USA > Pennsylvania > Mifflin County > History of that part of the Susquehanna and Juniata valleys, embraced in the counties of Mifflin, Juniata, Perry, Union and Snyder, in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. V. 1, Pt. 1 > Part 8
USA > Pennsylvania > Perry County > History of that part of the Susquehanna and Juniata valleys, embraced in the counties of Mifflin, Juniata, Perry, Union and Snyder, in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. V. 1, Pt. 1 > Part 8
USA > Pennsylvania > Union County > History of that part of the Susquehanna and Juniata valleys, embraced in the counties of Mifflin, Juniata, Perry, Union and Snyder, in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. V. 1, Pt. 1 > Part 8
USA > Pennsylvania > Juniata County > History of that part of the Susquehanna and Juniata valleys, embraced in the counties of Mifflin, Juniata, Perry, Union and Snyder, in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. V. 1, Pt. 1 > Part 8
USA > Pennsylvania > Snyder County > History of that part of the Susquehanna and Juniata valleys, embraced in the counties of Mifflin, Juniata, Perry, Union and Snyder, in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. V. 1, Pt. 1 > Part 8
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On June 18, 1711, the Governor was at Conestoga and informed the head men of the Conestogas and Shawanese that Governor Penn was " about to settle some people upon branches of Potowmack." To this they replied that, " as they are at present in a war with the Tos- cororoes and other Indians, they think that place not safe for any Christians," as it is " be- twixt them and those at war with them." As all the tribes on the Susquehanna were subject to the Five Nations, it is hard to see how they could be at war with the Tuscaroras. It is true that the report of Lawrence Clawson, May 6, 1712, sets forth that the Five Nations agreed to aid Virginia in the reduction of the Tuscarora " murderers;" but if they did so promise under some pressure brought to bear upon them, it is certain they never did anything to carry it out. The fact is, they were charged with overt acts in aid of their brethren during the war. Williamson, in his "History of North Carolina," p. 197, quotes a contemporan- cous writer, who says: " The Tuskarora In- dians, numerous and well provided with arms and ammunition, expect assistance from the Five Nations, or Senceas ; hence they are con- lident of success."
As already stated, however, the pressure was
1 Col. Rec. ii., 213 and 231 ; Dallas' Laws, i. 62.
2 See this quaint and graphic picture of Indian diplomacy fully set forth in Col. Rec., vol. ii., 511.
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too great. Their friends could not sufficiently aid them, and they were crushed, their lands forcibly taken and the pride of their nation sold into slavery. Most of the remnant fled to the north. It is remarkable that our co- lonial records contain nothing about their ad- vent at the time it occurred. This is the more surprising when we observe how very jealous they were of " strange Indians." On July 1, 1707, when "several strange Indians from Carolina " came to the Shawanese town on the Susquehanna, a strong effort was made to get their principal men to Philadelphia, to give an account of " their reasons for leaving their native country and transporting themselves hither." September 14, 1715, those on the Susquehanna were urged "to inform us of any strangers coming amongst them." Why no notice was taken of the influx of the Tusca- roras can only be accounted for on the idea that they settled so far inland and so distant from any of the white people that it was at that period not deemed a matter of public im- portance. But this need not be wondered at when we observe no minutes from October 15, 1713, to July 16, 1714, and this record, July 30, 1716: "The clerk having neglected to enter the minutes of what passed (on that day with the Indians), as he did all others relating to these people, which J. Logan himself took not with his own hand, are, with others, irre- coverably lost." The migration, however, ex- cited positive expressions of fear in New York. June 13, 1712, Governor Robert Hunter, of New York, wrote to the Board of Trade : "The war betwixt the people of North Caro- lina and the Tuscarora Indians is like to em- broil us all. The Five Nations, by instigation of the French, threaten to join them." Again, September 10, 1713, the same Governor wrote William Popple: "The Five Nations are hardly to be persuaded from sheltering the Tuscarora Indians, which would embroil us all." Here is a fear that the Five Nations would make common cause with the Tuscaroras against all the English colonies. The shelter- ing evidently refers to allowing them to live somewhere on their undisputed territories. Such sheltering on the Juniata would, at that period,
be as effectual as in New York, and in many respects preferable. How such sheltering would "embroil us all" will be seen in the savage letter of the Governor of Virginia to the Gov- ernor of New York some seven years later.
At a conference held with the Five Nations, September 20, 1713, as set forth in the journey of Hansen and others to Onondaga, one of the Iroquois orators said : "The Tuscarorase went out heretofore from us and have settled them- selves there (in Carolina) ; now they have got in a war and are dispersed and have abandoned their castles. But have compassion on them. The English have got the upper hand of them ; they have abandoned their castles and are scat- tered hither and thither. Let that suffice. (IIere follows a request that "Corlear," Gov- ernor of New York, will act as 'mediator, as- suring him that they will do no more harm.) For they are no longer a nation with a name, being once dispersed." A year after this, Sep- tember 20, 1714, at a conference with Governor Hunter, the Five Nations orator said : " We acquaint you that the Tuscarora Indians are come to shelter themselves among the Five Nations. They were of us, and went from us long ago, and are now returned and promise to live peaceably among us." This, for the first time, sounds as if some of the Tuscaroras were actually living among the Iroquois ; though being on the Juniata and along the middle Susquehanna may, in the language of that day, under the wide sway of Iroquois rule, have been regarded as sheltering among the Five Nations. If some of them were at this date already in New York, this passage stands alone in support of the fact ; and it is very in- definite, and at most could only refer to a small fragment of the tribe. It is utterly im- possible to follow all the detached fragments of the broken-up Tuscarora confederacy ; but there is no evidence that the mass of them had pro- ceeded any farther north at this time than the Juniata region.
After the Five Nations had overcome the tribes on the upper Susquehanna and the Juniata, they finally conquered the Susquehannocks, or Conestogas, in 1676. This opened up the way for predatory raids southward, and brought
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them into collision with the governments of Maryland and Virginia. In 1682 they were forced to indemnify these provinces for their depredations. Treaties were made and broken, and the fault was laid at the door of the in- discreet young men, who could not be restrained. Albany was the place where the chain of friend- ship was brightened from time to time, by giv- ing large presents to these Indians. These goods were purchased at Albany, and became a regu- lar source of income, and were looked forward to like a modern government pay-day. In December, 1719, the president of the Council of New York wrote a circular letter to the Gov- ernors of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and Carolina on Indian affairs. He observed that the Five Nations living in that province " think themselves slighted by the governments to the southward," and he intimated that it was time to come to Albany and hold a treaty with them. This enraged Governor Spottswood, of Virginia, who was opposed to " all the King's Governors dancing many hundred miles to Al- bany to treat upon every whim and caprice " of "your savages," as he writes to the Governor of New York. His sarcastic letter is dated January 25, 1720. To this letter we are in- debted for several items of interest in the early alliance of the Tuscaroras with the Fiye Nations, and what is of especial value is a statement that will, we believe, solve the question as to how the name "Tuscarora " came to be geo- graphically fastened in Juniata County. The only natural solution is that the tribe once re- sided there, yet we have sought in vain for any respectable historian who has ventured the statement that they ever did live here. The early traders to the Ohio, in following the dividing water-shed between the Potomac and Juniata, came to the ' Tuscarora Path," the well-defined route used by that tribe in their migration northward, and which led to their settlement in the valley beyond. The first is known as Path Valley to this day, and the region where they had their headquarters is still Tuscarora Valley, thus illustrating how lan- guage adheres to the soil when the lips that spoke it are resolved into dust. The language of Gov. Spottswood, referred to, is as follows :
" In the years 1712 and 1713 they (the Five Na- tions) were actually in these parts assisting the Tus- carouroes, who had massacred in cold blood some hundreds of the English and were then warring against us ; and they have at this very day the chief murderers, with the greatest part of that nation, seated under their protection near Susquehannah river, whither they removed them when they found they could no longer support them against the force which the English brought upon them in these parts. During the Tuscouroro war about two hundred of your Indians set upon our Virginia traders as they were going to the southern Indians with a caravan of at least eighty horses loaded, and after killing one of our people and shooting most of the horses, they made booty of all the goods, declaring their reason for so doing was because they did not carry their am- munition to the Tuscouroroes. Is their close confed- eracy with the Tuscouroroes any ways agrecable to the Five Nations' answer which Lawrence Clauson reports to your Commissioners on the 6th of May, 1712, and to be taken for the assistants promised to reduce these murderers ? "
The above extract proves that, although the great body of the Tuscaroras had left Carolina in 1713, yet seven years afterwards, instead of being with the Five Nations in New York, they were seated under their protection, near the Susquehanna River, having been removed there by them. The Five Nations had a close confederacy with the Tuscaroras, but they had not adopted them, nor had they taken them to New York, but left them living near the Sus- quehanna. In spite of the pressure brought to bear upon them, the Five Nations had aided their kindred, and in their extemity, had allowed them to occupy a quiet interior region, which they, in former years, had depopulated in their exterminating wars to the southward. ITere, hemmed in by mountains, they were beyond the reach of their enemies.
This position, that the Tuscaroras lived at some distance from the Five Nations, is strengthened by the assertion made by the Board of Trade, July 7, 1720, that the rob- beries and mischief's complained of by Vir- ginia had been committed by "some loose straggling Indians of the Five Nations, who had joined the Tuscaroras." This language shows that the loose fellows straggled from New York southward, and, living among the Tuscaroras, were molesting the Virginia set-
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tlers. This would have been no excuse in behalf of the Five Nations, if the Tuscaroras were then living among them, and if they then constituted a part of their confederacy.
The Tuscaroras did not all come north at the same time. They came in detached fragments for at least fifty-five years. The Nottaways remained until they entirely melted away. On the breaking up of the hostile forces, in 1713, the fragments of the several tribes scattered in different directions, seeking safety from the vengeance of their overpowering foes. This made them a roving, uneasy set of fellows, who were constantly seeking to better their condition by a change of resi- dence. These fragments cannot be followed, as they soon lose their identity in the com- pany of remnants of other tribes similarly situated. Yet we have the testimony of Gov- ernor Spottswood that in 1720 "the greatest part of that nation," including their chief warriors, were seated near the Susquehanna, in a region of which the white people knew little or nothing. It is possible that all who came north did not live in the Tuscarora Valley. They had a wide scope of country over which to roam, as it was then an empty interior. It is possible that some of them may have gone already as far as New York, but the bulk of them must have been in Tuscarora Valley. Their council-house, no doubt, was in the " old fort field," near Milligan's, above Academia, where their remains exactly correspond with what we know of these people. Their fort site and mound will be found described under the head of Beale township. There were at this period no other tribes in this region. The Delawares were then only beginning to leave their native river, but had not crossed the Susquehanna. The Shawanees, who had come up from the south, the Conoys and Nanticokes from Maryland, and the little squad of Cones- togas, all lived cast of the Kittatinny Moun- tains.
Frederick Kidder says: " It is certain that the main part of the tribe had joined the Iroquois in 1717." For this assertion there is not a particle of evidence. Morgan, in his "League of the Iroquois," says : " The Tusca-
roras were regarded as a constituent member of the confederacy, although they were not ad- mitted to full equality, as the Five Nations were opposed to changing the number and apportionment of the sachemships adopted at the first organization of the league. Otherwise they were equal." Samuel G. Drake, an In- dian antiquarian, who has made extensive researches into the history of North American Indians, says : " The Tuscaroras from Carolina joined them (the Five Nations) about 1712, but were not formally admitted into the con- federacy until about ten years after that-this gained them the name of the Six Nations." A strong confirmatory proof is found in the fact that during this period they are never mentioned at any of their conferences or treaties. Conferences were held at Albany, September 20, 1714, August 27, 1715, June 13, 1717, September 7, 1721, and August 27, 1722, besides many other meetings with the Five Nations, so called, bat at which there is no mention of the Tuscaroras. How could this be if they were received and adopted, as declared by our historians, immediately after they came from Carolina ? The inference is clear. During these ten years most of them were on the Juniata, and after this probation they were formally assigned a portion of the Oneida territory, where they had their council- house east of Syracuse.
On September 1, 1722, Governor Burnet held a conference with the Five Nations, at Albany, at which the Iroquois speaker said : " We inform you also that three companies of our people are gone out to fight against the Flatheads (Catawbas), who have been our ene- mies for a long time. There are also two French Indians that live at Cadarachqui; that went out a fighting two years ago towards Vir- ginia by way of Cayouga and have their abode among the Tuskarores that live near Virginia and go backwards and forwards." Beyond all doubt the Tuscaroras, among whom these two French Indians had their headquarters, were those in Tuscarora Valley. At this treaty Gov- ernor Spottswood got the Five Nations to agree to a division line along the Potomac and the high ridge of the Allegheny Mountains, to
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JUNIATA AND SUSQUEHANNA VALLEYS IN PENNSYLVANIA.
prevent ineursions between the northern and southern Indians. There are ten tribes enu- merated on each side of that line. The Five Nations are named in their order from cast to west, but the Tuscaroras are classified separately with the tribes resident in Pennsylvania and subject to the Five Nations. The Iroquois orator said : " As you engaged for ten nations, so do we, viz .: for the Five Nations and for the Tuscarores, Conestogoes, Chuanoes, Och- iachquanawieroones and Ostanghaes, which live upon Susquehanna River." This would seem to imply that these five tribes lived upon the Susquehanna, but upon the 6th of Sep- tember it is noted that the agreement made with the Governor of Virginia was by the whole Five Nations, including the Tuscaroras. Evidently they were only then beginning to reckon the Tuscaroras as a factor in connection with the negotiations with the Five Nations. On the same day it is recorded that the Indians "gave six shouts-five for the Five Nations and one for the castle of the Tuscarores, lately seated between the Oneidas and Onondagas." The word "lately" cannot possibly be acci- dental. It is positive proof of their recent settlement. At the conclusion of this treaty, in the presence of the New York Commis- sioners of Indian Affairs, the Five Nations, calling themselves by that name, requested a special interview with the Governor of Penn- sylvania, and this is the way in which the record introduces the Tuscaroras : "The next day, the 14th day of September, the Governor received, at his chambers, the ten chiefs of the Five Nations, being two from each, together with two others, said to be of the Tuscororoes." This is the first mention of the Tuscaroras in the management of the affairs of the Five Na- tions, and the expression denotes that their ap- pearance in this capacity was something new. On December 4, 1726, Governor Burnet, of New York in speaking of the Iroquois, says : " Who were but Five formerly, but now, by sending for the Tuscaroras from South Caro- lina, are become Six." Even as late as April 18, 1732, the Governor of Pennsylvania said : " Those Indians by us generally called the Five Nations, but of late the Six Nations, alias the
Minquays and Iroquois." Here we find the name Six Nations only lately substituted for Five Nations; the French term, Iroquois, and the Dutch, Minequas, in the process of transforma- tion into Mingos, strangely transferred from the Conestogas, whom they conquered, to their conquerors in New York, and finally especially applied to a mixture of Conestogas and New York Indians settled in Ohio.
It may seem strange that, from the time the Tuscaroras left Carolina until they were adopted, and became one of the Six Nations, that so little is said of them, and that we have trouble to find evidence of their location. This is explained by their fragmentary condition, being too dispersed to be regarded as a nation ; and partly by the fact that the body of them were then living beyond the range of white habitations, among the mountains, perhaps not yet penetrated by the ubiquitous trader; and, again, partly because further trouble with the white people was so dreaded that for a season they were retired and circumspect. Their town in Tuscarora Valley was, however, not abandoned altogether when they were adopted by the Five Nations, as is here demonstrated by the following quotation. An Indian boy (of what tribe is not stated, but most likely a Tuscarora), held as a slave by Nathaniel Ford, an Englishman on the Pedee River, called Constichrohare by the Indians (now the site of Cheraw, Chesterfield County, S. C.), was carried away. Complaint was made, and Governor Burnet and the Commissioners of In- dian Affairs of New York, on, September . 13, 1726, made inquiry of the Iroquois concerning this boy. In reply they used these words : " You have made inquiry concerning a slave, whom you say was taken by our people. We acknowl- edge to have been of the company that took him. He is given to Indians who live on a branch of the Susquehannah River, which is called Soghneija- die. Therefore we desire you to make a farther inquiry, for that place is nearer to you than to us."1 Beyond all doubt the branch of the Sus- quehanna here named is the Juniata, and this reference to it is especially interesting, as the oldest mention of the name of this river, outside
I See N. Y. Col. Hist., vol. v. 796.
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of ancient maps, that we have been able to find. No doubt the Indians who had this slave in possession on the Sogh-ne-ija-die were Tusca- roras, who still had a town in Juniata County. The Dutch used "ij " as we use the letter " y ". We read occasionally of some of the tribe being in this part of the State in later years. Sep- tember 5, 1730, we read that " three Tuskarorows were missing at Pechston " (Harrisburg).
While we claim to have established for the Tuscaroras a residence in the Juniata region with a central council-fire and fort in Tuscarora Valley, between their exodus from Carolina and their admission into the Iroquois confed- tracy, we claim, also, that there were some Tuscaroras still living at this outpost until after the Juniata region was sold to Penn. John O'Neal wrote a letter to the Governor from Car- lisle, May 27, 1753, in which he remarks,- " A large number of Delawares, Shawanese and Tuscaroras continue in this vicinity-the greater number having gone to the west." In an old bill of sale for lands at Academia, in Tuscarora Valley, written June 1, 1754, mention is made of Indians then " settled on ye bottom, sur- rounded by ye creek," which was a large loop, known as the Half-Moon. John Armstrong took up three hundred and fifty-six acres of this land February 3, 1755, and in his appli- cation says it is " where some Indians, called by the name of Lakens, live, some six miles from the mouth of the Tuscarora," and George Armstrong on the same day got a warrant for land " on the south side of Tuscarora, opposite to the settlement of the Indians called Lack- ens."
The year 1756, following Braddock's defeat, will be remembered as a time of border devas- tations by the Indians, headed by French. Among a series of letters and reports, written at Fort Duquesne (Pittsburgh), we find the fol- lowing, dated September 15th :
"Two hundred Indians and French left Fort Du- quesne to set fire to four hundred houses in a part of Pennsylvania. That Province has suffered but little in consequence of the intrigues of the Five Nations with Taskarosins, a tribe on the lands of that Prov- ince, and in alliance with the Five Nations, But now they have declared that they will assist their brethren, the Delawares and Chouanons (Shawanese), ;
and consequently several have sided with them, so that the above Province will be laid waste the same as Virginia and Carolina."
It would seem, from this extract, that these Tuscaroras, who lived in this province, were friendly to the whites, and for a time served as a partial protection to them in Pennsylvania. We have met no such evidence elsewhere. At this date the castern part of the Juniata region had been already devastated; but the intima- tion is that had it not been for a desire to win over these Tuscaroras, the borders would have suffered still more. We have no means for ascertaining the number of Tuscaroras then located here; but it was probably not large. We cannot well doubt the statement here given, as the French were well posted on Indian af- fairs, and, at that time, had parties out scouting under their direction to murder and burn in a style that is shocking to relate.
In a journal kept by Colonel James Burd, while building Fort Augusta, at Shamokin, June 4, 1757, we find these words : "This day the Tuscarora tribe informed me they intended setting off up the river; I gave them provis- ions enough, and five gallons of rum; they set off accordingly.". From the abrupt manner in which they are here spoken of, we infer that this branch of the Tuscaroras had been living near Shamokin, and probably stretching along the Tuscarora Path southward to the Potomac, or scattered over the Juniata Valley. There seems to be evidence, also, that at still later dates there were members of that tribe in Tus- carora Valley. On August 11, 1762, the Gov- ernor received a letter " taken from the mouth of Angus, Tuscarora chief, by Eli Forbes, missionary at Onohoquage." It is dated at "Lower Tuscarora Onohoquage, July 8, 1762." The chief Angus, or Akis, carried this letter in person. The place is said to be " on the upper waters of the Susquehanna." It contains this sentence : " We should be glad to be informed of the state and behavior of our brethren in Tuscarora Valley, and to have some directions about the way, as we propose to make them a visit, and also should be glad of a pass or recommendation in writing, that we may be friendly received on our way to and at the val-
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ley." It may be argued that there is a Tus- carora Valley in the southeast corner of Brad- ford County, and that that may be the region referred to in this and in the French extract above given ; but this does not seem possible for the following reasons : (1) The Tuscaroras did not settle at the mission point in Bradford County until ten years later (1766); (2) in that locality they would have been no barrier to any of the white settlements against Indians operating against them from the Pittsburgh re- gion; and (3) the chief Augus would not have come from his town (Windsor, Broome County, N. Y.), a little beyond that place, to Lancaster, to inquire from the Governor the way to Tus- carora Valley in Bradford County ; and, finally (4), his letter asks for a pass that would secure him a friendly reception among the white peo- ple, not only on his way, but also " at the val- ley." There were white inhabitants at this time in Juniata County, but none in Bradford County. The conclusion is, therefore, that this chief desired to visit his kindred in the Juniata Tuscarora Valley. The fact is the more interesting as we find, by the first assessment, taken the next year, that there were over fifty settlers already living in the valley. They must have settled among these red men-a condition of affairs which we have been slow to believe. When the last of them took their departure we have found no means to determine.
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