History of Washington County, Pennsylvania : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 2

Author: Crumrine, Boyd, 1838-1916; Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885; Hungerford, Austin N
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Philadelphia : H.L. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 1216

USA > Pennsylvania > Washington County > History of Washington County, Pennsylvania : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men > Part 2

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The Delawares claimed that theirs was the most ancient of all the aboriginal nations, the "Lenni Lenape," or Original People. One of their traditions ran, that, ages before, their ancestors had lived in a far-off country to the west, beyond the mighty rivers and mountains, at a place where the salt waters con- stantly moved to and fro, and that in the belief that there existed away towards the rising sun a red man's paradise-a land of deer and salmon and beaver-they had left their far-away home and trav- eled on towards the east and south to find it, but that on their way they were harassed and attacked by enemies and scourged and divided by famine, so that it was not until after long and weary journeyings | during hundreds of moons that they came at length to a broad and beautiful river (the Delaware), which forever ebbed and flowed, like the waters from whose shores they had come; and there, amidst a profusion of game and fish, they rested, and found that Indian elysium of which they had dreamed before they left |

their old homes in the land of the setting sun. At the present day there are enthusiastic searchers through the realms of aboriginal lore who, accepting the vague narrative as authentic, imagine that the red man came from Asia across the Behring Strait, through which they saw the tide constantly ebb and flow as"mentioned in the tradition.

Certain it is that at the coming of the first Europeans to America, the Indians of the Lenni Lenape were found living in Eastern Pennsylvania and New Jersey, in the country drained by the river which the white men called Delaware, a name which they also gave to the nation of red men who inhabited its valley. Many years before that time the Dela- wares had been powerful and the terror of other In- dian tribes, but they were afterwards subdued and humbled by the all-conquering Iroquois or Five Nations, who reduced them to a state of semi-vas- salage, and compelled them to acknowledge them- selves women and not warriors. The Delawares, while not daring to deny this fact, endeavored to re- lieve themselves of the disgrace in the eyes of white men by an ingenious yet flimsy account to the effect that as the Indian nations were almost continually at war with each other it had become necessary to have some one of the tribes stand constantly in the atti- tude of peace-makers between them; that as it was proper that the bravest and most powerful nation should perform this office, it naturally fell to the Delawares, who were exceedingly unwilling to take it, but finally consented to do so for the general good. It was disgraceful for warriors to ask for peace; this had always been done by the women of the tribes, hence peace-makers were women, and the Delawares in accepting the position as such became, metaphori- cally, women and wearers of the petticoat.ª The Delawares said that the Iroquois brought about this result by cunning speeches and artifice, because they dreaded their power and were anxious to render them powerless for harm, the Delawares only discover- ing the trick when it was too late for them to recede. Heckewelder and other Moravian writers gravely re- peated this silly story for truth ; but it is unquestion- able that the Iroquois treated the Delawares with great contempt, as a subjugated people and vassals. At a treaty council held in Philadelphia8 in July, 1742, a Six Nation chief named Cannassatego gave a

1 The Iroquois confederation, at first embracing the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, was then called the Five Nations, but afterwards became the Six Nations by the addition of the Tuscaroras, who emigrated to the North upon being expelled from their earlier hunt- ing-grounds in the Carolinas.

2 At a time when a strong French force was reported to be on the upper Allegheny on its way to the Ohio, the Delawares living at the head of the latter river sent runners to the Six Nation council at Onondaga, with belts and a message, in which they said, "Uncles, the United Na- tions,-We expect to be killed by the French your father. We desire therefore that you will take off our Petticoat that we may fight for our- selves, our wives and children. In the condition we are in, you know we can do nothing."-Colonial Records, vi. 37. 8 Col. Rec., iv. 580.

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

most withering reproof to some Delawares who were present, in reference to the conduct of their nation in some of their transactions with the whites. He told them they were not warriors but women, and that they deserved to have their ears cut off for their be- havior, and after a long and extremely abusive and contemptuous speech to them in the same strain, in which he told them their people must remove forth- with from the Delaware, that they could have no time to consider about it, but must go at once to the Susquehanna, but that considering their behavior he doubted whether they would be allowed to remain there, he handed them a string of wampum and con- tinued, "You are to preserve this string in memory of what your uncles have this day given you in charge. We have now some other business to trans- act with our brethren [the English], therefore depart this council, and consider what has been said to you."

The humiliated Delaware chiefs dared not disobey this peremptory command. They left the council at once, and the last of their people removed immedi- ately afterwards to Wyoming, where they remained only'a short time, and then went to the West Branch of the Susquehanna, and from there a large part of them emigrated to the Ohio, whither a considerable number of their tribe had removed many years before, as early as 1725.1

The Shawanese, who were originally inhabitants of the country now embraced in Southern Georgia and Florida, were driven from that country by a hostile tribe,2 and came to Pennsylvania about the year 1697, and removed from the Susquehanna to the head of the Ohio about.1728. An account of their coming

1 Conrad Weiser, the Indian trader, Indian agent, and interpreter, in a speech to the chiefs of the Six Nations at Albany in July, 1754, said, "The Road to Ohio is no new Road. It is an old and frequented Road; the Shawanego and Delawares removed thither above thirty years ago from Pennsylvania, ever since which that Road has been traveled by our traders at their invitation, and always with safety until within these few years that the French with their usual faithlessness sent armies there."

2 Zeisberger, the Moravian, says, "The Shawanos, a warlike people, lived in Florida, but having been subdued in war by the Moshkos, they left their land and moved to Susquehanna, and from one place to another. Meeting a strong party of Delawares, and relating to them their forlorn condition, they took them into their protection as grandchildren ; the Shawanos called the Delaware nation their grandfather. They lived thereupon in the Forks of the Delaware, and settled for a time in Wy- oming. When they had increased again they removed by degrees to the Allegheny." When they came from the East to the Ohio, they located at and near Montour's Island, below the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela. The Delawares came with them to the West, both tribes having been ordered away from the valleys of the Delaware and Susquehanna by the Iroquois, whom they were compelled by conquest to recognize as their masters.

Some writers have said that the Shawanese came from the country west of the Ohio to Pennsylvania, but this is shown to be a mistake by the language of Hetagnantagetchy, a Six Nation chief, at a council held at Philadelphia Sept. 10, 1735. He gave an account of the murder of one of the Iroquois Indians by a small band or tribe of the Shawanese who were then located on the Allegheny, and added, " That the tribe of Shawanese complained of is called Shaweygira, and consists of about thirty young men, ten old men, and several women and children; that it is supposed they are now returned to the place from whence they first came, which is below Carolina."

and subsequent movements is found in the minutes of a treaty council held at Philadelphia with the chiefs of the Six Nations, Aug. 26, 1732. The Shawanese were then settled on the Ohio, and it was desired to induce them to remove back to the Susque- hanna, to remove them from the influence of the French, who, as it was reported, had made their ap- pearance on the Allegheny. The Governor of Penn- sylvania proposed to the Six Nations to use their in- fluence with the Shawanese to that effect, and on the occasion of the council referred to recited to the as- sembled chiefs as follows :

" They were told that the Shawanese, who were set- tled to the Southward, being made uneasy by their Neighbours, about Sixty Families of them came up to Conestogoe, about thirty-five years since, and de- sired leave of the Sasquehannah Indians who were planted there to settle on that River; that those Sas- quehannah Indians applied to this Government that they might accordingly Settle, and they would be- come answerable for their good Behaviour. That our late Proprietor arriving soon after, the Chiefs of the Shawanese & of the Sasquehannahs came to Phila- delphia & renewed their Application; that the Pro- prietor agreed to their Settlement, and the Shawanese thereupon came under the Protection of this Govern- ment; that from that time greater Numbers of the same Indians followed them and Settled on the Sas- quehannah and Delaware; that as they had joyned themselves to the Sasquehannah Indians, who were dependent on the five Nations, they thereby also fell under their Protection. That we had held several treaties with those Shawanese, and from their first coming were accounted and treated as our own Indi- ans; but that some of their young men having, be- tween four and five years since, committed some Dis- orders, tho' we had fully made it up with them, yet, being afraid of the Six Nations, they had removed backwards to Ohio, and there had lately putt them- selves under the Protection of the French, who had received them as their children. That we had sent a message to them to return, & to encourage them had laid out a large Tract of Land on the West of the Sasquehannah round the principal Town where they had last been settled, and we desired by all means that they would return thither."

But the Shawanese could not be induced to return to the lands which had been laid out for them "near Pextan, which should always be kept for them and their children for all time to come." In response to a message to that effect, four of their chiefs,-Ope- kethwa, Opakeita, Quassenungh, and Kataweykeita- went from the Ohio to Philadelphia, where they ar- rived on the 28th of September, 1732,8 and after a council of three days' duration with the Governor, during which he used all his powers of persuasion to in- duce them to consent to the removal, "They answered

8 Col. Rec., iii. 459.

THE INDIAN OCCUPATION.

that the place where they are now settled Suits them much better than to live nearer; that they thought they did a Service to this Province in getting Skins for it in a place so far remote; that they can live much better there than they possibly can anywhere on Sasquehannah; that they are pleased, however, with the Land laid out for them, and desire that it may be secured to them." On the following day at a council held with the chiefs, "They were told there were Coats making for them, and other Cloaths,1 with a Present, was providing ; the Proprietor presented their Chief with a very fine gilt Gun, as a mark of respect for their Nation, and told them he would send a Surveyor to run Lines about the Land in- tended for them, and that none but themselves and Peter Chartiere should be allowed to live on it." The attempt to remove them eastward from the Ohio was relinquished, and they, with the Delawares, were found there when the first white men (other than a few traders) came to this region.

In 1748 the strength of the Delawares at the head of the Ohio was one hundred and sixty-five warriors; that of the Shawanese one hundred and sixty-two; 2 these figures being given by Conrad Weiser. Their chief settlement or village was Logstown 3 (called by the French Chinigue, or Chinique), which was then * located on the right bank of the Ohio, several miles below the mouth of the Allegheny, and where also was the residence of the Iroquois sachem, Tanachari- son, called the Half-King, whose authority over- shadowed that of the Delaware and Shawanese chiefs, because he represented the power of the dreaded Six Nations. The seat of the Delaware " king," however, was not at Logstown, but higher up, near the head of the Ohio, on its left bank. In the journal of Maj. George Washington's trip to the French forts on the

Allegheny in the fall of 1753 he says, " About two miles from this [the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela], on the southeast side of the river, at the place where the Ohio Company intended to erect a fort [at or very near the mouth of Chartiers Creek ], lives Shingiss, king of the Delawares. We called upon him to invite him to a council at Logstown." This same Shingiss, who was generally styled " king," was in some of the official communications of that day mentioned as the chief sachem of the Delawares; his brother, Pisquitomen, being also a high chief in the nation. The "king" of the Shawanese in 1753 was Nochecona.5 In 1756, King Shingiss had re- moved his residence from the mouth of Chartiers Creek to "Old Kittaning" on the Allegheny, which was also a town of the Delawares. Maj. Edward Ward (who when an ensign, in command of a small force engaged in the spring of 1754 in building a fort at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela, was compelled to surrender the work to the French, who then named it Fort Du Quesne) said,6 "That in the year 1752, and before his surrender to the French, there was a small Village Inhabited by the Delawares on the South East side of the Allegheny River, in the neighborhood of that place [the mouth of the Alle- gheny], and that Old Kittaning, on the same side of the said River, was then Inhabited by the Delawares ; that about one-third of the Shawanese Inhabited Loggs Town on the West Side of the Ohio, and tended corn on the East Side of the River, and the other part of the nation lived on the Scioto River."

From his stronghold at Kittaning, Shingiss led his Delaware warriors against the settlements east of the mountains in the fall of 1755, after the defeat of Braddock, and at that time and through all the year 1756 he carried desolation and massacre through all that country from the Potomac to the Delaware. He was one of the most implacable and ferocious of all the savage leaders. "Were his war exploits all on record," says Heckewelder, "they would form an interesting document, though a shocking one. Cono- cocheago, Big Cove, Shearman's Valley, and other settlements along the frontier felt his strong arm suf- ficiently to know that he was a bloody warrior, cruel in his treatment, relentless in his fury. His person was small, but in point of courage, activity, and sav- age prowess he was said to have never been exceeded by any one." It appears that he was succeeded by Tomaqui, or "King Beaver," as the latter name is found mentioned as that of the head of the Delaware nation in and after 1758. And in a list of Indians

1 The four chiefs received " each of them a bine Cloth Coat lined with Salloon, a Shirt, a Hatt, a pair of Stockings, Shoes and buckles. ... And for a present to their Nation was ordered and delivered a piece of blue Strouds for blankets, one hundred weight of Powder, four hundred weight Bullets, ten gallons Rum, and two dozen Knives. And to John Wray, the interpreter who came down with them, five pounds." Two of the chiefs, however, were taken sick with smallpox and died in Phila- delphia, where they were " buried in a handsome manner" by the orders of the Governor.

2 Eleven years later (in 1759) George Croghan, deputy Indian agent under Sir William Johnson, in a report made to Gen. Stanwix of the numbers of the several Indian tribes in the West, gave the numbers of the Delawares and Shawanese (who prior to that time had removed west- ward from their first location on the Ohio) as follows:

" The Delawares residing ou the Ohio, Beaver Creek, and other branches of the Ohio, and on the Susquehanna, their fighting men are 600." [A considerable number of the Delawares being still residing on the Susquehanna, and these not being included in Weiser's return of their strength in 1748.]

" The Shawanese on Scioto, a branch of Ohio, 400 miles below Pitts- burgh, 300 warriors."

3 When the Indians notified the French to quit the country in 1753 they said, " We have a fire at Logstown, where are the Delawares and Shawanese."-Colonial Records, v. 667.

៛ A later village also called Logstown was on the opposite side of the Ohio.

Logstown was " the first of the Indian towns on the road from Lan- caster to Allegheny."-Col. Rec., viii. 289.

5 See Colonial Records, v. 685.

6 In a "Deposition taken March 10, 1777, at the house of Mr. John Ormsby in Pittsburgh, etc., Agreeable to Notice given to Col. George Morgan, Agent for the Indiana Company, before James Wood and Charles Simms, pursuant to a resolution of the Honble, the Convention of Virginia, appointing them Commissioners for collecting Evidence on behalf of the Commonwealth of Virginia against the several Persons pre- tending to claim Lands within the Territory aud Limits thereof under Deeds of Purchases from Indians."

Sh ....

HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA.

present at a treaty council held at Fort Pitt on the 5th of July, 1759, Shingiss, George, and Kickeusking were named as "chiefs and captains," the first named having been deposed from his higher dignity, doubt- less on account of his bloody record as an inveterate enemy of the English, who were then masters of the country.

In or about 1753 the Delawares and Shawanese who had previously lived at Logstown removed to Sacunk, or Salt Lick Town, which was located at the mouth of Beaver Creek; but in 1759 the Delawares had migrated from that place to Kuskusky, or Kus- kuskees, which was some miles above Sacunk, on the Beaver. At a council held on the 25th of February in that year at Fort Pitt (which, as Fort Du Quesne, had been taken from the French by Gen. Forbes three months before), King Beaver, of the Delawares, said, "The Six nations and you [Col. Hugh Mercer, afterwards Gen. Mercer, who was killed at Princeton, Jan. 3, 1777] desired that I would sit down and smoke my pipe at Kuskusky. I tell you this that you may think no ill of my removing from Sacunk to Kus- kusky, for it is at the great desire of my brothers, the English, and my uncles, the Six Nations ; and there I shall always hear your words." From Kuskusky, Sacunk, and Kittaning the Delawares and Shaw- anese not long afterwards migrated to the Muskingum and Scioto.

The white traders were persons of no little conse- quence among the Indians. The French traders were here somewhat in advance of those of the English- speaking race, though the latter made their appear- ance among the Delawares and Shawanese soon after their settlement on the Allegheny and Ohio, certainly as early as 1730. The first French trader known to have been among the Indians on the Allegheny was James Le Tort, who probably came as early as 1720. One of the speakers of the Shawanese at a treaty council held in 1732 said that when they (the Shawa- nese) came over the mountains from "Patowmack" (about 1728), they met a French trader, who told them that the French Governor was exceedingly anxious to see them at Montreal, and that upon his advice they went there. This was doubtless the "French gentleman" whom the Indians called Ca- hictodo, and who was frequently mentioned in the proceedings of the Pennsylvania Council in 1731-32.

Peter Chartier, whose name was afterwards given to one of the principal streams flowing through the pres- ent county of Washington, went out from Philadelphia to the Allegheny at or very soon after the time when the Shawanese migrated there.1 He was the son of a French glover who had been established in that business in Philadelphia,2 and was himself French

in all his sympathies and inclinations, though he went to the wilderness ostensibly as an English trader. It is told that he at one time had a trading- post on the Ohio at the mouth of the creek which still bears his name (where King Shingiss was also located, as before mentioned); but he also estab- lished himself at a Shawanese village situated on the Allegheny, about twenty miles above the site of Pitts- burgh. This place became known as "Chartier's Old Town." In 1744 he had decided to boldly take the side of the French, who were using great efforts to secure the Indian trade; and on the 18th of April in that year he, with a large body of Shawanese whom he had induced to join him for the purpose, surprised and took prisoners two other traders on the Alle- gheny, robbing them of their entire stock of goods, amounting to sixteen hundred pounds. The names of these two traders were James Dinnew and Peter Tostee. For this and numerous other villanies Char- tier was severely reprimanded and warned by Gov- ernor Thomas, of Pennsylvania, and this was his pretended excuse for joining the French interest, which he did at once, and on the 25th of April, 1745, the Governor announced the fact to the Pro- vincial Council of Pennsylvania. During the same year Chartier persuaded the Shawanese at the Old Town to abandon their settlement at that place and remove to the Scioto. He was rewarded by a com- mission in the French service, but his subsequent career is not known.

In 1735, Abraham Wendall, a German trader, was living among the Indians on the Allegheny, this fact being mentioned by one of the Six Nation chiefs at a council held in Philadelphia on the 10th of Septem- ber in that year. The chief also presented a letter from this Wendall, " written in low Dutch, giving in- formation of some violence which had been committed by one of the tribes of the Shawanese." A very early English trader who lived with the Indians on the Allegheny was John Fraser, who was referred to in a letter dated Sept. 9, 1753,3 written by Edward Ship- pen, as follows : "Weningo [Venango] is the name of an Indian town on Ohio [as the Allegheny was then often called], where Mr. Fraser has had a gunsmith- shop for many years; it is situate eighty miles up said river beyond Logs Town." In the summer of 1753, when the French came down the Allegheny in force to build the forts at Le Boeuf and Venango, Fraser was driven away from the latter place and came down the river. Soon afterwards he located on the Monongahela, where he had a trading-post.

George Croghan (afterwards deputy Indian agent)

1 Chartier had before that time become possessed of a tract of six hun- dred acres of land, near the place from which the Shawanese removed, and mentioned as " near Pextan."

2 On the 24th of February, 1707, a message "from the Queen of the Con- estogoe Indians" was received by the Provincial Council of Pennsylva-

nia, informing " that divers Europeans, namely, Mitchel (a Swiss), Peter Bazalion, James Le Tort, Martin Chartiere, the ffrench Glover of Phil- adelphia, ffrank, a young man of Canada who was lately taken up bere, being all ffrenchmen, and one from Virginia, who also spoke ffrench, had seated themselves, and built Houses upon the branches of the Pa- towmack within this Gov'mt, and pretended that they were in search of some Mineral or ore."

3 Col. Rec , v. 660.

THE INDIAN OCCUPATION.

came among the Ohio River Indians as a trader as early as 1748. Andrew Montour and Conrad Weiser (both afterwards trusted agents of the provincial gov- ernment) came at about the same time. Hugh Craw- ford, John Gray, John Findley, David Hendricks, Aaron Price, Alexander McGinty, Jabez Evans, Jacob Evans, David Hendricks, William Powell, and Thomas Hyde were trading on the Allegheny, Mo- nongahela, and Ohio in 1752, and the six last named were in 1753 taken prisoners on the Allegheny by the French and Indians and sent to Montreal. Be- sides the traders above named, there were several others (whose names are not known) in the region contiguous to the head of the Ohio between 1748 and 1754, when they were all driven out by the French. Their trading-places were principally on the Ohio and Allegheny Rivers, with Fraser's and a few others on the Monongahela below the mouth of the Youghiogheny, but none, as far as ascertained, on the smaller streams or in the interior.

There is nothing found either in written history or in tradition, to show that the section of country which now forms the county of Washington was ever the permanent home of any considerable number of Indians. These lands, like all those on the upper Ohio, the Allegheny, and the Monongahela, and east- ward to the mountains, though claimed and partially occupied by the Delawares and Shawanese, were owned by their masters, the redoubtable Six Nations,1

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History of Washington County, Pennsylvania : with biographical sketches of many of its pioneers and prominent men, Part 2

Author: Crumrine, Boyd, 1838-1916; Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885; Hungerford, Austin N Publication date: 1882 Publisher: Philadelphia : H.L. Everts & Co. Number of Pages: 1216

Author: Crumrine, Boyd, 1838-1916; Ellis, Franklin, 1828-1885; Hungerford, Austin N
Publication date: 1882
Publisher: Philadelphia : H.L. Everts & Co.
Number of Pages: 1216