History of Bradford County, Pennsylvania, with Illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 2

Author: Craft, David, 1832-1908; L.H. Everts & Co
Publication date: 1878
Publisher: Philadelphia : L. H. Everts
Number of Pages: 812

USA > Pennsylvania > Bradford County > History of Bradford County, Pennsylvania, with Illustrations and biographical sketches > Part 2

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" The vast tract of wilderness from the Mississippi to the Atlantic, and from the Carolinas to Hudson's bay, was di- vided between two great families of tribes, distinguished by a radical difference of language." These were called, re- spectively, Algonquins (original people), and Aquanoschioni (united people). The latter were more commonly known among the white people by the names Iroquois, Mengue, and Five Nations. At the period when the whites first became acquainted with this territory, the Iroquois proper extended through central New York from the Hudson river to the Genesee, and comprised five distinct nations confederated together, which, beginning on the east, were known as Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondugas, Cuyugas, and Senecas. West of them were the Ilurons, the Neutral Nation, and the Eries ; on the south were the Andastes, on the Susquehanna, and the Delawares on the river which bears their name; on the east the various Algonquin tribes which inhabited New England.

Of the Andustes, who as early as 1620 were the inhabi- tants of the Susquehanna valley, but comparatively little is known. They are spoken of by various writers as Andus- trs, Andastrucronnons, Andustaguez, Antastoui, Minquas, Susquehannocks, Conestogas, and Conessetugocs. "Galla- tin erroneously places the Andustes on the Allegheny, Ban- croft and others adopting the error. The research of Mr. Shea has shown their identity with the Susquehunnocks of the English and the Minquas of the Dutch."*

In 1750, a Cuyuga chieftain informed David Zeisberger that a strange tribe of Indians whom the Cuyugas called Tehotuchse (so spelled in German), but which were neither Iroquois nor Deluwares, formerly inhabited this valley, and were driven out by the Cuyugas. In a letter written by Captain Joseph Brant, the noted Indian warrior, to Colonel Timothy Pickering, relative to the Iroquois claim to the northern part of Pennsylvania, and dated at Niagara, De- cember 30, 1794, he says, " The whole Five Nations have an equal right one with another, the country having been obtained by their joint exertions in war with a powerful nation formerly living southward of Buffalo ereek, called Erics, and another nation then living at Tioga Point, so that by our successes all the country between that and the Mississippi became the joint property of the Five Natious. All other nations inhabiting this great tract of country were allowed to settle by the Five Nations." That the Andastes are referred to by both these there can hardly be a doubt.

This was one of the most populous and powerful of all the Algonquin tribes. Their villages were thickly planted from Tioga to Virginia. At Sheshequin and Wysox, at Wyalusing (Gohontato) and at Mehoopany (Onochsae), the names of their towns have been preserved. They appear to have been the most warlike of all the eastern nations, having carried their conquests over the tribes of New Jer- sey, Maryland, and Virginia. For more than three-fourths of a century they waged almost an unceasing war with the Iroquois, by which the whole valley of the Susquehanna " was stained with blood." The following paragraphs, from

Dr. Egle's History of Pennsylvania, give a full account of these conflicts :

" Prior to 1600, says the ' Relation de la Nouvelle France,' the Susquehannas and the Mohawks came into collision, and the former nearly exterminated their enemy in a war which lasted ten years. In 1608, Captain Smith, in ex- ploring the Chesapeake and its tributaries, met a party of these Sasquesahanocks, as he calls them, and he states that they were still at war with the Mohawks.

" They were friendly to the Dutch, who were exploring the mouth of the Delaware. When the Swedes came, in 1638, they renewed the friendly intercourse begun by the Dutch. Southward, also, they carried the terror of their arms, and from 1634 to 1644 they waged war on the Yuo- macoes, the Piscataways, and Patucents, and were so troublesome that, in 1642, Governor Calvert, by proclama- tion, declared them public enemies.

" When the Aurons, in 1647, began to sink under the fearful blows dealt by the Five Nations, the Susquehannas sent an enibassy to offer them aid against the common enemy. Nor was the offer one of little value, for the Sus- quehannas could put into the field one thousand three hun- dred warriors, trained to the use of fire-arms and European modes of war by three Swedish soldiers, whom they had obtained to instruct them." This is doubtless the era of the fortifications on Spanish Hill and at the mouth of Sugar creek. These fortifieations bear unmistakable evidence of having been constructed under the supervision of white people, and differ materially from the palisaded inelosures of Indian construction. The origin and objects of these defenses must always be in some measure matter of conjec- ture ; but all the traditions relating to Spanish Hill attribute the defenses to white men long before the settlement of the whites, and their object to afford resistance to the Iroquois ; and about this time the Andustes were waging war in good earnest with the Five Nations, in which the Cayugas were so hard pressed that some of them retreated across Lake Ontario into Canada, and the Senecas were kept in such alarm that they no longer ventured to carry their peltries to New York except in earavans guarded by an escort.

Later, the power of the Susquehannas seems to have been on the wane, and they to have abandoned their towns above Wyoming about 1650. They were so hard pressed by their enemies that the legislature of Maryland in 1661 authorized the governor to aid them with the provincial forees.

In the spring of 1662 about eight hundred Iroquois set out to capture a fort of the Andustes situated about fifty miles from the mouth of the Susquehanna. On reaching the fort it was found to be so well defended as to render an assault impracticable, when the Iroquois had recourse to stratagem. They sent a party of twenty-five men to settle a peace and obtain provisions for their return. The Sus- quehannas admitted them, built high scaffolds, visible from without, on which they tortured the Iroquois messengers to death in sight of their countrymen, who thereupon de- camped in miserable discomfiture, pursued by the victorious Andastes. The war between the Andastes and Iroquois at length degenerated into one of mutual inroads, in which the former, greatly reduced by pestilence, gradually melted away

* Parkman's " Jesuits," p. 46, note.

HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

before the superior numbers of their enemies, so that in 1672 they could muster only three hundred warriors.

" In 1675, according to the 'Relations Inédites' and Colden, the tribe was completely overthrown, but unfor- tunately we have no details whatever as to the forces which effected it,* or the tique and manner of their defeat. Too proud to submit as vassals of the Iroquois, and too weak to contend against theni, they forsook the Susquehanna, and took up a position on the western borders of Maryland, where for many years they kept up a terrible border war with the whites. A remnant of this valiant people eon- tinued to subsist in the central part of the State, under the name of Conestogas, for nearly a century after, when they were utterly destroyed by the Paxton Boys in 1763.

The Iroquois, who hield the rule over this Susquehanna valley for more than a century, were the only Indian nations who possessed anything approaching the forms of civil gov- ernment. Originally a single nation, they were composed of a number of elans or familics, each of which was distin- guished by its family badge or totem, and bearing the name of some animal. The line of descent was in the mother, and intermarriages between those wearing the same totemic badge was interdicted. In time the nation became divided into several parts, five of which occupied central New York, but the national tie had become very weak, if it had not become entirely dissolved. In order to defend themselves against their common enemies, as well as to carry on their vast conquests, they united in a league or confederation, whose common interests were committed to a great eouneil composed of fifty sachems or hereditary chieftains, of whom the Mohawks were represented by nine, the Oneidas nine, the Onondagas fourteen, the Cayugas ten, and the Senecas eight. Each member of this council enjoyed equal rights and suffrage, and the decisions of the body were the supreme law of the confederaey.

The Tuscaroras, who were of the same generie stock as the New York Iroquois, and whose ancient seats were on the Neuse and Tar rivers, from which they were driven on account of their implacable enmity to the white settlers, were received in 1712 as the sixth nation of the confeder- acy, after which the league took the title of the Six Nations. The Tuscaroras, however, were not represented by sachems of their own in the Great Council, nor had they assigned them any specific bounds in the territory.

In case of a general war two supreme military chieftains, one of whom was a Mohawk, directed the campaign. Usually, however, the chiefs assumed command with much less formality. At a feast or war-dance some brave, who had shown daring and won success in previous encounters, recounted the grievances of his nation, his own deeds of valor, and invited as many as wished to avenge the wrongs of their people to follow him on the war-path. If the ex- pedition was successful the leader took his place by common consent among the war-chiefs of his nation.

By virtue of their superior civil and military organiza- tion, the Iroquois soon became the dominant power among the aborigines, and, after the conquest of the Andastes, car- ried their arms in triumph on the south to the Gulf and ou

the west to the Mississippi. Tioga, present Athens, was made the southern entrance to the confederacy, at which a sachem was stationed, without whose consent no one, neither Indian nor white man, was allowed to enter the territory of the Iroquois. At Shamokin, present Sunbury, the Great Council had a viceroy, a Cayuga sachem, who ruled their dependencies in the south.

Along the Delaware river, and extending across New Jersey, were the Lenni Lenape, or Delawares, divided into three tribes,-the Turtles or Unamis on the south, the Turkeys or Unalachtgos in the centre, and the Wolves or Minsis on the north. The latter had their villages in the Minisink country, on the head-waters of the Delaware, and were generally called by the English Monseys. By con- quest, as was elaimed by the Iroquois, by treachery, as was alleged by the Delawares, the former had reduced the lat- ter to the condition of vassals, deprived them of the right of warriors, and compelled them to bear the taunt and as- sume the garb of women. They were allowed neither to sell land, engage in war, nor make treaties, unless with the consent of their domineering masters. It was owing quite as much to this condition of complete subjugation of his Indian neighbors, as to the peaceable character of his Quaker policy, that the province of Penn was so long ex- empted from the bloody wars and massacres which form so dark a page of our colonial history.

The Indian instinctively withdraws from the presence of civilization. This peculiarity of Indian character com- pletely frustrated the benevolent plan of William Penn, in which he designed that his white and red brethren should dwell together in the same community, and be governed by the same laws. It was found to be equally necessary in the province as it had been in other colonies, that the Indian must retire beyond the white settlements, to whose laws and customs he could not conform, and whose restraints he would not endure. As the Iroquois from time to time sold the land of their dependencies to the whites, they opened the valley of the Susquehanna as an asylum to which the people, whom they had deprived of their ancestral homes, and over whom they exercised the rights of protection as well as command, might resort. By this policy families of different nationalities were brought into the same village, and not unfrequently were occupants of the same wigwam, so that it was no uneommon thing to find Nanticokes, Mo- hicans, Monseys, and Wampanoags living together without any tribal distinction whatever. Tioga, or as it is more frequently written in Pennsylvania records, Diahoga, from its important situation in the Iroquois territory, was prob- ably occupied as a town immediately after its conquest ; but from there to Shamokin the country was almost entirely un- oeeupied for a hundred years, when it was colonized by the refugees whose possessions had been sold to the whites.

The Iroquois and Delawares each have a tradition of an early eastward emigration from regions west of the Missis- sippi to the places where they were found by the Europeans. The period of our later Indian history finds that wave re- turning towards the setting sun. It is, therefore, a period of commotion among tribes easily excited, of removal and change among a people who, in the most quiet times, abandoned the places of their habitation for the most trivial

# By the Five Nations, without doubt.

HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

reasons. Mohicans and Wampanoags from southeastern New York aud from New England, Delawares from New Jer- sey and eastern Pennsylvania, Nanticokes, Tuscaroras, and Shawanees from the south, pushed from their ancient homes by the rapacity of the white man, were seeking new homes and fresh hunting-grounds, where they would henceforth be free from encroachment. To the Iroquois the native fugi- tives looked for defense from the grasping policy of the whites, and for counsel and permission as to where they should fix their future seats. It happened, therefore, that during this period this tide of western emigration was push- ing up both branches of the Susquehanna, in order to pour itself upon the great plains between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi, only to be forced still farther west by the advancing tide of civilization.

Of the three great topics of Indian history,-the location of their villages, their wars, and their migrations, -the last is by far the most important, so far as it relates to our im- mediate locality during the period of its later history, the materials for which are very meagre, being contained in the journals of travelers and messengers in the interests of the Moravian church or of the government of Pennsylva- nia, in their passage through the country, beginning with that of Conrad Weiser, in 1737, a period comparatively early in our Pennsylvania history, it being only forty-five years after the landing of William Penn, and five years be- fore the founding of Bethlehem, and continuing for about thirty-five years.

Near the upper and lower confines of our county were points of great historic interest in relation to the aborigines. In the spring of 1750, Cammerhoff, a bishop in the Moravian church, in company with the intrepid Zeisberger, passed up the Susquehanna from Wyoming to Tioga, en route for Onon- daga in the State of New York, in order to negotiate with the Great Council for the establishment of a mission among the Iroquois. They were accompanied by a Cuyuga chief and his family. When the party reached the vicinity of Wya- lusing, the remains of an old town were still visible, which the Cayuga said was called "Go-hon-to-to," inhabited by a tribe speaking a strange language, neither Delawares nor Iroquois, called by the latter " Te-ho-tach-se" ( Andastes),- upon whom the Five Nations made war and wholly exter- minated them, the greater part being slain, a few only being taken captive and adopted by some of the families of the Cuyugas ; that this occurred " before the Indians had rifles, when they fought with bows and arrows," and must have been not later than 1650,* which may be taken as the be- ginning of the authentic history of the county. This town was situated on the flats, about a mile below the mouth of the Wyalusing creek, on the farms now owned by G. H. Welles and J. B. Stalford.

For nearly a century this "blood-stained field" seems to have been abandoned as a habitation, although, situated as it was at the junction of two important trails, it may occasionally have been the temporary residence of wandering parties. In 1752; Papunhank, a Monsey chief of some note, from the

Minisink country, with a number of families, came to Wya- lusing, and built a new town a little below the site of the old Gohontoto. During the French war the town was probably abandoned. In the journalt of Moses Tatemy and Isaac Hill, who were sent, June, 1758, by the Pennsylvania gov- ernment to the Six Nations and their dependencies, inviting them to a council it was proposed to hold at Easton the following autumn, they speak of breakfasting with " Pa- poonhank" on their return, before reaching Diahoga, from which it would appear that during the war he had removed higher up the Susquehanna, probably to the vicinity of Oswego.

In 1760 this village is described as consisting of " about twenty houses full of people, very good land, and good Indian buildings, all new." Three years afterwards, this town, which was called McChiwihilusing (or Wyaloo- sing), had increased to a village " of about forty houses, mostly compact together, some about thirty feet long and eighteen feet wide, some bigger, some less, mostly built of split planks, one end set in the ground and the other pinned to a plate, on which lay rafters covered with bark."§ On the breaking out of the Pontiac war, in 1763, Papunhank, with twenty-one of his followers, not wishing to take part in the war, joined the Moravian Indians assembled about Bethlehem, and afterwards went with them to Philadel- phia, where they were sheltered in government barracks until the close of the war. The remainder of the Indians at Wyalusing, as most of the others of the Algonquin tribes in this part of the country, sympathized with the hostile party, and many of them took up arms in its in- terest.|| The result was, that all of their settlements in the county, below Tioga, were abandoned.

There was an Indian burial-ground near the present Sugar Run ferry. At this point the left bank of the river formerly extended some twenty rods farther into the stream than it now does. As these banks have from time to time been washed away by the river freshets, great numbers of human bones and pieces of pottery have been laid bare. In one instance, two complete skeletons and an earthen pot containing the bones of a small animal were thus exposed. The indications are that this burial-place was an extensive one, and, judging from the mortality of white settlements, it would be inferred that the ancient village was large and populous. Farther up the river, in the neighborhood of the present Frenchtown station, on the Pennsylvania and New York railroad, was a meadow of about one hundred and fifty acres, called " Meschaschgunk," but there is no account of its ever having been inhabited. On the Wysau- kin plains a party of Shawanese stopped for a time, built their huts, and planted their corn, but the number of the party, the time of their settlement or of their removal, is unknown. The settlement was located nearly opposite the mouth of the Towanda creek. This plain, stretching sev- eral miles along the river, was " covered with grass as high as a man's head," and redolent with the perfume of the wild rose. As Cammerhoff and Zeisberger encamped here on the evening of the 7th of June, after a fatiguing journey

# The Dutch at Fort Orange had supplied the Mohawks with four hundred guns previous to 1641, so that the date mentioned in the text cannot be far ont of the way .- Jesnits in North America, p. 212.

+ Pennsylvania Archives, iii. 736.

# Pennsylvania Archives, iii. 507.

¿ Journal of John Woolman, p. 165.

| Pontiac Conspiracy, p. 614.

HISTORY OF BRADFORD COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

of fifteen miles up the rapid current of the Susquehanna, swollen by recent rains, they named the spot the " Garden of Roses." At this time it, as the whole valley from Mehoopany to Tioga, was deserted of inhabitants. On the evening of Sept. 30, 1767, Zeisberger spent the night here in an empty Delaware Indian hut, but adds, " no one lives here now." He calls the place the " Wisach."

The Nanticokes, " tide-water people," when first known by the whites had their seats on the eastern shore of Mary- land. In August, 1748, almost the entire nation aban- doned its ancestral home, moved northward, following the course of the Susquehanna, planted in part below and at Wyoming, in part above Wyalusing, principally at Shamunk (Chemung) and Zeninge (Chenango). In the course of this migration, a party of them stopped for a time on the Towanda flats. They had the repulsive custom, on stated occasions, of exhuming their dead, wherever buried, scrap- ing the putrid flesh from their bones, and burying the skeletons, with prescribed rites, at one of their national cemeteries. One of these burial-places was at Towanda, near the river, and a short distance below the Barclay depot. Here, as at Wyalusing, the water has worn away the banks, laying bare great numbers of bones and numer- ous relics which the Indians were accustomed to bury with their dead. Many of these relics, some of which bear evi- dence of intercourse with white people, were collected by the late Hon. C. L. Ward, of Towanda, and remain in his cabinet of Indian curiosities .*

In 1762, about thirteen or fourteen families, relatives of Nathaniel and Anthony, two Moravian Christian Indians residing a short distance below Tunkhannock, in Wyoming county, seceding from the Wyalusing village, were settled here, but the settlement disappeared when the Pontiae war broke out in the following year.

Osculni was a very ancient Indian town, situated just above the mouth of Sugar creek, on the farm now owned by John Biles and the one lately owned by Judge Elwell, about opposite the lower end of Bald Eagle island. Conrad Weiser, the celebrated Indian agent and provincial inter- preter, visited this place March 28, 1737, on his way to a council with the Six Nations at Onondaga. He describes the settlement at that time as consisting of a few hungry people who were subsisting chiefly on the juice of the sugar- trees. The only food he could procure here was a little weak soup made of corn-meal.

In 1745, on the 11th of June, Spangenburg and Zeis- berger passed this place on their journey to the capital of the Iroquois confederacy, a journey for both political and religious purposes. They were accompanied by Weiser, Shikellimy, a Cayuga sachem, and the Iroquois viceroy at Shamokin, one of his sons, and Andrew Montour. Their object was to induce the Six Nations to conclude a peace with the Catawbas, to make satisfaction for murders perpe- trated by the Shawanese, and to obtain permission for the Christian Indians to begin a settlement at Wyoming.

At this time but few Indians were observed at the settle- ment; but they found many pictured trees about this place, it being on the great war-path. War parties were, in this

way, accustomed to record the results of their campaigns. The bark was peeled off one side of a tree, and on this were painted certain characters, by which they understood from what tribe and of how many the war-party consisted, against what tribe they had fought, how many sealps and prisoners they had taken, and how many men they had lost. In 1750 this town had been abandoned, and there is no record of its again having been inhabited previous to the Revolu- tionary war.

Below the town, and about one-fourth of a mile above the creek, when the North Branch canal was excavated, a large burying-ground was discovered, extending from fifteen to twenty rods along the line of the canal. This bore marks of great age. In several instances not a bone had survived the ravages of decay ; in others only the larger oues were found. These, as they were exposed by the excavation, were gathered up and re-buried in the orchard adjoining. The loose soil in which they were deposited is not as well adapted to preserve such remains as the more compact soil at the burying places of Wyalusing and Towanda.

On the north side of Cash's creek and near its mouth, in the village of Ulster, was the town of Schechschequanink. The chief Acheobund and a few families, chiefly Monseys, planted here about the close of the Pontiac war. They were frequent visitors at Wyalusing, and the Moravian missionaries often visited them ; and at the beginning of the year 1769 a mission was established here; therefore further account of it is now omitted. A little above and on the opposite or Sheshequin side of the river are evidences of the existence of an old town, doubtless of the Andastes, as all the marks point to about the same age as those of the early town at Wyalusing. Here too the excavations made by the river have disclosed a very extensive burial-place. Scattered along above this have been found great quantities of arrow-heads, which have led to the surmise that on this plain was fought one of the fierce battles between the An- dastes and the Iroquois.

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History of Bradford County, Pennsylvania, with Illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 2

Author: Craft, David, 1832-1908; L.H. Everts & Co Publication date: 1878 Publisher: Philadelphia : L. H. Everts Number of Pages: 812

Author: Craft, David, 1832-1908; L.H. Everts & Co
Publication date: 1878
Publisher: Philadelphia : L. H. Everts
Number of Pages: 812