USA > Pennsylvania > Jefferson County > Jefferson County, Pennsylvania : her pioneers and people, 1800-1915, Volume I > Part 5
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95
Another kind of dance was attended only by men. Each rose in his turn, and danced with great agility and boldness, extolling his own or his forefathers' great deeds in a song, to which all beat time, by a monotonous, rough note, which was given out with great vehem- ence at the commencement of each bar.
The war dance, which was always held either before or after a campaign, was dread- ful to behold. None took part in it but the warriors themselves. They appeared armed. as if going to battle. One carried his gun or hatchet, another a long knife, the third a toma- hawk, the fourth a large club, or they all ap- peared armed with tomahawks. These they brandished in the air, to show how they in- tended to treat their enemies. They affected such an air of anger and fury on this occasion that it made a spectator shudder to behold them. A chief led the dance, and sang the warlike deeds of himself or his ancestors. At the end of every celebrated feat of valor he wielded his tomahawk with all his might against a post fixed in the ground. He was then followed by the rest ; each finished his round by a blow against the post. Then they danced all together; and this was the most frightful scene. They affected the most hor- rible and dreadful gestures; threatened to beat, cut and stab each other. They were. however, amazingly dexterous in avoiding the threatened danger. To complete the horror of the scene, they howled as dreadfully as if in actual fight, so that they appeared as rav- ing madmen. During the dance they some- times sounded a kind of fife, made of reed. which had a shrill and disagreeable note. The Iroquois used the war dance even in times of peace, with a view to celebrate the deeds of their heroic chiefs in a solemn manner.
The Indians, as well as "all human flesh," were heirs of disease. The most common complaints were pleurisy, weakness and pains in the stomach and breast, consumption, diar- rhœa, rheumatism, dysentery, inflammatory fevers, and occasionally the smallpox made dreadful ravages among them. The general remedy for all disorders, small or great, was a sweat. For this purpose they had in every town an oven, situated at some distance from the dwellings, built of stakes and boards. covered with sods, or dug in the side of a hill. and heated with some red-hot stones. Into this the patient crept naked, and in a short time was thrown into profuse perspiration. As soon as the patient felt himself too hot he crept out, and immediately plunged himself in a river or other cold water, where he con-
CAPTAIN GEORGE SMOKE AND HIS COUSIN JOHN SMOKE
P. BEAVER
INDIAN STOCKADE (BARK HOUSES) Interior View, Showing Long House and Ga-no-sote within
THE BEW YORK FULLIC LISTA RY
ASTAR, L ' X THECLA I
G
1.2
9
JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANI.
tinued about thirty seconds, and then went again into the oven. After having performed this operation three times successively, he smoked his pipe with composure, and in many cases a cure was completely effected. In some places they had ovens constructed large enough to receive several persons. Some chose to pour water now and then upon the heated stones, to increase the steam and pro- mote more profuse perspiration. Many In- di ns in perfect health made it a practice of going into the oven once or twice a week to renew their strength and spirits. Some pre- tended by this operation to prepare themselves for business which requires mature delibera- tion and artifice.
If the sweating did not remove the disorder, other means were applied. Many of the In- (lians believed that medicines had no efficacy unless administered by a professed physician ; enough of professed doctors could be found, many of both sexes. Indian doctors never applied medicines without accompanying them with mysterious ceremonies, to make their ef- fect appear supernatural. The ceremonies were various. Many breathed upon the sick ; they averred their breath was wholesome. In addition to this, they spurted a certain liquor. made of herbs, out of their mouth over the patient's whole body, distorting their f and roaring dreadfully. In some
physicians crept into the oven, where they sweat, howled, roared, and now and then grinned horribly at their patients, who had been laid before the opening, and frequently. felt the pulse of the patient. Then sentence was pronounced, foretelling either recovery or death. On one occasion, a Moravian mis- sionary, who was present, says: "An Indian physician had put on a large bearskin,so that his arms were covered with the forelegs, his feet with the hind legs, and his head was en- tirely concealed in the bear's head, with the addition of glass eyes. He came in this at- tire, with a calabash in his hand, accompanied by a great crowd of people, into the patient's hut, singing and dancing, when he grasped a handful of hot ashes, and scattering them into the air, with a horrid noise, approached the patient, and began to play several legerdemain tricks with small bits of wood, by which he pretended to be able to restore him to health."
The common people believe that by rattling the calabash the physician had power to make the spirits discover the cause of the disease, and even evade the malice of the evil spirit who occasioned it.
Their materia medica, used in curing dis-
eases, were rattlesnake-root, skins of rattle- snakes dried and pulverized, thorny ash, tooth- achetree, tulip tree, dogwood, wild laurel, sassafras, poison-ash, wintergreen, liverwort, Virginia poke, jalap, sarsaparilla, ginseng, and a few others.
Wars among the Indians were always car- ried on with the greatest fury, and lasted much longer than they do now among them. The offensive weapons were, before the whites came among them, bows, arrows and clubs. The latter were made of the hardest kind of wood, from two to three feet long and very heavy, with a large round knob at one end. Their weapon of defense was a shield, made of the tough hide of a buffalo, on the convex side of which they received the arrows and darts of the enemy. But about the middle of the last century this was laid aside by the Delawares and Iroquois, though they continued to use to a later period bows, arrows and clubs of war, the clubs pointed with nails and pieces of iron, when used at all. Guns were measurably substituted for all these. The hatchet and longknife were used. as well as the guns. The army of these na- tions consisted of all their young men, includ- ing the boys of fifteen years. They had their captains and subordinate officers. Their cap- tains would be called among them command- ers or generals. The requisite qualifications for this station were prudence, cunning, reso- Intion, bravery, undauntedness, and previous good fortune in some fight or battle.
"To lift the hatchet" or to begin a war, was always, as they declared, not till just and im- portant causes prompted them to it. Then they assigned as motives that it was necessary to avenge the injuries done to the nation. Perhaps the honor of being distinguished as great warriors may have been an "ingredient in the cup." But before they entered upon so hazardous an undertaking they carefully weighed all the proposals made, compared the probable advantages or disadvantages that might accrue. A chief could not begin a war without the consent of his captains, nor could he accept a war-belt only on the condition of its being considered by the captains. The chief was bound to preserve peace to the ut- most of his power. But if several captains were unanimous in declaring r, the chief was then obliged to deliver the care of his people, for a time, into the hands of the cap- tains, and to lay down his office. Yet his in- fluence tended greatly either to prevent or encourage the commencement of war, for the Indians believed that a war could not be stic-
10
JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
cessful without the consent of the chief, and the captains, on that account, strove to be in harmony with him. After war was agreed on, and they wished to secure the assistance of a nation in league with them, they notified that nation by sending a piece of tobacco, or by an embassy. By the first, they intended that the captains were to smoke pipes and consider seriously whether they would take part in the war or not. The embassy was in- trusted to a captain, who carried a belt of wampum, upon which the object of the em- bassy was described by certain figures, and a hatchet with a red handle. After the chief had been informed of his commission, it was laid before a council. The hatchet having been laid on the ground, he delivered a long speech, while holding the war-belt in his hand, always closing the address with the request to take up the hatchet, and then delivering the war-belt. If this was complied with, no more was said, and this act was considered as a solemn promise to lend every assistance ; but if neither the hatchet was taken up nor the belt accepted, the ambassador drew the just con- clusion that the nation preferred to remain neutral, and without any further ceremony returned home.
The Iroquois were very informal in declar- ing war. They often sent out small parties. and having seized the first man they met be- longing to the nation they had intended to engage, killed and scalped him, then cleaved his head with a hatchet, which they left stick- ing in it, or laid a war-club, painted red, upon the body of the victim. This was a formal challenge, in consequence of which a captain of an insulted party would take up the weapons of the murderers and hasten into their coun- try, to be revenged upon them. If he re- turned with a scalp, he thought he had avenged the rights of his own nation.
Among the Iroquois it required but little time to make preparations for war. One of their most necessary preparations was to paint themselves red and black, for. they held it that the most horrid appearance of war was the greatest armament. Some captains fasted and attended to their dreams, with the view to gain intelligence of the issue of the war. The night previous to the march of the army was spent in feasting, at which the chiefs were present, and a hog or some dogs were killed. Dog's flesh, said they, inspired them with the genuine martial spirit. Even women, in some instances, partook of this feast, and ate dog's flesh greedily. Now and then, when a warrior was induced to make a solemn
declaration of his war inclination, he held up a piece of dog's flesh in sight of all present and devoured it, pronouncing these words. "Thus will 1 devour my enemies !" After the feast the captain and all his people began the war dance, and continued till daybreak, till they had become quite hoarse and weary. They generally danced all together, and each in his turn took the head of a hog in his hand. As both their friends and the women generally accompanied them to the first night's encamp- ment, they halted about two or three miles from the town, danced the war dance once more, and the day following began their march. Before they made an attack they rec- onnoitred every part of the country. To this end they dug holes in the ground; if practicable, in a hillock, covered with wood, in which they kept a small charcoal fire, from which they discovered the motions of the enemy undiscovered. When they sought a prisoner or a scalp, they ventured, in many instances even in daytime, to execute their designs. Effectually to accomplish this, they skulked behind a bulky tree, and crept slyly around the trunk, so as not to be observed by the person or persons for whom they lay in ambush. In this way they slew many. But if they had a family or town in view, they al- ways preferred the night, when their enemies were wrapped in profound sleep, and in this way killed, scalped, or made prisoners of many of the enemies, set fire to the houses, and re- tired with all possible haste to the woods or some other place of safe retreat. To avoid pursuit, they disguised their footmarks as much as possible. They depended much on stratagem for their success. Even in war they thought it more honorable to distress their enemy rather by stratagem than combat. The English, not aware of the artifice of the Indians, lost an army when Braddock was de- feated.
The Indians' cruelty, when victorious, was without bounds ; their thirst for blood was al- most unquenchable. They never made peace till compelled by necessity. No sooner were terms of peace proposed than the captains laid down their office and delivered the govern- inent of the state into the hands of the chiefs. .A captain had no more right to conclude a peace than a chief to begin war. When peace had been offered to a captain he could give no other answer than to mention the proposal to the chief, for as a warrior he could not make peace. If the chief inclined to peace, he used his influence to effect that end, and all hostility ceased, and, in conclusion, the calu-
11
JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
met, or peace-pipe, was smoked and belts of wampum exchanged, and a concluding speech made with the assurance "that their friend- ship should last as long as the sun and moon give light, rise and set ; as long as the stars shine in the firmament, and the rivers flow with water."
The weapons employed by our Indians two hundred years ago were axes, arrows and knives of stone. Shells were sometimes used to make knives.
The Indian bow was made as follows: The hickory limb was cut with a stone axe, and the wood heated on both sides near a fire until it was soft enough to serape down to the proper size and shape. A good bow meas- ured forty-six inches in length, three-fourths of an inch thick in the center, and one and a quarter inches in width, narrowing down to the points to five-eighths of an inch. The ends were thinner than the middle. Bowmaking was tedious work.
The bowstring was made of the ligaments obtained from the vertebrae of the elk. The ligaments were split, scraped and twisted into a cord by rolling the fibres between the palm of the hand and the thigh. One end of the string was knotted to the bow, but the other end was looped. in order that the bow could be quickly strung.
Quivers to carry the arrows were made of dressed buckskin, with or without the fur. The squaws did all the tanning. The arrow- heads were made of flint or other hard stone or bone: they were fastened to the ash or hickory arrows with the sinews of the deer. The arrow was about two feet and a half in length, and a feather was fastened to the butt end to give it a rotary motion in its flight. Poisoned arrows were made by dipping them into decomposed liver, to which had been added the poison of the rattlesnake. The venom or decomposed animal matter no doubt caused blood poisoning and death.
Bows and arrows were long used by the red men after the introduction of firearms, be- cause the Indian could be more sure of his game without revealing his presence. For a long time after the introduction of firearms the Indians were more expert with the how and arrow than with the rifle.
It was originally the practice of our In- dians, as of all other savage people, to cut off in war the heads of their enemies for trophies, but for convenience in retreat this was changed to scalping.
The stone hatchets, or tomahawks, were in the shape of a wedge; they were of no use in
felling trees, which was accomplished by building a fire around the roots. Their stone pestles were about twelve inches long and five inches thick. Their knives were made of flint and hornstone. They used bird claws for "fishhooks," or made them of bone.
All the stone implements of our Indians except the arrows were ground and polished. How this was done the reader must imagine. Indians had their mechanics and their work- shops or "spots" where implements were made. You must remember that the Indian had no iron or steel tools, only bone, stone and wood to work with. The flint arrows were made from a stone of uniform density. Large chips were flaked or broken from the rock. These chips were again deftly chipped with bone chisels into arrows, and made straight by pressure. A lever was used on the rock to separate chips- a bone tied to a heavy stick.
They had a limited variety of copper imple- ments, which were of rare occurrence, and which were too soft to be of use in working so hard a material as flint or quartzite. Hence it is believed that they fashioned their spear and arrow heads with other implements than those of iron or steel. They must have ac- quired. by their observation and numerous experiments, a thorough and practical knowl- edge of cleavage, that is, "the tendency to split in certain directions, which is characteristic of most of the crystallizable minerals." Capt. John Smith, speaking of the Virginia Indians in his sixth voyage, says, "His arrow-head he quickly maketh with a little bone, which he weareth at his bracelet, of a splint of a stone or glasse. in the form of a heart, and these they glue to the ends of the arrows. With the sinews of the deer and the tops of deer's horns boiled to a jelly they make a glue which will not dissolve in cold water." Schoolcraft says: "The skill displayed in this art, as it is exhibited by the tribes of the entire con- tinent, has excited admiration. The material employed is generally some form of hornstone. sometimes passing into flint. No specimens have, however, been observed where the sub- stance is gunflint. The hornstone is less hard than common quartz, and can be readily broken by contact with the latter." Catlin, in his "last ramble among the Indians," says : "Every tribe has its factory in which these arrowheads are made. and in these only cer- tain adepts are able or allowed to make them for the use of the tribe. Erratic boulders of fint are collected and sometimes brought an immense distance, and broken with a sort of sledge hammer made of a rounded pebble or
12
JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
hornstone set in a twisted withe, holding the stone and forming a handle. The flint, at the indiscriminate blows of the sledge, is broken into a hundred pieces, and such flakes selected as from the angles of their fracture and thick- ness will answer as the basis of an arrowhead. The master-workman, seated on the ground. lays one of these flakes on the palm of his hand, holding it firmly down with two or more fingers of the same hand, and with his right hand, between the thumb and two forefingers. places his chisel or punch on the point that is to be broken off, and a co-operator, a striker. in front of him, with a mallet of very hard wood, strikes the chisel or punch on the upper end, flaking the flint off on the under side be- low each projecting point that is struck. The flint is then turned and chipped in the same manner from the opposite side, and that is chipped until required shape and dimensions are obtained, all the fractures being made on the palm of the hand. In selecting the flake for the arrowhead a nice judgment must be used or the attempt will fail. \ flake with two opposite parallel, or nearly parallel, planes of cleavage is found, and of the thickness re- quired for the center of the arrowpoint. The first chipping reaches nearly to the center of these planes, but without quite breaking it away, and each clipping is shorter and shorter, · until the shape and edge of the arrowhead are formed. The yielding elasticity of the palm of the hand enables the chip to come off with- out breaking the body of the flint, which would be the case if it were broken on a hard substance. These people have no metallic instruments to work with, and the punch which they use. I was tokl, was a piece of bone, but on examining it, I found it to be of substances much harder, made of the tooth. incisor, of the sperm whale, which cetaceans are often stranded on the coast of the Pacific."
They made ropes, bridles, nets, etc., out of a wild weed called Indian hemp. The twine or cords were manufactured by the squaws. who did all the work-they were more apt than the braves. They gathered stalks of this hemp, separated them into filaments, and then. taking a number of filaments in one hand, rolled them rapidly upon their bare thighs until twisted, locking, from time to time, the ends with fresh fibres. The cord thus made was finished by dressing with a mixture of grease and wax, and drawn over a smooth groove in a stone. For ropes and straps, raw- hide and barks were used, the bark making the best ropes. The inside bark of the eln
or basswood was boiled in ashes, separated into filaments, and then braided into rope.
The kettles were made of clay, or what was called "pot stone." These cooking vessels could not be exposed to fire, hence they used large upright vessels made of birch bark, in which to boil food, repeatedly putting stones red hot into the water in these vessels, forc- ing them to boil.
C'anoes were made of birch or linnwood bark. and many wigwam utensils of that bark. This bark was peeled in early spring. The bark canoe was the American Indian's invention. Their tobacco pipes were made of stone bowls and ash stems.
The moccasin was an Indian invention, and one of great antiquity. The needle was made from a bone taken from the ankle-joint of the deer, and the thread was from the sinews. The deerskin was tanned by the use of the brains of the deer. The brains were dried in cakes for future use. Bearskins were not tanned, but were used for cloaks and beds.
From Penn's arrival in 1682 the Delawares were subject to the Iroquois, or the confed- eracy of the Six Nations, who were the most war-like savages in America. The Iroquois were usually known among the English peo- ple as the Five Nations. The nations were divided, and one famous tribe known as the Mohawks, the fire-striking people, they having been the first to procure firearms. The Sen- ecas, mountaineers, occupied western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania. They were found in great numbers along the Alle- gheny and its tributaries. Their great chiefs were Cornplanter and Guyasutha. This tribe was the most numerous, powerful and war- like of the Iroquois nation, and comprised the Indians of Jefferson county.
These were Indians pure and uncorrupted. Before many a log fire, at night, old settlers have often recited how clear, distinct and im- mutable were their laws and customs; that when fully understood a white man could transaet the most important business among them with as much safety as he can to-day in any commercial center.
In this day and age of progress we pride ourselves upon our railroads and telegraph as means of rapid communication, and yet, while it was well known to the carly settlers that news and light freight would travel with in- comprehensible speed from tribe to tribe, peo- ple of the present day fail to understand the complete system by which it was done.
1
13
JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
When runners were sent with messages to other tribes the courier took an easy running gait, which he kept up for hours at a time. It was a "dog trot," an easy, jogging gait. Of course he had no clothes on except a breech- clout and moccasins. He always carried both arms up beside the chest with the fists clinched and held in front of the breast. He ate but little the day before his departure. A courier could make a hundred miles from sunrise to sunset.
More than eighteen hundred years ago the Iroquois held a lodge in Punxsutawney (this town still bears its Indian name, which was their sobriquet for "gnat town"), to which point they could ascend with their canoes, and go still higher up the Mahoning to within a few hours' travel of the summit of the .Alle- gheny mountains. There were various Indian trails traversing the forests, one of which en- tered Punxsutawney near where Judge Mitch- ell now ( 1916) resides. The trails were the thoroughfares or roadway of the Indians, over which they journeyed when on the chase or the warpath, just as the people of the pres- ent age travel over their graded roads. An erroneous impression obtains among many at the present day that the Indian, in traveling the interminable forests which once covered our towns and fields, roamed at random, like a modern afternoon hunter, by no fixed paths, or that he was guided in his long journeyings solely by the sun and stars, or by the courses of the streams, and mountains; and true it is that these untutored sons of the woods were astronomers and geographers, and relied much upon these unerring guide-marks of nature. Even in the most starless nights they could determine their course by feeling the bark of the oak trees, which is always smoothest on the south side and roughest on the north. But still they had their trails or paths as distinctly marked as are our county and State roads. and often better located. The white traders adopted them, and often stole their names, to be in turn surrendered to the leader of some Anglo-Saxon army, and, finally, obliterated by some costly highway of travel and com- merce. They are now almost wholly effaced or forgotten. Hundreds travel along, or plough over them, unconscious that they are in the footsteps of the red men. It has not taken long to obliterate all these Indian land- marks from our land ; little more than a cen- tury ago the Indians roamed over all this west- ern country, and now scarce a vestige of their presence remains. Much has been written and said about their deeds of butchery and cruelty.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.