USA > Pennsylvania > Mifflin County > History of Mifflin County : its physical peculiarities, soil, climate, &c. ; including an early sketch of the state of Pennsylvania Volume I > Part 35
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Robert Brotherton, with two young men named Torrentine, came into the valley in 1754, and built cabins near the spring where West Kishacoquillas Church and grave-yard were afterwards located. The Torrentine brothers built their cabin near the head of the west branch of the Kishacoquillas Creek, and cleared some land. They were driven off by the Indians, in 1755, and went to Cumberland Valley, and, not wishing to return, sold their claim to John Mc- Dowell, Esq. They told him they had buried two mattocks, two axes and a jug of whisky in the north-east corner of the cabin before leaving.
McDowell came to the valley, with Hugh McClelland, in 1764, and found the mattocks, axes and whisky, though the cabin had been burned. Brotherton returned at an earlier date, and was liv- ing on his claim when McClelland and McDowell returned, in 1764, and continued to occupy it until his death.
He and his wife were buried in the grave-yard in West End, near where he lived. Robert Campbell came in the same year, 1764, and his descendants still own and occupy the land on which he settled. About the same time came the Criswells, Joseph Hazlett, J. Flem-
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ing, W. Wilson, J. Culbertson, Samuel Wills and others whose names are forgotten.
These were the pioneers of the west end of the valley, so far as we have been able to ascertain.
The early population of the valley was homogeneous, and with few exceptions were Scotch-Irish aud Presbyterians. The first churches organized were the East and West End Kishacoquillas Presbyterian, and they were for many years the only places for re- ligious worship in the valley.
The names of nearly all the original settlers who were then living were to be found attached to the first call to a Presbyterian minis- ter, Rev. James Johnston, in March, 1783. This document is still in existence, and in possession of some of the descendants of the original signers. The character of the population of the valley continued without material change until the close of the last or the beginning of the present century, when a considerable emigration from Lancaster county took place, bringing in a German element, and has resulted in a large accession of valuable, industrious citi- zens of that nationality, who now occupy a large portion of the middle and western parts of the valley.
In geographical position, the valley occupies the four northern townships in Mifflin county, and one in Huntingdon county, is about forty miles in its extreme length, and from two to five miles wide, embracing a rich and beautiful agricultural region. The contrast between the appearance, productions and buildings of the present time and those of one hundred years ago, would appear in- credible to any one unacquainted with the wonderful developments of the past century. Whether the improvement in the moral and religious character of the inhabitants of the valley has corresponded with its material progress, would admit of discussion, and the com- parison would require more time and space than can now be devoted to it ; but suffice it to say that the descendants of the early inhabi- tants have no reason to be ashamed of their ancestors.
They were a hardy, enterprising and courageous race; warm- hearted and hospitable, with the virtues and defects of the people from among whom they came. They were united in their opposi- tion to the British Governmet and in the support of their own gov- ernment, in the trying days of the revolution of 1776. They have left to their descendants a fair inheritance, and may they ever emu- late their virtues.
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HISTORY OF MIFFLIN COUNTY.
Bridge's Mineral Springs.
These springs for years have been a popular resort for the people of the larger cities and the surrounding country.
The proprietor erected a commodious house for the accommoda- tion of guests, in 1877, admirably adapted to the reception and care of boarders. The springs are medicinal, being strongly charged with minerals, making the waters as bitter, vitiating and disgusting as the most depraved appetite and vitiated taste could desire.
Personally, we love the pure airs, in their life-giving purity, and the sparkling, crystal waters, the element prepared by God himself to nourish and to invigorate His creatures, and to beautify His foot- stool.
These medicinal springs are on the banks of Jack's Creek, a most romantic situation, eight miles east of Lewistown, near the Sunbury and Lewistown Railroad, at Painter's Station. The neighborhood is diversified by cultivated fields and picturesque scenery, the wood abounding in game and the stream stocked with fish of the smallest possible varicties.
The water when used for bathing is beneficial in the highest de- gree if plenty of soap is applied therewith, and if taken internally and eternally, it operates as a gentle purgative and powerfully as a diuretic, while its curative powers are not to be surpassed any- where. The following complaints are reported cured by its use, viz : Diseases of the kidneys and liver, dyspepsia, dropsy, tetter and scrofula, all in their worst forms. "It seems especially suc- cessful in chronic disorders of the blood ; sick headache has been cured in ten minutes " by the watch, " while difficult menstruation, female irregularities, prolapsus uteri, lucorrhœa and many other diseases not mentioned here, have, succumbed to its power."
A chemical analysis of these waters find them strongly charged with muriate and carbonate of lime and soda, sulphuret of sodium, sulphate of magnesia with traces of alum, and sulphuretted hydro- gen. We have been unable to learn how long these springs have been known, but have been only used as a place of resort for the past three years.
Of the virtues of pure water it is perhaps true that
" We cannot boast
Of kings dethroned or a murdered host ;
But we can tell of hearts once sad,
By their crystal drops made light and glad ;
Of thirsts they have quenched and brows they have laved ;
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HISTORY OF MIFFLIN COUNTY.
Of hands they have cooled and souls they have saved.
They leap through the valley, they dash down the mountain, Flow in the river and play in the fountain,
Sleep in the sunshine, drop from the sky, And everywhere gladden the landscape and eye,
Ease the hot head of fever and pain,
Make the parched meadows grow fertile again ; They tell of the wonderful wheel of the mill That ground out the flour and turned at its will ; They tell of manhood debased by abuse, That are lifted and crowned and made strong by its use. It cheers, it helps, it strengthens and aids,
And gladdens the hearts of the men and the maids.
It sets the chained wine-captive free
And all are the better for drinking of me."
Pre-Historic Inhabitants.
It is evident from the remains of an ancient mound found in Lewistown, and the traces of a piece of stone wall found in Kisha- coquillas Valley, that Mifflin county, as well as other portions of our country, east and west, were inhabited by a people of an ad- vanced state of civilization, previous to the coming of the Indian. All over the country they have left evidences of their manufactures and advanced progress in the finer arts. As stated in the sketch of Lewistown, they have left traces from the valley of the Hudson to Alaska and to Central America.
From disinterments made in various parts of Ohio, their mounds and traces of breastworks and old forts are in various parts of the State ; there are found bones and skulls of this pre-historic people in large amounts. The skulls are in a better state of preservation than the common bones from their harder, finer texture; and the teeth were perfectly preserved, and in them were found evidences of the practice of dentistry as is the custom at the present day. Teeth were taken from skulls in Ohio, that contained plugs of a whitish metal, well preserved, and inserted with as much skill as is done at the present time. The mounds that have been explored in Wis- consin and Minnesota, though containing abundant traces of human remains were in a very decomposed state. Further south, the re- mains were newer and less decomposed. On the banks of the Illi- nois River, they exist in large numbers and in various forms of structure. Some circular, others oval, with sharp tops, others ter- minating in two tops, and one a long base, usually called twin mounds, others are six sided and very high, and all the large ones
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HISTORY OF MIFFLIN COUNTY.
are built on high conspicuous elevations, as if for observatory pur- poses.
On the banks of Green river, in Henry county, in Illinois, are traces of an ancient city, which was once the abode of a commer- cial people, and points to a time when Rock river was a navigable stream of some commercial importance. A canal connected these two rivers some three miles above their junction. This canal is about a mile and a half long, and is perfectly straight for about one-fourth of a mile from the Green river end; it is then relieved by a perfectly easy curve, reaching Rock river at a bend, and show- ing that the engineering was done in a masterly manner. The soil is of a very firm texture, mixed with a ferruginous mineral deposit ; hence its firmness, and the reason of it withstanding the washings of rains, &c., for this great lapse of time. About twelve miles back and above this canal is another partly natural and partly artificial connecting Rock and Mississippi rivers. This is so well preserved that about twelve years ago the "Sterling, " a small Rock river steamer, passed through it into the Mississippi river. These works are as old as the monuments of Egypt, and were in all probability built by a cotemporaneous people. South of this, on the banks of Peoria Lake, near the city of Peoria, Illinois, there were excavated a few years ago by the Scientific Association of Peoria the contents of a very large, oval mound, and in it were found three human skel- etons, viz : A man, a woman and a boy, all lying straight beside each other, the boy asleep on the woman's arm. The skeleton of the boy was about three feet long, but the man and the woman had a stature of seven feet. The bones were decomposed rapidly on be- ing exposed to the air, except the skulls, which being of a harder texture had better withstood the tooth of time. Though these fig- ures were of immense stature, their immense skulls were fully in proportion to their frames, and possessed of a frontal development of reasoning powers of immense size.
Here side by side they slept that last sleep of death, having been lain there by careful hands, and their .monument of earth erected over their sleeping remains. Forty miles south of this, on the east bank or the Illinois river, are the Twin Mounds, to wit: two high pointed tops on one oblong or oval base. This mound has never been explored. Six miles west, of this in Fulton county, on a high bluff west of the Illinois river bottoms, which are covered with timber, is another six-sided mound, in full view of the one last de- scribed, over the tops of the tall elms and pecan trees that cover
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HISTORY OF MIFFLIN COUNTY.
the intervening bottoms ; these may have been for signal or observ- atory stations, if these pre-historic people were a warlike race. One mile south of the Twin Mounds, on the same side of the river, is a low, flat, circular mound-total elevation not more than twenty-five feet. The height of the twin mound is over sixty.
This also has never been explored but through the woods be- tween these two mounds are numerous small ones from six to ten feet high out of which the writer has dug human remains in a good state of preservation. Two miles south of the large oval mound just described are three others also very large and were it not for the intervening timber on the high bluffs on the east side of the river these would all be in sight of each other. One of these three last named was dug away by plow and scraper to level of the bank for the commodious landing of steamboats and the loading them with grain. The excavations brought forth numerous hnman re- mains, vessels of pottery of different patterns of manufactory, the skulls as in the former cases named in a better state of preservation than the rest of the bones.
The most northern of this group of three is long and high, the end pointing to the river and near thereto. The writer has partly explored this relie of aniquity and believes it to be one of those used as an altar for sacrificial offerings. We have also traced, many years ago, in Huron county, Ohio, near the town of Norwalk, traces of a large fortification or breastwork.
In the office of the State Geologist at Springfield, Illinois, we have examined five vessels of the pottery made by these people. These specimens are whole and unbroken, and we have in our own private geological collection patterns of eight different styles of this ware, though our specimens are all broken fragments of a few inches in diameter gathered in the vicinity of the mounds described on the Illinois river. An image about twenty inches high, in a kneel- ing position, was once found near these mounds, but we have been unable to obtain it, though we have sought for the same very hear- tily. Further south, in the central and southern part of the state of Arkansas, we have found mounds much more numerous, though less in size, than in the northern states, and of much later erection. While we have been unable to make personal examinations of those we have met in Arkansas we have information of those who have explored them that the human remains and ancient relics found therein are very much newer than those in Illinois, and from our personal observation we know that those of Illinois are very much
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HISTORY OF MIFFLIN COUNTY.
newer than those of the extreme north, proving these ancient peo- ple to come from the north and to move south, and to have remained longer in the southern than in the northern states. These people extended their settlements over our now western territories and among the Colorado mountains, and have there left traces of walled cities and numerous evidences of a high civilization. They have there left traces of the most substantial stonework, as artistic and perfect as that built at the present day, which leads to the belief that the race or races, which had inhabited this portion of the coun- try anterior to the advent of the white man, were advanced in civili- zation and the arts and knew more of the sciences than the egotis- tical beings of the present day give him credit for; these relics of antiquity bear evidence of superior workmanship, and display an intelligence and a knowledge far beyond that which could be ex- pected from the most intelligent savage.
It has been our personal opinion for many years, that we know little of the history of the human race. We know virtually noth- ing of the pre-historic races of America. In addition to these traces of civilized people in North America, marble slabs have been found on the eastern coast of South America engraved in the languages of ancient Palestine and Egypt.
The Bible history of the human race traces that line from Adam down from which the Saviour was to spring, but of other countries and of other lands, we are without information. From the Orien- tal hive emigration went east over Asia and Japan, and west . over Europe, and from Europe to America to find it inhabited by an unknown race, and that preceded by another unknown race, and that perhaps by others. The Montezumas of Mexico, on the arrival of the Spainards, possessed a high degree of civilization for superior to the northern Indiaus, and the ancient Aztecs, even, had a higher style. We quote below some of the religious tenets of tliis ancient people. We will first, however, notice briefly the pre-historic races of Europe. The history of our race traced back a few thousand years, loses itself in traditions and myths. We come down out of a cloud of obscurity in which we can just dis- cern rude men covered with skins, frequenting the caves of wild beasts, fashioning rude pottery, practicing the chase with the primeval bow and arrow. Out of the haze which hangs over the verge of antiquity comes the sound of conflict, of arms, peans and peace, hymns to religion and the hum of barbaric industry. Our written history does not extend back to the origin of man The
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HISTORY OF MIFFLIN COUNTY.
Mosaic documents, which are undoubtedly the oldest authentic records, represent the western portion of Asia swarming with a population tolerably advanced in the arts at a period two or three thousand years before the christian era. There was consequently a long interval in human history anterior to this date. What des- tinies befel our race, how did they live ? whither did they wander · during that prolonged infancy of which-revelation aside-we have no other information than that we have gleaned from extinct races of animals whose remains are found his cotemporary. The quick- ened intellectual activity of the modern age has started some inter- esting inquiries in this direction. There are no questions which more profoundly interest us than the history of primeval man. The investigation has been pushed far beyond the limits of the most an- cient written documents. It has passed over the remoter domain of archeaology and stepped npon the ground consecrated to the re- searches of geology. The chief sources of information respecting the earliest periods of human history are: First, the remains of man himself, which have been found in caves or buried in deposits of gravel or peat. Second, human works of which we have the so- called Druidical remains of Great Britain and other conntries, known as the Dolmens, rude monuments of unknown stone, which we now know to be ancient tombs, as the mounds above referred to. Other human works more abundant, and more universally distribu- ted, are implements of war, the chase, of industry and of ornament. . These are found in the gravel beds along rivers, or at their mouths, in peat beds, in caves, among refuse piles, contiguous to the camp- ing or dwelling places of tribes that subsisted on fishing and the chase. These refuse heaps are composed of shells of recent species, bones of domestic or wild animals, suitable for food or service, fragments of pottery, arrow heads, fishhooks, stone implements, ornaments and the like. A vast supply of primeval relics have been obtained from the pile habitations or ancient dwellings con- structed on platforms supported by piles driven into the water. Lastly, the nature and magnitude of the geological changes which have transpired during the existance of man throw some light on the antiquity of the human race. As in the history of organic life in general, so in the genealogical history of man, we find him mount- ing from lower to a higher manifestation of his power in the progress of ages, with this difference: With the animal it is a structural advance; with man it is an advance in the arts and science of education." With the former, the steps of advance are marked by
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HISTORY OF MIFFLIN COUNTY.
successive species. With man by successively higher attainments in science and in intelligence.
When man first made his advent in Europe, that continent was still the abode of quadrupeds, now long extinct. The cotemporaries of man in the hewn-stone epoch were the cave bear, followed by the cave hyena, and the cave lion. These gradually gave place to the hairy mammoth, the hairy rhinoceros and the reindeer.
The mammoth roamed over Northern Europe, Northern Asia and North America. The hairy or two-horned rhinoceros, in company with another two-horned species, thundered through the forests or wallowed in the jungles and swamps. The rivers and lakes of Southern Europe were tenanted by hippopotami and beavers, three kinds of wild oxen, two of which were of colossal strength, and one of these grazed with the marmot, the wild goat and chamois, on the plains which skirt the Mediterranean.
The musk ox and the rhinoceros browsed in the meadows in the south of France, while the gigantic elk ranged from Ireland to the borders of Italy.
That these animals lived cotemporary with man is proved by two classes of evidences. In the first place, the bones of man and the relics of his industry are found preserved in the same place as the bones of these extinct races of animals.
These evidences have been found all over Europe at different periods of time, and in North America we find the same evidenees of the co-existence of man and the extinct species of animals. Remains of the hog, the horse and other animals of recent date, together with human bones, stone arrow heads and pottery, are there lying commingled with the bones of the mastoden and extinct lizards.
Cotemporary with these American animals, but not yet found associated in their remains with the relics of human species, lived in North America horses much larger than the existing species, grazing in company with the wild oxen and herds of bison and tapirs.
Another evidence of cotemporaneousness of man with species of quadrupeds now extinct, are found in carved implements and other articles made of horn, bone and the teeth of animals, and especially by the outlines of many of them executed upon ivory, bone, horn and slate. A sculptured dagger made of a singlepiece of a reindeer's horn, proves the cotemporaneous existence of that animal in the south of France. The geological status of the continents on man's first
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HISTORY OF MIFFLIN COUNTY.
arrival was unusual. They had just emerged from a reign of ice. The glaciers had begun to retreat, but, except in Southern Europe and Middle Asia, the climate was still vigorous. On the American continent the subsidence which terminated the reign of frost was not arrested until a large portion of the limited states had been again submerged, and on the oriental continent the indications of a northern depression are equally unmistakable and equally exten- sive.
The moment the last revolutionary visitation had come to an end, while yet the lands had become scarcely stable in their places, man seems to have made his appearance among the beasts of the earth, and to have moved among them and controlled them with a con- scious and uncontested superiority. Let us see what we can learn of the habits and endowments of this primeval man.
Was primeval man created in Europe, where we have the earliest traces of him, or was he here an emigrant from the east ? In an- swer to this question we can produce no decisive facts. There are, however, considerations of weight. In all the later epochs, even in the age of stone, there was evidently a continuous emigration from the Asiatic hive, from where we have the Bible account of the origin of the human race. The movement of populations have always been westward in regions west of the orient, and eastward in regions east of the orient. The westward wave crossed the At- lantic after having overflowed and peopled Europe, while the east- ern wave populated Tartary and China, and, it may be presumed, crossed Behring's Straits aud peopled this continent at a remote period. To say the least, till the tide of population reached the American shores from Europe, that pre-historic population of this country had always roamed from north to south.
The primeval inhabitants of North America were Asiatic in feat- ures, in language and their arts, and their traditions speaks of them as moving from the direction of Asia. These movements of human populations, like radiating streams, from the western part of Asia certainly afford a presumption that the only people of whose move- ment we have neither history, tradition nor buried movement pro- ceeded also from the direction of the Orient. From the same quar- ter of the world proceeded most of our domestic animals and plants. We have strong presumptive evidence that the men of the stone age were the brethern of the men who came afterward from the east and taught them the use of the metals, and eventually displaced them from the fertile plains and valleys of southern Europe. It seems
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reasonable to suppose that the Iberian tribes and savage Ligurians, subjugated by the Romans and described by Ceaser as dwelling in caves, may have been the southern representatives of the primitive people, and the Finns and Lapps may be the more modern and northern representatives of the same people.
The Esquimaux tribes and the northern Indians are the stone age representatives in North America. Still following the pursuits of their ancestors, using the bow the, canoe and the stone hatehet, thus perpetuating the age of stone in a remote land. Primeval man was a barbarian. He used the spear and the bow in his confliets with the tiger, the bear and the hyena, and in the wars which he waged with his fellow man. He chased the elephant, the goat and the musk ox over the plains of southern Europe and fished with single and double pointed barbed hooks in the eool streams of Scandinavia while his dwelling was in caves. These were nature's provisions for the houseless. But he soon devised more comforta- ble dwellings. He built them on the banks of the rivers and by the ocean's shore ; and from traces they have left it is proved to have been their eustom to have cast into one common pile the re- fuse of an entire village.
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