History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania, Part 7

Author: Mathews, Alfred, 1852-1904. 4n
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co.
Number of Pages: 1438

USA > Pennsylvania > Monroe County > History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania > Part 7
USA > Pennsylvania > Pike County > History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania > Part 7
USA > Pennsylvania > Wayne County > History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania > Part 7

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" It is difficult to read this correspondence without the feeling that deliberate and cruel in- justice was done to these simple-minded people - the Indians. The letter of the Governor is, to say the least, hard, un- sympathic and mercenary, and is not such an one as the ordinary feeling of humanity would dictate, and most certainly not such a letter as would have been written, under like circum- stances, by the founder of the commonwealth.

" The following extracts from two other letters are equally interesting and equally painful, with the former correspondence.

" The letter from William Penn (the grandson) shows that efforts had been made for the sale of the land in the Minisink nine years before the " Walking Purchase."

PROPRIETARY CORRESPONDENCE.

In possession of the Historical Society of Penn- sylvania.

Extract from a letter of William Penn (the grand- son) to Jaines Logan.

April 28th, 1728.

I return you thanks for the regard you.are pleased to express for my interest in Pennsylvania ; and had at first some thought of attending to it myself, persuent to your advice, but finding that not so suita- able to my present circumstances as I could have

wished, do herewith send a full power of attorney to yourself and Mr. Langhorne, which I hope will be accepted, and doubt not it will under your care be disposed of to as much advantage as if I were present, especially if the Indians can be prevailed upon to suffer a survey to be made of the valuable tract of land you mention, which I hope will not be found impracticable.

To this the following note is appended : The Indians forbade the survey, but promised if young William Penn (for which name they ex- pressed a high veneration) would come over lie should have what he pleased.

Extract of a letter from James Logan to the proprietor :---

July 10, 1742.

This is the 10th and last day of my attendance here for a treaty with the chiefs of the Six Nations, who, with the Delawares, between 20 and 30 in number and 8 of Shawnees made up 188 persons with their wom- en and children.

When on the 29th of last month they came to my house where they were entertained till the next after- noon, and then coming thither were joined by about 40 more from the Conestoges, with the Ganawese and soon after by Natimus and his company, who com- plained very heavily to their uncles of being cheated, after a full hearing have this day been commanded by them (the Six Nations) to quit all that tract entirely and to remove either over to Jersey again or beyond the Hills, but as this has been throughout excellent treaty (for the whites) I shall refer you more particu- lar accounts to more ready pens. This treaty will cost me £20 out of pocket and which I shall not charge a penny to any.

Just twelve years after the unfortunate " Walk- ing Purchase" was made, and while the conten- tion in regard to it was still carried on, a portion of the territorry which it covered and very much more was secured from the Delaware, or Lenape, and the Six Nations by purchase, the considera- tion being £300 " lawful money of Pennsyl- vania." This purchase included a belt of coun- try stretching from the Delaware to the Susque- hanna ; having as its south boundary the Blue Mountains. In this scope of country, thius ob- tained, lies the whole of the present Monroe County, the greater part of Pike, a very small portion of Wayne (the extreme tip of its southern panhandle), the whole of Carbon and Schuylkill and parts of Lackawanna, Luzerne, Columbia, Northumberland, Dauphin and Le- banon.

WAYNE, PIKE AND MONROE COUNTIES, PENNSYLVANIA.

The treaty was consummated August 22, 1749, at Philadelphia, the parties being Edward Warner, Lynford Lardner, receiver general of the province, William Peters, Richard Peters, secretary of the province, and others, and the sachems and chiefs of the Six Nations, Delawares, Shamokin and Shawanese Indians. The purchase was described in one of the treaty documents as follows :

" All that Tract and parcel of Land situate, lying and being within the following limits or bounds, and thus described (that is to say) : Beginning at the Hills or Mountains called in the language of the Five Nations Indians the Tyanuntasachta or Endless Hills, and by the Delaware Indians the Keckachtany Hills. On the east side of the river Susquehanna, being in the North West line or boundary of the Tract of Land formerly purchased by the said Proprietors from the Said Indian Nations by their Deed of the Eleventh day of October, Anno Dom, One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Six ; and from thence running up said river by the several courses thercof to the first or nearest Mountain to the North side of the Mouth of the Creek called in the Language of the said Five Nation Indians Cantaguy, and in the Language of the Delaware Indians Mag- honioy, and from thence extending by a direct or straight line to be run from the said Moun- tain on the north side of said creek to the main branch of Delaware River at the north side of the Mouth of the Creek called Lechawachsein, and from thence to return across Lechawachsein Creek aforesaid, down the River Delaware by the several courses thereof to the Kekachtany Hills aforesaid, and from thence by the range of said Hills to the place of Beginning." 1

After the treaty of 1749, the first purchase of lands from the Indians, which included any por- tion of the territory which is the province of this work, was that made in 1768. The treaty was made between the representatives of Thomas and Richard Penn and the Sachems of the Six Na- tions, at Fort Stanwix (now Rome, N. Y.), and concluded on November 5, 1768. By its terms the Indian title was released from an immense

belt of country, northwest of the lands ceded by the treaties of 1749, 1754 and 1758, and extending diagonally across the entire province from the Delaware River, in the northeastern, corner to the boundaries of Virginia on the westand of Virginia and Maryland on the south.

All of the territory of the preseut Wayne County, except a very small fraction of its southern extremity, was included in this cession, whichi embraced the whole of Susquehanna, Wyoming, Sullivan, Montour, Green, Wash- ington, Fayette, Westmoreland, Somerset and Cambria, and parts of Lackawanna, Luzerne, Columbia, Northumberland, Union, Snyder, Bradford, Lycoming, Clinton, Centre, Clearfield, Indiana, Armstrong, Allegheny and Beaver.

In the deed from the Six Nations, the terri- tory of the purchase was described as follows:

" All that part of the Province of Pennsylvania not heretofore purchased of the Indians, within the said general boundary line, and beginning in the said Boundary line on the east side of the east Branch of the River Susquehanna, at a place called Owegy, and running with the said boundary Line down the said Branch, on the east side thereof, till it comes opposite the mouth of a Creek called by the Indians Awandac (Tawandee) and across the River, and up the said Creek on the south side thereof and along the range of hills called Burnctt's Hills by the English and by the Indians2-on the north side of them, to the head of a creek which runs into the West Branch of the Susquehanna; then crossing the said River and run- ning up the same on the South side thereof, the sev- eral courses thereof, to the forks of the same River which lies nearest to a place on the River Ohio3 called Kittanning, and from the said fork, by a straight line to Kittanning aforesaid, and then down the said Ohio by the several courses thereof, to where the western Bounds of the said Province of Pennsylvania crosses the same river, and then with the same western Bounds to the South boundary thereof, and with the South boundary aforesaid to the east side of the Alle- gheny hills, on the east side of them to the west line

2 Meaning the Allegheny, to which the Indians always gave the name Ohio.

3 At a subsequent treaty at Fort Stanwix (October, 1784), the Pennsylvania Commissioners inquired of the Indians what was their name for the range called by the English " Burnett's Hills," to which they replied that they knew them by no other name than the " Long Mountains." As to the creek called by them " Tiadaghton " they explained that it was the same known by the whites as Pine Creek which flows into the West Branch of the Susquehanna from the northward.

1 Penn. Archives, vol. ii., p. 34.

THE INDIAN WAR, 1755-1763.

of a tract of Land purchased by the Said Proprietors from the Six Nations, and confirmed October 23, 1758, and then with the Northern bounds of that Tract to the River Susquehanna and crossing the River Susquehanna to the northern Boundary line of another tract of Land purchased of the Indians by Deed (August 22, 1749), and then with that northern Line, to the River Delaware at the north side of the mouth of a creek called Lechawachsein, then of the said River Delaware on the west side thereof to the intersection of it by an east line to be drawn from Owegy aforesaid to the Said River Delaware and then with that east Linc, to the beginning, at Owegy aforesaid."

CHAPTER IV.

The Indian War, 1755-1763-Benjamin Franklin Plans the Frontier Defense-Forts Norris, Hamilton, Hynd- shaw and Depui.

WHAT is known locally in Eastern Pennsyl- vania as the Indian War of 1755-1763 was but a comparatively small and partially inde- pendent seene, or incident, in that long bloody drama commonly called the French and In- dian War, the theatre of which extended from the Hudson and St. Lawrence to Fort Pitt, to Detroit and other points upon the great lakes, and even to Western Michigan.

The greater war consisted of a protracted, stubborn, desperate contest between the French and their Indian allies upon one side, and the English upon the other, for dominion in Amer- ica, and finally concluded, as all know, with the victory of the latter and the complete overthrow of the power of Franee in America.

The lesser war which prevailed at the same time, and of which we are to treat in these pages, while in some measure incited by the in- trigucs of the French, and by the generally in- flamed condition of the Indian tribes, was chief- ly brought about by local causes, was local in its aim and effects -- and in short, practically a separate and distinct campaign. It was essen- tially a war of the Delawares under Teedyns- cung, who was called at that period, " the War Trumpet " of his people ; it grew out of the dis- satisfaction of the Indians with the terms of sev- eral treaties and land purchases, particularly that of 1837, where the Proprietarics' represen- 1

tatives engaged in literally "running" the boundaries of the "Walking Purchase ;" and its fury was particularly-almost exclusively- directed toward and sated upon the inhabitants of the region, which the Indians regarded as having been fraudulently taken from them. The field of Teedyuscung's war was, therefore, principally confined to that part of Northamp- ton County north of the Blue Mountains and between the Lehigh and the Delaware-the re- gion now chiefly comprehended in Monroe, Pike, Carbon and Lehigh counties-though in several instances, carried for local causes and the blind hate engendered by the heat of strife, into regions outside of these general boundaries. In fact, the field of the lesser war over-lapped at various times and places the ter- ritory of the greater, and so it is in some cases difficult to determine to which general conflict particular hostilities should be attributed.

The connection between the lesser and greater, the local and the general wars, was apparent at the beginning. The French knew that by securing as allies the Delawares and other tribes of Pennsylvania the probabilities of success in their military operations against the English on the Ohio, would be greatly enhanced, and it was for that reason that they flattered and cajoled them. But the Indians were also slow to espouse a doubtful cause, and hence we find that the Indians of Eastern Pennsylvania did not assume an attitude of active hostility until the French had won a signal victory, and one which presaged the success of their arms. Braddock's terrible defeat on the Mononga- hela, near the site of Pittsburg, on the 9th of July, 1755, proved the direct means of encour- aging the disaffected Indians to make indis- criminate war upon the whites, and they fol- lowed it witli savage zest for several years.

It was then that Teedyuscung who had been led from pathis of peace-from the teachings of the Moravians-by the incitement of lis ambi- tion to become the " King of his People "-the " War Trumpet of the Delawares," assembled his braves and the allied Mohicans and Shawa- nese, at Nescopeck, and marked out a campaign which carried terror through the frontier settle- ments of old Northampton in the fall of 1755,

3-4

WAYNE, PIKE AND MONROE COUNTIES, PENNSYLVANIA.

and the succeeding winter. But prior to the open exhibition of his mighty hand in open hostility to the whites among whom he had formerly lived, several atrocities were com- mitted in the interior of the province, particu- larly along the Susquehanna. There may be said to have begun the Indian war in Pennsyl- vania-a war desultory, but none the less bloody, fatal and desolating. A settlement on John Penn's creek below Sunbury was sacked on the 18th of October, the great cove on the Conococheague shared the same fate on the 3rd of November, and two weeks later the camp-fires of the Lenape and their allies blazed through the forest, north of the line of frontier settlements from the Susquehanna to the Dela- ware.

The first fatal blow struck by savage fury near the region which is our especial field in this work, and the one which may be said to have opened the war in Northampton County, was curiously enough directed against the peaceful Moravians upon the Upper Lehigh. Where the wild waters of the Mahanoy poured their tribute to the former stream (near the site of Lehighton in Carbon County), the Mora- vians had established in 1746, a mission station known as Gnadenhutten, (meaning "Tents of Grace " or more literally "Mercy Huts.") The mission was moved in 1754 to the east side of the Lehigh where upon the site of the present town of Weissport, a village called New Gnadenhutten was built. Here had been lo- cated the Mohican Indians, a short time before driven out of Shekomeko, in Connecticut, and Patchgatgoch in New York near the border of the former State, and here too, were a large number of Delawares who had been converted to Christianity. The congregation we are told numbered five hundred souls. Just before the opening of the war some of the Mohicans had been induced by the Delawares, and their allies on the Susquhanna after long persuasion to desert the mission and remove to Wyoming, but nearly as many converted Delawares were about the same time brought from Meniala- gomcka.1 So the Indian town remained

nearly as large as ever in 1755. Of the Moravian brethren and sisters there were about twenty living upon the west side of the Lehigh. They fondly hoped that their little mission colony and the Christian Indian vil- lage might flourish and become a permanent abode of peace, but destiny ruled otherwise, and while they were enjoying a sense of almost complete security they were suddenly and terribly aroused by an Indian attack which swept the little frontier dot of civilization com- pletely out of existence, and left more than half their number slain.

This massacre was doubtless attributable to French machinations or at least to the Indians who had warmly espoused the French cause and there is no convincing evidence that Teedy- uscung was so far treacherous to the people from whose faith he was an apostate, as to take an active part in planning or executing the as- sault. His hands, however red with blood of other victims, were probably not stained by that of his former Moravian friends and spiritual advisers of the place where he was baptized only five years before.2

Loskiel says of the period preceding the massacre : "The Indians in the French interest were much incensed that any of the Moravian Indians chose to remain at Gnadenhutten and determined to cut off the settlement. After Braddock's defeat the whole frontier was open to the inroads of the savage foe. Every day dis- closed new scenes of barbarity committed by the Indians. The whole country was in terror; the neighbors of the Brethren forsook their dwellings and fled ; but the Brethren made a covenant together to remain undaunted in the place al- lotted them by Providencc."3

The attack was made late in the evening of November 24th by a large body of Indians ; the Mission house was fired and while the glare of the flames lit up the gloom of the surround- ing forest, from which the stealthy savages had come, eleven of the inmates perished by the tomahawk aud rifle or were burned to death in the building which had been their shelter and home. The house being consumed the murder-

I Menialagomeka was on the Pohopoco, in Eldred town- ship, Monroe County. See chapter II.

2 See sketch of Teedyuscung in chapter I

3 Loskiel, Vol. II. p. 163.

THE INDIAN WAR, 1755-1763.

ous horde set fire to the barns and stable, and thus destroyed all of the corn, hay and cattle together with' much other property within them. The Meeting house (Gemein haus) a grist and saw mill, a store building and numerous out houses were also burned and all of the portable property of value that was not destroyed was carried away as spoil.1

The Indians at the mission on the opposite side of the river were alarmed by the firing and shouts of their savage brothers and offered to attack the enemy without delay, but being ad- vised to the contrary by the missionaries who had escaped, they all fled into the woods.2

The people of Bethlehem had seen the lurid glare beyond the Blue Mountains and had been in an agony of suspense in regard to the fate of their brethren.

They apprehended that evil news would be brought to them, and were in a measure pre- pared for the tidings borne by a breathless mes- senger between midnight and morning. During the following day it was confirmed by one after another of the poor people who had barely escaped with their lives, and had fled in terror from the fire-illumined scene of murder. By night eight of the white people and about forty of the Indian converts had reached Bethlehem aud from this time on, for several days the people of the Lehigh Valley were precipitately pushing southward into the older and larger settlements to escape the savage lordes they im- agined might at any instant come upon them. They were filled with the wildest alarm and many came with scarcely elothes enoughi upon their backs to protect them from the cold, while all were entirely destitute of the means to obtain the necessities of life. There was a general lie- gira from all that part of the valley north of the Mountains and nearly all the people below, as far down as the Irish . settlement, left their

homes. The Moravians at Bethlehem and Na- zareth and the citizens of Easton extended to these panic-stricken and destitute people, every kindness in their power. The Brethren kept their wagons plying to and fro between Bethle- hem and points eight or ten miles up the road, bringing into their hospitable town the woman and children who had become exhausted in their flight and sunk by the way. 1242333

The Provincial authorities had failed to read in Braddock's defeat a warning of the danger that was imminent, but the butchery on the Lehigh and the abandonment of the valley brought them to an appreciative sense of the condition of the frontier and they sought at the eleventh-perhaps we may say the twelfth- hour to atone for their remissness of duty. Their measures were two fold. They endeavored to pacify the Indians, and at the same time hastened to put the Province on a war footing, by organizing troops and building a line of defenses along the frontier. Early in December 1755 Governor Morris decided to summon the Indians to a conference and he entrusted the diplomatic delivery of his message to Aaron Depui, Charles Brodhead and Benjamin Shoe- maker, all of the county of Northampton, but the effort toward pacification was abortive. By a letter from James Hamilton to Governor Morris dated Easton, December 25, it appears that Depui was then still at home, sick and it was not probable that he would be able to carry the message to Wyoming, so that he " believed the Expectation of the Treaty would fall to the ground"-and it did.

The action taken toward the protection of the frontier, which we shall speak of fully in proper place, was more effective than the measures to bring about coneiliation, and it ushered into the arena of military life, for a short career, one of the most illustrious characters in the civil his- tory of America-Benjamin Franklin.

But in the meantime had oceurred the first organized Indian invasion of the Minisink country-the first active hostility in which Tee- dynscung's hand was exhibited. This was the strong-concerted assault upon the Brodheads, on the site of East Stroudsburg (then known as Dansbury and included in the bounds of Smith-

1 The total financial loss of the Moravians at Gnadenhut- ten, November 24, 1755, as sworn to before Justice Timothy Horsfield at Bethlehem, February 4, 1756, was £1638 19s. 3d. and of the destruction of the Indian town on the op- posite side of the river, January 1, 1756, the amount of damage was sufficient to make the grand total of loss nearly .£2000.

2 Loskiel, Vol. II. p. 165.

WAYNE, PIKE AND MONROE COUNTIES, PENNSYLVANIA.

field), and the series of attacks upon other set- tlers, chiefly within the limits of the present Monroe County, though the general incursion extended also into what is now Pike County, and its effects were felt still further north, in Wayne County, and along the Delaware in New Jersey and New York.

Upon the morning of the 11th of December ,

1755, a large body of Indians, variously esti- mated at from one to two hundred, suddenly ap- peared at Daniel Brodhead's settlement. Here, besides Brodhead and his several stalwart sons, lived several other families, either in the imme- diate vicinity or a few miles away. Ephraim Culver had built a mill upon the Brodhead tract this very year and was living there. So also was Francis Jones. Not far away were the McMichaels and the Carmichaels, while Jasper Payne1 had only a few days before vacated the mission-house, which had been built on the west side of the Analoming Creek, where it is now crossed by the iron bridge in Stroudsburg. Apprehension of danger had been the cause of his removal, and it was fortunate that he had yielded to his fears, for otherwise he would doubtless have fallen a victim to the Indians.

The savages fiercely attacked the Brodhead house, but the master and his sons had barri- caded it, and they made a vigorous defense, for they were well armed, accustomed to the use of the rifle, and, having had reason to fear an attack, they were as well provided to with stand it as any single family, within the walls of a log house could be. The Indians did not succeed in surprising any members of the household, nor could they steal up to fire the building, for eyes and rifles commanded every approach. The Indians were only made more fierce by meeting this strong resistance, and they patiently besieged the house, in the mean- time, fireing the barn and other outbuildings, Cul- ver's mill, and the mission house, and sent small bands to fall upon the other settlers in the re- gion. All day long, mingled with the sound of the crackling flames at Brodhead's, resounded the demoniac yells of the besieging savages and

the reports of near and distant firing. It was a perilous time for the inmates of that little log house, surrounded by a hundred or more infu- riated Indians, in an almost unbroken forest, literally upon the frontier, and far beyond the hope of succor from the larger settlements; but, if the courage of the small domestic garrison ever failed, their enemy did not know it, and they were obliged to disperse without glutting their thirst for blood. It was supposed that some of the Indians were killed by rifle-shots from the house, and it is not improbable, as the Brodhead boys were famous marksmen ; but if any were killed it could not be definitely ascer- tained, for the Indians, as is well known, had a custom of carrying their fallen from the field. 1

The Culvers and Francis Jones, who was living with them, fled, and none too soon, for looking back when only a few miles away they saw their dwellings and the mill both in flames and the forms of men moving about the burn- ing buildings. Thus were saved from the tomahawk and scalping knife eight persons, for the Culver family consisted of Ephraim, the father, Elizabeth his wife, Ephraim, Jr., and four girls. Together with Jones they journeyed southward through the forest with all possible haste, not knowing but that they might be pur- sued, and at length reached Nazareth where they were domiciled in the famous Whitefield House and remained for some time.2 Jones was for a considerable period an inmate of the " Rose Inn.""3

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History of Wayne, Pike, and Monroe counties, Pennsylvania, Part 7

Author: Mathews, Alfred, 1852-1904. 4n Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co. Number of Pages: 1438

Author: Mathews, Alfred, 1852-1904. 4n
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Philadelphia : R.T. Peck & Co.
Number of Pages: 1438