel murders. To guard against such and other depredations a cordon of forts and blockhouses was erected along the Kittatinny hills, from the Delaware river to the Maryland line, east of the Susquehanna river. West of that river were Fort Louther, at Carlisle, Forts Morris and Franklin at Shippensburg, Fort Gran- ville, near Lewistown, Fort Shirley, at Shirleys- burg, on the Sugwick branch, Fort Littleton, near Bedford, and Fort Loudon, in what is now Franklin county. Still Indian depredations continued to be committed through the spring and summer of 1756. In July of that year Fort Granville was stormed, and a number of prisoners taken and transferred to Kittanning.

Mr. Morris informed the governor and council, August 2, 1756, that he had concerted an expedi- tion against Kittanning, to be conducted by Col.

* Jonah Davenport, an Indian trader, in his examination or affi- davit, taken before Lieut. Gov. Gordon, at Philadelphia, October 20, 1731, says : " Last spring was four years, as he remembers, a French Gentleman in appearance, with five or six Attendants, came down the River to a settlement of the Delaware Indians, called Kithan -. ning, with an Intention, as this Examit believes, to inquire into the number of English Traders in those parts, and to sound the minds of the Indians," etc. James Le Tort's examination, taken at the same time, gives the name of that French gentleman as M. Cavalier. A list of Delaware and other Indians on the Connumach and Kithenning rivers and elsewhere is attached to those examinations, in which is this item: "Kithenning River-Mostly Delawares. Fam. 50; men, 150. Dist. 50." The last probably means the distance from Fort Du Quesne.

f It was called hoth Ohio and Allegheny as early as 1748.

EXPEDITION AGAINST KITTANNING.

John Armstrong, who was to have under his com- mand the companies under Capt. Hamilton, Capt. Mercer, Capt. Ward, Capt. Potter, and besides to engage what volunteers he could. The affair was to be kept as secret as possible, and the officers and men were ordered to march to Fort Shirley and thence to set out on the expedition. Mr. Morris had given Col. Armstrong particular in- structions, which were entered in the orderly book. In pursuance thereof and agreeably to the plan concerted, Col. Armstrong had made the necessary preparations and had written to Mr. Morris a letter from Fort Shirley in which he gave an account of the capture of Fort Granville by the French and Indians, and stated that they intended to attack Fort Shirley with 400 men, and that Capt. Jacobs said, "I can take any fort that will catch fire, and I will make peace with the English when they learn me to make gunpowder."

EXPEDITION AGAINST KITTANNING.

Eight companies of soldiers, constituting the second battalion of the Pennsylvania regiment, under the command of Lieut. Col. John Armstrong,* were stationed at the forts on the west side of the Susquehanna. For the purpose of carrying out the expedition against Kittanning, planned as above stated, Col. Armstrong, with a part of the force assigned to him, consisting of 307 men, marched upon Fort Shirley, Monday, September 3, 1756, and joined his advanced party at Beaver Dam, near Frankstown, which they left on the 4th and advanced to within fifty miles of Kittanning on the the 6th, whence an officer, one of the pilots, and two soldiers were sent forward to reconnoiter the town. These men returned on the 7th and in- formed Col. Armstrong that the roads were entirely clear of the enemy, but it appeared from what else they said that they had not approached near enough to the town to learn its situation, the number of persons in it, or how it might be most advantage- ously attacked. The march was continued on the 8th with the intention of advancing as near as pos- sible to the town that night. A halt was, however, made about nine or ten o'clock on account of infor- mation received from one of the guides that he had seen a fire by the roadside a few perches from the front, at which were two or three Indians. The pilot returned again in a short time and reported that from the best observations he could make there were not more than three or four Indians at the fire. It was determined not to surround and

cut them off immediately, lest, if only one should escape, he might communicate their presence to his people in the town, and thus their well-laid plan of attack would be, in a measure at least, frustrated. Lieut. James Hogg, of Capt. Armstrong's company, with twelve men and the pilot who first discovered the fire, was ordered to remain, watch the enemy until the break of day, on the 9th, and then cut them off, if possible, at that point, which was about six miles from Kittanning. The tired horses, the blankets, and other baggage, were left there, and the rest of the force took a circuit off the road, so as not to be heard by the Indians at the fire, which route they found to be stony. That condition of the route and the fallen trees along the way greatly retarded their march. Still greater delay was caused by the ignorance of the pilots, who, it seems, knew neither the real situation of the town nor the paths leading to it.

After crossing hills and valleys, the front reached the Allegheny river shortly before the setting of the moon on the morning of the 9th, about a hundred rods below the main body of the town, or about that distance below Market street, at or near the present site of the poorhouse, on lot number 241, in modern Kittanning. They were guided thither by the beating of the drum and the whoop- ing of the Indians at their dances, rather than by the pilots. It was necessary for them to make the best possible use of the remaining moonlight, but in this they were interrupted for a few moments by the sudden and singular whistling of an Indian, about thirty feet to the front, at the foot of a corn- field, which was at first thought by Col. Armstrong to be a signal of their approach to the rest of the Indians. He was informed by a soldier by the name of Baker that it was the way a young Indian called his squaw after the dance. Silence was passed to the rear and they lay quiet until after the going down of the moon. A number of fires soon flashed up in various parts of the cornfield, which, Baker said, were kindled to keep off the gnats, and would soon go out. As the weather was warm that night, the Indians slept by the fires in the cornfield.

Three companies of Col. Armstrong's force had not, at daybreak on the 9th, passed over the last precipice. Their march of thirty miles had wearied them and most of them were asleep. Proper per- sons were dispatched to rouse them ; a suitable number, under several officers, were ordered to take the end of the hill at which they then lay, and to march along to the top of it at least one hundred perches, and so much farther as would carry them opposite the upper part, or at least the body of the town. Col. Armstrong, presuming that the Indian

* For personal sketches of Col. Armstrong, and other officers en- gaged in the expedition against Kittanning, the reader is referred to the note at the close of this chapter.

HISTORY OF ARMSTRONG COUNTY.

warriors were at the lower end of that hill, kept the larger portion of his men there, promising to post- pone the attack eighteen or twenty minutes, until the detachment along the hill should have time to advance to the point to which they had been ordered. They were somewhat unfortunate in making that advance. The time having elapsed, a simultaneous attack was made as expeditiously as possible, through and upon every part of the corn- field. A party was dispatched to the houses, when Capt. Jacobs and several other Indians, as the En- glish prisoners afterward stated, shouted the war- whoop and yelled : "The white men are come at last and we will have scalps enough," at the same time ordering their squaws and children to flee to the woods.

THE BATTLE.

Col. Armstrong's men rushed through and fired the cornfield, where they received several returns from the Indians in the field and from the opposite side of the river. A brisk fire commenced soon after among the houses, which was very reso- lutely returned from the house of Capt. Jacobs, which was situated on the north side of Market, a short distance above Mckean street, on Jacobs' Hill, in the rear of the site at the northern end of the stone wall in the garden, on which Dr. John Gilpin built, in 1834-35, that large two-story brick mansion now owned and occupied by Alexander Reynolds. Thither Col. Armstrong repaired and found that several of his men had been wounded, and some had been killed, from the port-holes of that house and other advantages which it afforded to the Indians within it. As the returning fire upon that house proved ineffectual, he ordered the adjoining houses to be fired, which was quickly done, the Indians seldom failing to wound or kill some of their assailants when they presented them- selves. Col. Armstrong, while moving about and giving the necessary orders, received a bullet-wound in his shoulder from Capt. Jacobs' house. It is stated in "Robinson's Narrative," that Col. Arm- strong said : "' Are there none of you that will set fire to these rascals that have wounded me and killed so many of us ?' John Furgeson, a soldier, swore he would. He went to a house covered with bark and took a strip of it which had fire on it, and rushed up to the cover of Jacobs' house and held it there till it had burned about a yard square. Then he ran and the Indians fired at him. The smoke blew about his legs and the shots missed him." That house contained the magazine, which for a time caused it to be observed, to see whether the Indians, knowing their peril, would escape from it. They, as we say nowadays, "held the

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History of Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, Part 3

Author: Smith, Robert Walter Publication date: 1883 Publisher: Chicago : Waterman, Watkins Number of Pages: 790

Author: Smith, Robert Walter
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago : Waterman, Watkins
Number of Pages: 790