USA > Pennsylvania > Greene County > History of Greene County, Pennsylvania > Part 17
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The Shawnees were the most resolute in their emnity and were the last to yield. Boquet was ready to move against them; but on the 12th of November they met the Colonel in conference and said, Red Hawk speaking: "One year and a half ago we made peace with you at Fort Pitt, which was soon after broken; but that was neither your fault nor ours; but the whole blame is to be laid to the Ottawas (Pontiac's tribe), who are a foolish people, and are the cause of this war. When we now saw you coming this road, you advanced towards us with a tomahawk in your hand, but we, your younger brothers, take it out of your hand and send it up to God to dispose of it as he pleases, by which means we hope never to see it any more. And now, bretliren, we beg leave that you, who are warriors, will take hold of this chain of friendship and receive it from us, who are always warriors, and let us think no more of war, but to take pity on our old men, women and children."
Boquet received the captives whom they brought, but sternly reminded them of their long holding back and tardiness in bringing in the prisoners. He demanded the rest of the captives, and that six of their chiefs should be delivered into his hands as
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hostages. When these terms had been agreed to he said: " I came here determined to strike you, with a tomahawk in my hand; but since you have submitted, it shall not fall upon your heads. I will let it drop, and it shall no more be seen. I bury the bones of all the people who have fallen in this war, and cover the place with leaves so that it shall no more be perceived."
The long captivity of many of those who were brought in had effaced from their recollection all memory of their former relatives and friends, and they preferred to remain with the savages, having come now to know no other way of life. The savages religiously observed their promises, bringing in all their captives even to the children who had been born to the women during their cap- tivity. So wedded were many of the captives to the Indians that the Shawnees were obliged to bind many of them in order to bring them in. Some, after being delivered up, escaped and returned to their life in the woods. The Indians parted with their adopted families not without many tears. Many affecting scenes transpired when the captives were brought, and those who had lost friends and relatives recognized their own after long separation. The children who had been carried away in tender years and had grown up in savage life, knowing no other, could not recognize their own parents and timidly approached them. The Shawnees chief gave those who had recovered children or friends some good advice: ". Father, we have brought your flesh and blood to you; they have all been united to us by adoption, and although we now deliver them up to you, we will always look upon them as our relations, whenever the Great Spirit is pleased that we may visit them. We have taken as much care of them as if they were our own flesh and blood. They are now become unacquainted with your customs and manners, and therefore we request you will use them tenderly and kindly, which will induce them to live contentedly with you."
Many of the Indians, who had given up captives whom they loved, followed the army back, that they might be with them as long as possible, bringing them corn, skins, horses, and articles which the captives had regarded as their own, hunting and bringing in game for them. A young Mingo had loved a young Virginia woman and made her his wife. In defiance of the dangers to life which he sub- mitted himself to in going among the exasperated settlers, he per- sisted in following her back.
"A number of the restored prisoners were brought to Carlisle, and Colonel Boquet advertised for those who had lost children to come to this place and look for them. Among those that came was a German woman, a native of Rentlingen, in Wittemberg, Germany, who with her husband had emigrated to America prior to the French .
war, and settled in Lancaster County, Tulpehocken, where two of her
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daughters, Barbara and Regina, were abducted by the Indians. The mother was now unable to designate her children, even if they should be among the number of the recaptured. With her brother, the dis- tressed, aged woman lamented to Colonel Boquet her hopeless case, telling him how she used, years ago, to sing to her little daughters, hymns of which they were fond. The Colonel requested her to sing one of the hymns, which she did in these words:
Allein, und doch nicht ganz alleine Bin ich in meiner Einsamkeit; Dann wann ich gleich verlassen scheine, Vertreibt mir Jesus selbst die zeit : Ich bin bei ihm, und er bei mir, So kommt mir gar nichts einsam für, Alone, yet not alone am I, Though in this solitude so drear; I feel my Savior always nigh, He comes, my dreary hours to cheer- I'm with him and he with me Thus, I cannot solitary be -
And Regina, the only daughter present, rushed into the arms of the mother. Barbara, the other daughter, was never restored."
Though Pontiac still persisted in his hostility in the Detroit country, yet he could have no prospect of success. The French had held out in their hostility to the English even after the treaty of Paris had been concluded, and this enmity was especially persevered in by the more lawless and revengeful, yet the fruitlessness of this course was becoming day by day more apparent. Official notice, by order of the French court, was given of relinquishment of all power in Canada. De Neyon, the commandant at Fort Charters, " sent belts," says Baneroft, " and peace pipes, to all parts of the continent. exhorting the many nations of savages to bury the hatchet, and take the English by the hand for they would never see him more. * * * The courier who took the belt to the north offered peace to all the tribes wherever he passed; and to Detroit, where he arrived on the last day of October, 1764, he bore a letter of the nature of a proclamation, inform- ing the inhabitants of the cession of Canada to England; another ad- dressed to twenty-five nations by name, to all the Red Men, and par- tienlarly to Pontiac, chief of the Ottawas; a third to the commander, expressing a readiness to surrender to the English all the forts on the Ohio, and east of the Mississippi. The next morning Pontiac sent to Gladwin, that he accepted the peace which his father, the French, had sent him, and desired all that had passed might be forgot on both sides."
Thus ended the conspiracy of Pontiac, a warrior unexcelled by any of his raee for vigor of intellect and dauntless courage. His end was ignoble. An English trader hired a Peoria Indian for a
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barrel of rum to murder him. The place of his death was Cahokia, a small village a little below St. Louis. He had been a chief leader in the army of the French in the battle with Braddock, at Mononga- hela, and he was held in high repute by the French General Mont- calm, and at the time of his death, Pontiac was dressed in a French uniform presented to him by that commander.
CHAPTER XII.
FIRST SETTLERS-LANDS MUST BE ACQUIRED OF INDIANS - KING'S PROCLAMATION- LANDS WEST OF THE ALLEGHANIES - " FAIR PLAY " COURT-TWO ROADS LEADING WEST -- PROCLAMATION OF GOVERNOR PENN -- LITTLE HEED TO THEM-SACHEMS COMPLAIN -SETTLERS PLACATE THE LOCAL TRIBES BY KINDNESS --- GAGE TO PENN AND REPLY-LAW PASSED GIVING THE SETTLERS TO DEATH WHO Do NOT MOVE OFF-NOTICE GIVEN-INDIANS IN- TERFERE-SETTLERS WILLING TO REMOVE THOUGH ENCOURAGED To REMAIN -- POSTSCRIPT TO REPORT -- NAMES OF SETTLERS-IN- DIAN CONFERENCE AT FORT PITT-MURDER OF INDIANS -- SAT- ISFIED BY PRESENTS-INDIANS AGREE TO WARN OFF THE SET- TLERS-FINALLY DECLINE - REASONS-PLAN TO SECURE THE REMOVAL BY INDIANS IN THE INTEREST OF PHILADELPHIA SPECU- LATORS-HILLSBOROUGH ATTEMPTS TO DESTROY VIRGINIA CLAIM -EAGERNESS TO SECURE BLOCKS OF THESE WESTERN LANDS BY SPECULATORS-GREAT GATHERING AT FORT STANWIX -- TREATY MADE-LANDS ACQUIRED-PENNSYLVANIA LAND OFFICE OPENED -RUSH OF APPLICANTS -CASE OF HENRY TAYLOR --- TESTI- MONY-DISHONEST CLAIMANTS.
H ITHERTO no permanent settlements had been made in the limits of what is now known as Greene County. Traders had for some years previous passed through all this section of country, and had tarrying posts, where the natives were met and bartered with for valuable skins and furs, furnishing them in return with traps, axes, knives, guns and ammunition. But no perma- nent settlements, in which families had come and taken up the land they proposed to reclaim, and erected hints for shelter and a home, had been attempted. Veech, in his Monongahela of Old, states that the Brown's, Wendell and his sons, Mannus and Adam, were among
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the earliest thus to come. They came in 1750, or perhaps a little earlier, and settled in Jacob's Creek valley in what is now Fayette County. Early in the '50's, Christopher Gist, whom we have pre- viously mentioned, planted himself in the valley east of the Monon- gahela, and others followed into these pleasant regions. Though we have no definite information respecting the number of settlers up to this time, yet there must have been a considerable population gathered in during the period from 1760 to '70; for Mason and Dixon record in their field notes under date of September 30, 1767. " Sent to Redstone for more hands."
The colonial governments nominally held that settlers had no right to occupy any lands that had not been formally purchased of the Indians, and the purchase been confirmed by treaty stipulations. None of the territory west of the Alleghany Mountains had been thus secured previous to 1768, though the Ohio company, which had beeen formed in Virginia in 1748, had stipulated for the settlement of 100 families within seven years. A treaty had been held at Lancaster, as before noted, on the 21st of June, 1744, at which representatives of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia were pres- ent, and a vast tract west of the mountains was purchased and paid for in goods and gold. But the Indians who dwelt upon these lands repudiated the purchase, as did the Six Nations, and indeed the British government subsequently. But the Ohio Company pro- ceeded to send settlers on the strength of this purchase, as did the government of Pennsylvania. However, when the seven years' war broke ont in 1756, all settlements in this western country were abandoned. During the pendency of the operations under Colonel Boquet against the Indians in the Pontiac war, the King of Great Britain had issued his proclamation, in the hope of pacifying the Indians, forbidding settlements in these words: "Whereas, it is just and reasonable, and essential to our interest, and the security of our colonies, that the several nations or tribes of Indians with whom we are connected, and who live under our protection, should not be molested or disturbed in the possession of such parts of our dominions and territories as, not having been ceded to, or purchased by us, are reserved to them, or any of them, as their hunting grounds; we do, therefore, with the advice of our privy council, declare it to be
our royal will and pleasure * * that no Governor or Com-
mander-in-chief of our other colonies or plantations in America, do presume for the present, and until our further pleasure be known, to grant warrants of survey, or pass patents for any lands beyond the heads or sources of any of the rivers which fall into the Atlantic Ocean from the west or northwest, or upon any lands whatever, which never having been eeded to, or purchased by us, are reserved to the said Indians * and we do hereby strictly forbid, on
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pain of our displeasure, all our loving subjects from making any purchases or settlements whatever or taking possession of any of the lands above reserved, withont our special leave and license for that purpose first obtained. And we do further strictly enjoin and re- quire all persons whatever, who have either wilfully or inadvertently seated themselves upon any lands within the countries above de- scribed, or upon any other lands ** * ** which are still reserved to the said Indians, forthwith to remove themselves from such settlements."
It will be seen by this royal proclamation, that all lands west of the sources of the rivers falling into the Atlantic Ocean were with- held from settlement, as not having been legally purchased of the Indians, and settlers who had taken lands there were summoned to vacate them. But the settlers paid little heed to this proclamation, and when the peace secured by Colonel Boquet was declared, in 1764, hardy settlers hastened back to the tracts which they had previously selected, and many more followed in their footsteps. As they could claim no protection from the government, entering upon their lands in direct violation of the royal proclamation, they be- came a law unto themselves. In a note to Smith's laws, Vol. II, he says: " In the meantime, in violation of all law, a set of hardy adventurers had from time to time seated themselves upon this doubtful territory. They made improvements, and formed a very considerable population. It is true so far as regards the rights to real property, they were not under the protection of the laws of the country; and were we to adopt the visionary theory of some philos- ophers, who have drawn their arguments from a supposed state of nature, we might be led to believe that the state of these people, would have been a state of continual warfare, and that in contests for property the weakest must give way to the strongest. To pre- vent the consequences, real or supposed, of this state of things, they formed a mutual compact among themselves. They annually elected a tribunal, in rotation of three of their settlers, whom they called Fair-play-men, who were to decide all controversies and set- tle disputed boundaries. From their decision there was no appeal. There could be no resistance. The decree was enforced by the whole body, who started up in mass, at the mandate of the court and execution and eviction were as sudden and irresistible as the judg- ment. Every new comer was obliged to apply to this powerful tri- bunal, and upon his solemn engagement to submit in all respects to the law of the land, he was permitted to take possession of some vacant spot. . Their decrees were however just; and when their set- tlements were recognized by law and " Fair-play" had ceased, their decisions were received in evidence and confirmed by judgments of courts." The "Fair-play " dominions were embraced in the purchase
Moss
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which was made in 1768, of which the territory of Greene formed a part.
There were two roads leading through the rugged ranges of the Alleghany Mountains, which led from the settlements on the Delaware and the James to the country of the Monongahela; that opened by Wills' Creek (Cumberland) the Great Meadows, and Red- stone (Brownsville) for the passage of Braddock's army, which be- came substantially the route of the national road of Jefferson's time, and that by Bedford, Ligonier and Royalhanna, opened for the pas- sage of the army of General Forbes. Strictly, the English armies according to the royal proclamation above quoted. except the ever ready one of military necessity, had no right to cut these roads and march armies over them. Indeed, the Ohio Company, which claimed its authority from the crown, was acting in contravention to that proclamation, though they held that the treaty which their agents had concluded with the Indians, was their warrant. "During the summer of 1760," says Albach, "General Monkton, by a treaty at Fort Pitt, obtained leave to build posts within the wild lands, each post having ground enough about it to raise corn and vegetables for the use of the garrison. Nor were the settlements of the Ohio Company and the forts the only inroads upon the hunting grounds of the savages. In 1757, by the books of the secretary of Virginia, three millions of acres had been granted west of the mountains. Indeed, in 1758, that State attempted by law to encourage settle- ments in the West."
So disastrous had been the wars with the Indians, and so bitter their hatred of the settlers, that government exercised care in pre- venting encroachments and in removing intruders upon unacquired territory. Governor Penn, in September, 1766, issued his proclama- tion warning " all his majesty's subjects of this or any other province or colony from making any settlements, or taking any possession of lands, by marking trees or otherwise, beyond the limits of the last Indian purchase, that of 1758, within this province, upon pain of the severest penalties of the law, and of being excluded from the privilege of securing such settlements should the lands where they shall be made be hereafter purchased of the Indians." A little earlier, in June of this year, Captain Mackay, with a squadron of English regu- lars was sent out from Fort Pitt to Redstone, to order the settlers away. Governor Farquier, of Virginia, issued a proclamation of a tenor similar to that of Governor Penn.
But notwithstanding the loud words of royal and governor's proclamations, and the presence of the king's troops, it is probable that little heed was given to these commands by the hardy pioneers who had ventured forth in small parties and pressed into this beau- tiful and fruitful country, where they could get the best lands by
10
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" squatting" on them, and driving a few stakes. They made fast friends of the Indians, whom they casually met, by gifts and kind- nesses. But the great war Sachems looked with a jealous eye upon these encroachments, and made loud complaints to the colonial au- thorities. So threatening had these protests become near the close of 1767, that General Gage, who had succeeded General Amherst in the command of the royal forces in America, wrote to Governor Penn, that Sir William Johnson, who was the most trusted medium between the English and the Indians, to whom the latter were ac- enstomed freely to unbosom themselves, had advised him that there was danger of an immediate rupture, the chief ground of complaint being " the obstinacy of the people who persist to settle on their lands."
In his reply, Governor Penn very judieionsly and candidly ob- serves: " With respect to the inefficiency of the laws to secure the Indians in their persons and properties, I would beg leave to observe that the remote situation of their country, and the dispersed and vagrant manner in which the people live, will generally render the best laws that can be framed for those ends in a great measure inef- fectual. The civil officers, whose business it is to see that they are duly enforced, cannot exert their authority in so distant and extensive a wilderness. In the execution thereof, of the present interesting mat- ter, I am persuaded that, notwithstanding, all the Legislature can do, I shall find it necessary to apply the military aid, which you have so readily offered me in support of the civil power. Yet I fear that while the severity of the weather in the winter season continues, it will be found extremely difficult, if not impracticable, to oblige these lawless people to abandon their present habitations, and to remove with their families and effects into the interior part of the country, and I am of the opinion that it would be unadvisable to make any attempt of that kind before spring."
At the opening of the legislative session of 1768, the Governor called attention to these irregularities, and called upon the Assembly to pass such a law as will effectually remedy these provocations, and the first law of the session was one providing that if any person settled upon lands not purchased of the Indians by the propri- etaries, shall refuse to remove for the space of thirty days after having been requested so to do, or if any person shall remove and then return, or shall settle on such lands after the notice of the pro- visions of this act have been duly proclaimed, any such persons on being duly convicted shall be put to death without benefit of clergy.
This statute having been duly enacted, it was printed with a pro- clamation of the Governor, and a committee consisting of John Steel, John Allison, Christopher Lemes and James Potter, were dispatched
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to the Monongahela country to distribute these documents and give the necessary notice.
This embassage was faithfully performed. the settlers being called together and the law and the message of the Governor being read to them, and the occasion of the action. Upon their return they made a report of their proceedings in which they say: "We arrived at the settlement on Redstone on the twenty-third day of March. The people having heard of our coming had appointed a meeting among themselves, on the twenty-fourth, to consult what measures they should take. We took the advantage of this meeting, read the act of assembly and proclamation, explaining the law, and giving the reason of it as well as we could, and used our endeavors to persuade them to comply, alleging to them that it was the most probable method, to entitle them to favor with the honorable proprietaries when the land was purchased. After lamenting their distressed condition, they told us the people were not fully collected; but as they expected, all would attend on the Sabbath following, then they would give us answer. They, however, affirmed that the Indians were very peaceable, and seemed sorry they were to be removed; and said they apprehended the English intended to make war upon the Indians, as they were moving off their people from their neigh- borhood. We labored to persuade them that they were imposed on by a few straggling Indians, that Sir William Johnson, who had in- formed our government, must be better acquainted with the mind of the Six Nations, and that they were displeased with the white people settling on their unpurchased lands. On the Sabbath a con- siderable number attended, and most of them told us they were resolved to move off, and would petition your honor for preference in obtaining their improvements when a purchase was made."
" While we were conversing, we were informed that a number of Indians had come to Indian Peters! We, judging it might be sub- servient to our main design that the Indians should be present while we were advising the people to obey the law, sent for them. They came, and after sermon delivered a speech, with a string of wam- pum to be transmitted to your Honor. The speech was: ' Ye are come, sent by the great men to tell these people to go away from the land, which you say is ours; and we are sent by onr great men, and are glad we have met here this day. We tell you the white people must stop, and we stop them till the treaty, and when George Croghan and our great men will talk together we will tell them what to do! * * After this the people were more con- firmed that there was no danger of war. They dropped the design of petitioning, and said they would wait the issue of the treaty. Some, however, declared they would move off."
By a similar manner of procedure, the settlers on Cheat River.
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and Stewart's crossings of Youghiogheny were met, and copies of the law and proclamation were sent to Turkeyfoot, and other scattered settlers. In conclusion they say: " It is our opinion that some will move off, in obedience to the law, that the greater part will wait the treaty, and if they find the Indians indeed dissatisfied, we think that the whole can be persuaded to remove. The Indians coming to Redstone and delivering their speech greatly obstructed our design."
This closed the report of the commissioners; but a private letter of the chairman, John Steel, to the Governor, discloses the secret spring that may have been moving in this whole matter, and gives a smack of the milk that is in the cocoanut. He says: " Sir, there is one thing which, in preparing the extract of our journal, happened to be overlooked, viz .: The people at Redstone alleged that the re- moving them from the unpurchased lands was a contrivance of the gentlemen and merchants of Philadelphia, that they might take rights for their improvements when a purchase was made. In con- firmation of this, they said that a gentleman of the name of Harris, and another called Wallace, with one Priggs, a pilot, spent a con- siderable time last August in viewing the lands and creeks there- abouts. We promised to acquaint your honor with this." It was a most fortunate lapse of memory on the part of the commissioners that they forgot to put any mention of this little scheme into their report, as it might have been made public and defeated the underly- ing motive of their mission. Mr. Steel adds in this note, " I am of opinion from the appearance of the people and the best intelligence we could obtain, that there are but about an hundred and fifty fami- lies in the different settlements."
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