USA > Pennsylvania > Westmoreland County > Old Westmoreland : a history of western Pennsylvania during the Revolution > Part 6
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The captains were Van Swearingen, Moses Carson, Samuel Miller, James Piggott, Wendel Ourry, David Kill-
4 Washington-Crawford Letters, Washington to the Board of War, May 23, 1778.
5 American Archives, Fifth Series, vol. i., pp. 1574, 1578, 1583, 1586; vol. ii., pp. 1333, 1338, 1405.
6 See Diary of David McClure, New York, 1899.
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THE EIGHTH PENNSYLVANIA.
gore, Eliezer Myers and Andrew Mann. Of these, Carson was the only one who proved false to his country."
The nucleus of the regiment was the company of rifle- men formed by Van Swearingen, in May, 1776, for defense against the Indians. Swearingen was one of the noted characters of the border. With his father and brothers, he moved from Virginia and became a pioneer of the upper Monongahela valley. He was of great stature and fear- less spirit. By the time of the Revolution he had acquired on the frontier the name of "Indian Van." One of his brothers was captured by the Indians, and became a chief of the Shawnee nation.
Swearingen's company was stationed at Kittanning for two months and then joined the new continental bat- talion, ordered by Congress on July 11, 1776. The pur- pose of the organization of this battalion or regiment was to garrison the western posts and protect the frontier. It was an easy matter to recruit the borderers for the defense of their own homes, and the very best men of Westmoreland joined the organization. Between August 9 and December 16, 1776, 630 men were enlisted.
Mackay's battalion, as it was formed, went into camp at Kittanning, where the men built their own rude cabins for the winter. They had settled down for the cold season, sending out scouting parties up and down the river, when, on December 4, the regiment was surprised by the receipt of an order from the Continental Congress to march to New Jersey and join the army of General Washington. At that time the Commander-in-Chief was being driven, by the British, across New Jersey to the Delaware river, Phila- delphia was in danger, the Revolution seemed to be at its lowest ebb, great alarm prevailed in the East, and the call for aid went out to all parts of the colonies. The Eighth Pennsylvania, encamped on the Allegheny river, was the most distant command summoned to the support of the patriot cause.
7 American Archives, Fifth Series, vol. ii., p. 1340.
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OLD WESTMORELAND.
The order caused much discontent in Mackay's bat- talion, for officers and men felt it a hardship to be called away from the duty for which they had enlisted, leaving their families unprotected in the face of an impending Indian warfare. The regiment, moreover, was badly provided for a mid-winter march over the mountain ranges. It was with- out uniforms or tents, and was scantily furnished with blankets and cooking utensils. Yet there was little hesita- tion. The scouting parties were called in, pack horses were collected, and the command began its desperate journey on January 6, 1777, at the very worst period of the Pennsyl- vania winter.8
This was a trying march across the state, along bad roads, amid deep snows, by mountain passes, through deso- late forests, without tents or sufficient food or clothing. The whole distance exceeded 300 miles, of which more than 100 was through a region of rough mountains and their intervening valleys. Encampments were made in the most sheltered places, amid heavy timber, and great fires were kept going all night, that the men might not perish from the cold. Hunting parties procured some meat, but for most of the journey the only food consisted of cakes and bread. Arnold's winter toil through the Maine woods into Canada was the only march of the Revolution that ex- ceeded this in severity.
It is not surprising that some of the men deserted and returned to their homes. Toward the end of February the regiment reached Quibbletown, near Philadelphia, and went into camp in miserable quarters. One-third of the men were ill, and within two weeks there were 50 deaths. Among those who died as the result of their terrible priva- tions were Colonel Mackay and Lieutenant Colonel Wilson."
S Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, vol. v., p. 93. For the earis history of the regiment, its winter march and service in the east, see Pennsylvania Archives, Second Series, vol. x., pp. 641-648.
9 Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, vol. v., p. 283. Many writers have identified Colonel Aeneas Mackay with the Captain James Mackay, of South Carolina, who assisted Washington in the defense of Ft. Neces- sity in 1754. This is a mistake. Aeneas Mackay came to America about 1767 as a commissary with the Royal Irish regiment (Eighteenth Foot). For a sketch of the life of Lientenant Colonel George Wlison, see Veech's Monongahela of Old.
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THE EIGHTH PENNSYLVANIA.
While this perilous march was making, Washington had won the victories of Trenton and Princeton, had re- lieved Pennsylvania from the danger of immediate invasion, and had taken post, with his little army, north of the Rari- tan river, in New Jersey. To that place, after a short rest, the Eighth proceeded, and there it received new officers. Daniel Brodhead became colonel; Richard Butler was pro- moted to be lieutenant colonel, and Stephen Bayard, a son-in-law of Aeneas Mackay, was made major. The regi- ment was placed in the second brigade of General Anthony Wayne's Pennsylvania division.
In June Washington formed Morgan's famous rifle corps, of the best sharp-shooters to be found in the whole army. There is a general impression that this corps of 500 dead-shots was made up of Virginians, but this is an error. Virginia contributed only 163 men. More were chosen from the Eighth Pennsylvania than from any other command. It furnished 139, including Lieutenant Colonel Butler and Captain Swearingen. The First Pennsylvania furnished 54 men, from that part of the regiment recruited on the upper Susquehanna, among the number being the celebrated Lieutenant Samuel Brady.1º This corps was sent to the northern army under General Gates. It did the most effective fighting at Stillwater and Saratoga, and participat- ed in the triumph when Burgoyne surrendered.
Late in the fall Morgan rejoined Washington near Philadelphia. The men of the Eighth Pennsylvania returned to their regiment, and Lieutenant Brady was transferred to that organization. Thus he obtained the opportunity which gave him lasting fame on the western border. The portion of the regiment which had remained with Wash- ington's army had been engaged, under Wayne, in the de- feats of Brandywine, Paoli and Germantown, and the re- united command passed the winter of 1777-78 in the distress- ful encampment of Valley Forge.
Daniel Brodhead, who led the Eighth Pennsylvania back to the West and subsequently acted an important part
10 Pennsylvania Archives, Second Series, vol. x., pp. 311-313, 315, 643.
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OLD WESTMORELAND.
in the history of the frontier, was the son of a pioneer tavern-keeper living near the Delaware Water Gap. He had early experience in Indian war, learned surveying, settled in Reading, and took a prominent part in the agita- tion against the oppressions of the British Parliament. He was a member of the Pennsylvania convention in 1775, raised soldiers for the revolutionary army, and in 1776 became a lieutenant colonel in the Pennsylvania service. He acquitted himself gallantly in the battle of Long Island, August 27, 1776, and won promotion. He was a man of energy and persistence, bold in planning, fearless in exe- cuting, keen to assert his authority, well set in his opinions and of hasty temper.
The other regiment ordered to Fort Pitt, the Thirteenth Virginia, had been raised by Colonel William Crawford in the territory now included in the counties of Fayette, Wash- ington and Greene. Its formation in 1777 had been some- what slow, and before it was completed about 200 of the men were ordered to the East. The remainder of the com- mand, about 100 men, when enlisted, was detained at Fort Pitt, and was still there, under Colonel William Russell, when the eastern detachment, with Washington's army, was ordered to return to the West.
Lieutenant Colonel John Gibson was promoted to the rank of colonel, went west with the main part of the regi- ment, and took command of the reunited force under Mc- Intosh. Colonel Russell was called to the East.11
11 Washington's Letters to the American Congress, vol. ii., pp. 229, 232.
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BACK TO THE HARRIED FRONTIER.
CHAPTER XI.
BACK TO THE HARRIED FRONTIER.
In both of its marches across the state of Pennsyl- vania, the Eighth regiment was unfortunate. The first, from Kittanning to Philadelphia, was made in the dead of winter; the second, from Valley Forge to Fort Pitt, was in the heat of midsummer, and included a long diversion up the valley of the Susquehanna.
General McIntosh, with the detachment of the Thir- teenth Virginia, left camp toward the end of May and marched to Lancaster, where the fugitive Congress was in session. The Eighth Pennsylvania, under Colonel Brod- head, did not march from Valley Forge until the middle of June, and then proceeded by way of Lancaster to Car- lisle. Before their departure into the borderland the men of the Westmoreland regiment received uniforms. The officers were outfitted with the traditional blue of the con- tinental line, but the men were clad in hunting shirts, with broad-brimmed hats looped up, and long leggings. When organized in the West, the men carried long rifles, but these were replaced, on the advice of General Wayne, by mus- kets and bayonets, with the exception of a small detach- ment of sharp-shooters, who retained their rifles for scout- ing and skirmishing work.
While the Thirteenth Virginia pushed onward, over the mountain road toward the Ohio, General McIntosh waited at Carlisle until the Eighth regiment arrived there early in July. The most alarming news had been received
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OLD WESTMORELAND.
from the upper branches of the Susquehanna. In May the Iroquois came down on the scattered settlements of the West Branch and in two weeks killed and captured more than 30 persons. This caused what was known as the Big Runaway, when nearly all the settlers on the West Branch, from Bald Eagle creek down to the junction with the North Branch, fled by boats, on horses and afoot to Sunbury, Carlisle, York and Lancaster. Great was the suffering of the thousands of fugitives.1 General McIntosh reached the Susquehanna to find himself surrounded and beset by the fleeing settlers and their families, crying for protection and relief. He determined to send some of his troops up the Susquehanna to stop the Indian incur- sions, but before the Eighth arrived at Carlisle the news of a greater calamity was received.
On the 3d of July, 1778, took place the "massacre" of Wyoming, most notably but untruthfully commemorated by Thomas Campbell in his poem, "Gertrude of Wyoming." Four hundred British and tories and 700 Iroquois In- dians, from Central New York, burst into the beautiful val- ley on the North Branch of the Susquehanna with gun, tomahawk, scalping knife and torch, and in a few days swept it clean of its inhabitants and habitations.
At once Colonel Brodhead was ordered to march up the Susquehanna, drive out the enemy and encourage the settlers to return to their plantations. The baggage and pack horses were left at Carlisle, and on July 12, the regi- ment marched in light order, about 340 strong.2 Several small detachments had already preceded the regiment on the road toward Fort Pitt, to prepare provisions for the men and forage for the horses at points along the route. The command hurried to Sunbury, where Fort Augusta was held by 100 bold volunteers. From that place Colonel Brodhead sent details up both branches of the great river.
The British and Indians had retired from the Wyoming
1 Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, vol. vi., pp. 499, 615, 631; Day's Hist. Coll. of Pa., p. 451.
2 Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, vol. vi., p. 635.
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BACK TO THE HARRIED FRONTIER.
valley and the commander found that it was too late to as- sist the inhabitants there against their enemy. The ruin had been wrought, and all the settlers had either been killed, carried away captives or driven across the mountains toward the Delaware river.
On the West Branch the situation was not quite so bad, for there the harvests had not been destroyed, and many cabins were yet standing. It became Brodhead's duty to clear the region of bands of prowling savages, guard the trails and place detachments at the principal centers of set- tlement to encourage the farmers to return and do their harvesting.
Major Butler was sent up the North Branch to Nesco- pec, with two companies; Captain John Finley, who had succeeded Moses Carson when that individual deserted, was detailed with his company into Penn's valley, west of the Susquehanna, and with the remainder of the command Brodhead advanced up the West Branch to Muncy, to cover the harvesters in that rich agricultural region. On July 24 Brodhead wrote from Muncy: "Great numbers of the inhabitants returned upon my approach, and are now col- lected in large bodies, reaping their harvests.""
The Nescopec and Muncy detachments had few op- portunities to fire their muskets at skulking Indians, but the men of Captain Finley's company, sent into Penn's valley, had the only serious encounter. They were posted at the settlement of Colonel James Potter, the pioneer of that region, who had built a stockade around his house, about nine miles southeast of the present town of Belle- fonte, Center county. On an evening of July a detail of the soldiers, being at a little distance from the stockade, was attacked by a band of savages, and made a running fight for shelter. Two of the men were killed in sight of the fort, but their scalps were saved by a relief party. One of the Indians was killed and another severely wounded.
At Muncy a stockade fort liad been built by Captain
3 Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, vol. vi., p. 660.
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OLD WESTMORELAND.
John Brady, the father of the famous Samuel, and there- some of the bolder settlers had made a stand until the regu- lars came to their relief. John Brady had commanded a company in the Twelfth Pennsylvania, had been wounded at the battle of Brandywine, and had been honorably dis- charged from the continental service that he might assist in the defense of the northern frontier. Lieutenant Samuel Brady returned with his regiment to Muncy, and for the first time after three years of service in the army of the Revolution, was permitted to revisit his parents, brothers and sisters. The family reunion was not a long one. The Eighth Pennsylvania was relieved, at the end of July, by the Eleventh Pennsylvania, and Colonel Brodhead's men returned down the Susquehanna to Carlisle, arriving there on August 6.4
Before taking the road over the mountains to the West, the command rested at Carlisle one week. Just before it marched, Lieutenant Brady suffered a terrible blow. He received word that his younger brother James, from whom he had so recently parted, had been scalped by Indians and was dying at his home.
It was on Saturday, August 8, 1778, at the settlement of Peter Smith, about one mile below the site of Williams- port, on the bank of the West Branch, that James Brady received his mortal wounds.
On the preceding day 14 reapers and binders, accom- panied by eight soldiers, went from Fort Brady to Smith's place to cut oats. The work of the first day was carried on without molestation. In the evening four of the men grew uneasy and went away. The morning of Saturday was very foggy. The cradlers began work at one side of the large field, under the protection of the soldiers. Six bind- ers, of whom Brady was one, proceeded to the farther side of the field, separated from the view of the cradlers and soldiers by a ridge. Five of the binders placed their rifles against one tree, but Brady stood his apart.
4 Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, vol. vi., p. 680.
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BACK TO THE HARRIED FRONTIER.
About an hour after sunrise, under cover of the fog, 30 Seneca and Muncy Indians slipped up on the binders and opened fire on them. The moment they were dis- covered Brady ran for his rifle, but the five other men took to their heels across the oatfield, leaving their guns un- touched. Brady was shot and fell, but he sprang up, ran several rods, and fell again. Three Indians pounced upon him. He was wounded by a spear, struck on the head with a tomahawk and scalped. The soldiers and cradlers, hear- ing the firing, appeared on the ridge. The Indians ex- changed a few shots with them, killing two of the white men, and then ran away into the forest. In the other di- rection the soldiers and the harvesters, with one exception, fled as rapidly toward Muncy.
The one exception was Jerome Veness. He discover- ed that young Brady was not dead, but was trying to make his way toward Smith's cabin, near the field. Veness assisted the wounded man into the cabin, and remained with him during the day, dressing his wounds as well as he was able. In the evening a company of soldiers reached Smith's plantation from Muncy. They made a rude litter and car- ried Brady on it to the house of his parents. There he lingered in a delirium for five days, but expired before his brother Samuel arrived from Carlisle.5
The Bradys were a family of vigorous bodies and strong passions. Samuel Brady's rage over the cruel death of his favorite brother was intense, and his soul was pos- sessed with a craving for revenge. Tradition tells us that he ascertained that Bald Eagle, of the Wolf clan of the Delawares, and Cornplanter, a Seneca, were the chiefs of the Indian band and that he was relentless in his pursuit of those two savages, Brady had the satisfaction of killing Bald Eagle at the mouth of Red Bank creek, on the Alle- gheny, in June, 1779.6 He was never able to accomplish the death of Cornplanter.
5 Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, vol. vi., pp. 688, 689, 691; Con- quering the Wilderness, Triplett, New York, 1883, p. 213.
6 Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, vol. xii., p. 131; Washington- Irvine Correspondence, p. 41; William Young Brady, in Pittsburg Post, January 8, 1893.
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OLD WESTMORELAND.
Lieutenant Brady was excused, doubtless because of his brother's death, from accompanying the regiment on its march to Fort Pitt. During the month of September he was detailed as a recruiting officer in Cumberland county.
Before the Westmoreland regiment reached Fort Pitt it suffered another loss. Early in the year Captain Samuel Miller had been sent to Westmoreland county on the re- cruiting service. His home was about two miles northeast of the site of Greensburg. In July he was engaged, with several men of his company, in providing at Hannastown. near his home, a stock of forage and provisions for the coming regiment. On the 7th of July, while he and nine soldiers were conveying grain from a farm near the Kis- kiminetas, they were waylaid and attacked by Indians, and only two of the white men escaped alive. The bodies of Captain Miller and his seven companions were afterward found, scalped and stripped."
The Eighth regiment left Carlisle on August 13 and moved slowly.8 It was two weeks going as far as Bed- ford, and two weeks more in making the journey over the mountains, past Ligonier and Hannastown, to Fort Pitt. It arrived at its destination, footsore and weary, on September 10, 1778, having been nearly three months on the road from the camp on the Schuylkill.º After it reached Bedford it was in its own country. From that place to Pittsburg, all along the line of march, there were many joyful reunions, and doubtless the travel-stained soldiers were well served with food and drink as they passed through Westmoreland. Yet many tearful women sat at the way- side cabins and sad-faced parents looked in vain for the familiar figures of beloved sons. Nearly three hundred of the stout frontier youths who marched away to the East to help Washington did not return to the defense of their own borderland.
7 Pennsylvania Archives, First Series, vol. vi., p. 673; Frontier Forts, vol. Ii., p. 323.
8 Pennsylvania Archives. First Series, voi. vi., p. 700.
9 Frontier Forts, vol. ii., p. 130.
73
THE ALLIANCE WITH THE DELAWARES.
CHAPTER XII.
THE ALLIANCE WITH THE DELAWARES.
The plan of General McIntosh for the protection of the frontier was to attack Detroit. £ In this he was encouraged by the opinions of many officers and members of Congress. The difficulty and hazard of such an undertaking was not appreciated in the East. It involved a march of more than 300 miles through a wilderness inhabited by savages, most of whom were hostile to the American cause. It must car- ry an army far from its base of supplies, and that base, at Fort Pitt, a precarious one. It was against an enemy hav- ing greater resources and a superior line of communication, by water, through Lakes Erie and Ontario. It was a pro- ject which Hand had meditated and which other command- ers after McIntosh essayed; but all were doomed to disap- pointment.1
The two regiments of regulars, the Eighth Pennsyl- vania and the Thirteenth Virginia, were to be augmented by ~ the militia from Westmoreland, and the three Virginia counties of Yohogania, Monongalia and Ohio, and there was hope of adding to these a force of Delaware warriors.
The Delawares, living on the Tuscarawas and the Mus- kingum, were the only Indians who had maintained neu- trality between the Americans and the British. This was the tribe which had made the treaty with William Penn, un- der the elm at Shackamaxon, and its traditions attached it
1 Hand expressed the opinion that 3,000 men, with light artillery, would be necessary for the capture of Detroit. See Ft. Pitt, p. 229.
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OLD WESTMORELAND.
to the white man's council which sat at Philadelphia. More- over, its head sachem, White Eyes, the greatest chieftain ever produced by this remarkable Indian nation, was pe- culiarly devoted to the American cause. He revealed a spirit of intelligent sympathy with the struggle for liberty, and even hoped that a Delaware Indian state might form a fourteenth star in the American Union.
Preparations were made to enter into a formal treaty of alliance with this Indian tribe. In June, 1778, Congress ordered the treaty to be held at Fort Pitt on July 23, and re- quested Virginia to name two commissioners and Pennsyl- vania one. Virginia chose General Andrew Lewis, the vic- tor of Point Pleasant, and his brother, Thomas Lewis, a civilian ; Pennsylvania neglected to appoint. It being found impossible for the continental troops to reach Pitts- burg at the time first set, the treaty was postponed until September.
When Colonel Brodhead and his Westmoreland reg- ulars marched into Fort Pitt, on September 10, 1778, they found the wigwams of the Delaware chiefs and warriors pitched near the shore of the Allegheny river, a short dis- tance above the fort. Two days later, the conference between white men and red was begun in one of the buildings with- in the walls of Fort Pitt.
This was probably the most remarkable treaty ever made on behalf of the United States. Its proceedings are worthy of preservation as matters of curiosity and as illus- trating one of the strange developments of the revolution- ary struggle. They are handed down to us in the manu- script letter book of Colonel George Morgan, Indian agent at Fort Pitt.2 By this treaty the United States entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with a tribe of savages, recognizing that tribe as an independent nation, guarantee- ing its integrity and territory. Each party bound itself to as- sist the other against its enemies. The treaty laid the groundwork for the establishment of a system of judiciary
2 In the possession of the Pittsburg Carnegie Library.
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THE ALLIANCE WITH THE DELAWARES.
in the Delaware nation and contained a provision for the admission of an Indian state into the American Union. The commissioners who made the treaty must have known that such a state was an impossibility, yet they deliberately pro- vided for it in a solemn treaty, taking care, however, to sub- ject the scheme to the approval of Congress. It was a "gold brick," presented by the white men to their red brethren.
It was a courageous act for the Delaware chiefs to form this alliance with the Americans. All other Indian tribes of the West were in league with the British, and for months had been coaxing and threatening the Delawares to draw them into the general combination. By daring to form an open union with the United States, White Eyes exposed his people to absolute destruction by the British and their red allies. He fully realized his danger, yet he had the courage to do what he believed to be the right thing. He fell a martyr to his convictions.
The Americans had sent messengers to the Shawnees, inviting them to come with the Delawares to the treaty, but that warlike tribe did not respond. The deputies of the Delawares were White Eyes, the chief sachem; Killbuck, a famous medicine man and war chief, and Pipe, the chief warrior of the Wolf clan. These three red men appeared at the council in holiday regalia, painted, feathered and beaded. Captain Pipe was especially celebrated for the gaudiness of his attire. The scene in the assembly room must have been picturesque. The councils were attended by General McIntosh and his colonels and staff officers, in new uniforms, and the Indian deputies were supported by a band of warriors in bright paint and gay blankets. The in- terpreter was Job Chilloway, a Delaware from the Susque- hanna, who had lived many years among the white people.3 Soldiers in hunting shirts patrolled before the barrack doors or stood in groups on the parade ground, watching the coming and going of the bedizened Indians.
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