USA > West Virginia > Pendleton County > A history of Pendleton County, West Virginia > Part 3
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with the pioneers. They were active, sensible, manly, and high-spirited. They were cheerful and full of jokes and laughter, but in deceit and treachery they were not « ut- classed by any tribe. They despised the prowess of other Indians, and it became their boast that they killed or carried into captivity ten white persons for every warrior that they lost. According to the Indian standard. the Shawnees were generous livers and their women were superior housekeepers.
We can better understand the early pioneer period in Pen- dleton if we pause a moment to look into the habits of the red man and his ways of thinking. What was true of the Shawnees was in a very large sense true of the Indian race in general.
No tribe was more restless than the Shawnee, yet it is not correct to suppose it was in the nature of the red man to be ever on the go. His sense of inhabitiveness was strong. He would make a long and even dangerous journey to see the place where his tribe used to live and to gaze upon the graves of his forefathers. The roving of the Indian was only in response to pressure from without. Each tribe claimed a definite territory, and for another people to disregard the boundary line was a cause of war. Nevertheless, he had no knowledge of territorial citizenship. He always thought of himself as a member of his tribe, wherever that tribe might chance to dwell. Consequently it never occurred to a Shaw- nee to speak of himself as a Virginian or an Ohian. As a natural result there was no such thing as individual ownership of the soil The land of the tribe belonged to the tribe as a people and could be sold only by the tribe. The right of the individual to his truck patch was respected, but his claim ceased when he quit using the ground.
Neither did the Indian count relationship as we do. The tribe was made up of clans, or groups, each with its own dis- tinctive name, and each living in a village by itself. The members of a clan counted themselves as brothers and sis- ters, and the Indian no more thought of marrying within his clan than of marrying his blood sister. The clan looking up- on itself as a family, an injury to a member thereof was held as an injury to the family as a whole, and any warrior thought it his duty to avenge the hurt. If the injury came from another tribe, vengeance was inflicted upon any mem- ber of that tribe. There was no thought of punishing the innocent for the guilty, since the members of the offending clan were likewise brothers and sisters. And as the Indian meted out redress against people of his own race, so did he meet it out upon the white man. Because the people of his
AN INDIAN SPOON: Phot'd by A. A. Martin. This spoon of buffalo horn was brought from the Shawnee village in Ohio by Sarah Dyer Hawes on her return from captivity in 1761. The spoon is of dark color and symmetrical form, and is handsomely carved.
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tribe were brothers he thought the whites were brothers among themselves. He could not at first comprehend cus- toms or thought which were unlike his own. He judged the white man by his own measuring stick.
The families of a clan never lived in isolated homes but al- ways in a single village. A limited agriculture was carried on in an open space around the village. Subsistence how- ever was mainly upon game and fish. A people living in this manner requires a very large area from which to draw its support. As a natural result the Indian never butchered game out of sheer wantonness, after the manner of some people who style themselves civilized.
A Shawnee hut was made of long poles bent together and fastened at the top and a covering of bark laid on. The only openings were a place to go in or out and a crevice for the smoke. The art of weaving was unknown to this tribe. Clothing was made of skins tanned by a simple process. Un- til there was contact with white traders the only weapons or other implements were of stone or bone. There were bas- kets, but the pottery was not fireproof, water being boiled by dropping heated stones into a vessel.
Custom took the place of law and was rigidly enforced. An offence against custom was punished by a boycott. Gov- ernment was nearly a pure democracy .* Matters of pub- lic interest were settled in a council, where there was a gen- eral right to speak and to vote. The speeches were often eloquent, but the long-winded orator was not tolerated. Men of address and daring were of course influential, and with- out uncommon ability no person might be a chief or military leader.
In his own way and to the extent of the light given him the Indian was religious. After death he believed the soul of the warrior took its flight to a happy hunting ground in the region beyond the setting sun. Here the departed one fol- lowed the chase without limit of days. But no coward and no deformed person might enter this abode of bliss. In mutilating a slain enemy he was simply following out this belief. In
In this, as in some other chapters, the word "democracy" does not refer to a political party. It means the government of a community by itself, the members thereof being on a footing of equality with respect to civil rights. Democracy is thus distinguished from monarchy, which is government in a more or less arbitrary form by some privileged per- son, or from aristocracy, which is government by a privileged class. When the Democratic or Republican party is mentioned in this book, the word begins with a capital letter.
PCH 2
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common with all unenlightened people the Indian was a believer in witchcraft and a slave to superstition.
The Indian commonly had but one wife. Children were treated with kindness. They belonged to the clan of the mother. and were under the authority of the chief of that clan. The father had no particular authority over his own children, yet exercised control over the children of sisters. The red man has been called lazy because his wife cared for the truck patch as well as the cabin. This charge is not al- together just. The braves spent many long and toilsome hours in making their weapons and in stalking game. To pursue wild animals and follow the warpath requires supple limbs, and supple limbs do not go with hard labor.
Among the whites the Indian was silent, generally sus- picious, and always observant. Among his own kind he was social and talkative. He had no fixed hours for his meals and was a great eater, though able on occasion to go without food for a long while. He discovered the tobacco plant, but not the filthy practice of chewing or snuff-dipping. Smoking was done in great moderation, and was thought to be a means of communing with the Great Spirit. It was also a form of oath. A treaty between tribes was made valid through a mutual smoking of the "pipe of peace."
In making marks on a stone, in carving a spoon, or in weaving a basket, there was always ornamentation, and this was never without a purpose. A given style of decoration conveyed a story of some other meaning.
The Indian had a large fund of folk-lore and of tribal history, this being passed from father to son in the form of oral tradition. He had a keen sense of humor, as his proverbs bear witness. The following are some of these :
No Indian ever sold his daughter for a name.
A squaw's tongue runs faster than the wind's legs.
The Indian scalps his enemy; the paleface skins his friends.
Before the paleface came, there was no poison in the Indian's corn.
There will be hungry palefaces so long as there is any Indian land to swallow.
There are three things it takes a strong man to hold ; a young warrior, a wild horse, and a handsome squaw.
A civilized people does not consider a country occupied unless the soil is brought under private ownership and culti- vation. The colonials were increasing in number and needed more land. Here in the wilderness was plenty of it. The thought of millions of good acres lying wild was insufferable to the pioneer. He believed the red man should live as he himself was doing. He figured it out that in this manner
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the native would need only a little ground for his own use, and that he himself had a perfect right to the vast remainder. The resistance of the Indian maddened the aggressive and resolute frontiersman.
So the settler looked him out a choice spot, blazed such boundaries as he saw fit, and built his cabin. The Indian regarded the act as a high-handed trespass. He proceeded to burn the cabin and to relieve the builder of his scalp. Cruelty on one side was repaid with cruelty on the other. If an unruly frontiersman murdered an unoffending native, - and this not infrequently happened, -the first white man the friends of the victim could waylay was promptly slain in ac- cordance with their ideas of relationship and their rules of warfare. And as the Indian made no distinction between offender and non-offender, so neither did the white man. He learned to scalp, and even to make leather of his adversary's skin. But among the tribes east of the Mississippi, the female captive was not violated.
The Indian would use craft to gain his end in time of war, but was true to the promise he gave in time of peace. Several families secured permission from the red men to settle and hunt on the Monongahela. In 1774 Governor Dunmore sent a messenger to warn them to return because of an impending Indian war. An Indian heard the message delivered and sent this reply : "Tell your king he damned liar. Indian no kill these men." Nor did they. These frontiersmen stayed where they were and lived in safety throughout the Dunmore war.
We shudder at the cruel torture inflicted by the Indian on the captives condemned to death. Yet he was no more cruel than the religious zealots of Europe, who in the very same century that the colonies were founded, were skinning and disemboweling the heretics under the hideous misbelief that they were saving their souls. In his own way the Indian was no less logical or consistent. He sought to make his foe incapable of harming him again. If possible he made sure of killing his adversary. He scalped and mutilated, not merely to preserve a trophy of his victory, but in accordance with his belief that no man may enter the future world who is disfigured in body or limb. He killed the wife so that she might not bear any more children to grow up and avenge the slain husband. He killed the boys because they would grow into warriors, and he killed the girls, because they would be- come the mothers of more warriors. If he spared a life, it was to adopt the captive into his own tribe in order to in- crease its strength. Finally he burned the house in order to damage the enemy that much more.
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The captive was either put to the torture, made a slave, or adopted outright into the tribe. Adoption was a prerogative of the women and was often exercised. The story of the saving of John Smith's life by Pocahontas may be a myth, but as there have been authentic instances of the same nature, it holds good as an illustration. The Indian girl was simply following a well known custom of her people, and her behavior was entirely misunderstood by the boasting leader of the Jamestown colony. Pocahontas chose to adopt the captive into the tribe, and the tribesmen respected her right to do so.
The Indian was kind to the captive be spared. Many of those taken in childhood and returned to their friends in maturer years, have still preferred the rude tepee of the native to the cozy cottage of the white man. It would seem that if civilization is not the unalloyed good that we assume it to be, none the more is barbarism an unmixed evil. There is in fact no hard and fast line between the two. Barbarism is the childhood of civilization, and as the child survives in the man, so in our own latter-day culture there lingers no small amount of barbaric impulse.
The Indian could recognize the power of the white man's civilization, yet for himself he saw no increase of happiness in the complex and artificial culture brought to his shore by the European. His contact with the Caucasian usually meant a contact with drunkenness, immorality, and boundless greed. It meant the persistent breaking by the white man of treaties he had solemnly sworn to. It meant the preaching of a pure religion, which nevertheless was practiced by few of those who had dealings with him. It meant an exchange of his forest freedom for the slums, the social rivalry. the class distinctions, and the false estimates of manhood which are as yet inseparable features of our boasted civiliza- tion. When he visited the great city he saw on every hand the restless man of business pursuing his vision of the Dollar as the wolf pursues the fleeing sheep.
The native ability of the Indian is superior to that of the negro. If he rebelled against the thralldom he saw in the methods of the white man, he was nevertheless feeling his way toward a civilization constructed on the lines of his own nature. The powerful Iroquois, the "Romans of the New World," were but following the very example of the Romans in conquering a general peace among the American tribes. What the Iroquois had already accomplished in their home south of Lake Ontario may be seen by the destruction wrought among them by the army of Sullivan in 1779. Forty towns were destroyed, in one of which were 128 houses. There was
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destroyed 160,000 bushels of corn, and in a single orchard 1500 fruit trees were cut down. The framed houses of these Indians were large and painted. That their farming was none of the poorest will appear from the circumstance that one of the ears of corn was twenty-two inches long.
The red man was in some degree a teacher to the white. He had many ways of preparing corn as food, and he im- parted these methods to the newcomer. He taught the pio- neer how to make deer-skin sieves, how to utilize cornhusks, how to recognize medicinal herbs, and how to clear farm land by deadening the trees. All in all, the experience of the native entered very materially into the mode of life of the white frontiersman. The costume of the latter was an approach to that of the native, and sometimes his cabin was no more inviting than the Indian hut.
The red man had great skill in finding his way through an unbroken forest, yet during their centuries of occupancy the tribes had established a network of footpaths with the help of their stone tomahawks. In Pendleton the paths usually follow the rivers, travel thus being easier and game more plentiful. And as the rivers of this region run parallel with the mountain ridges, with only a slight divide parting the waters of two diverging streams, the succession of water courses in one continuous valley constitutes a natural high- way. But in crossing from one valley to another the Indian preferred following a ridge. It was easier than to descend a narrow, rocky gorge with its danger of ambuscade.
The Seneca trail is much the best known of the local In- dian paths, and in early days it was used by the white set- tlers. It entered the county near its northwest angle, cross- ing from the valley of the Cheat on the crest of a long ridge and descending to the level of the Seneca a little above Onego. Thence its course to the South Branch at Ruddle ap- proximated that of the present highway. East of the North Fork only uncertain vestiges of the old trail remain, but along the ridge to the west of Roaring creek it may easily be followed, and in places is deeply worn by the gullying action of rain.
On the bottom lands of Pendleton are clear signs of early and prolonged occupancy by the native. These indications are found in the mounds, the rings of earth, the graves, and the arrowheads which in certain localities have been plenti- fully found. The old inhabitants planted their villages along the rivers, where the soil is richest and most easily cleared. Stone arrowheads require time, skill, and patience to fashion into shape, and would not be used wastefully. Their com- parative abundance points to centuries of occupation. In
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disposing of their dead the tribes of this region covered the corpse with a circular pile of stones. Many of these graves have been detected and sometimes opened.
In a mound opposite the Hoover mill above Brandywine seven skeletons were found placed in a circle with their feet together. On the farm of Major Sites at the mouth of Seneca was formerly a mound six feet high and twelve feet broad at the top. At Mitchell's mill, a mile above Sugar Grove, on the farm of Sylvester Simmons, a little below Brandywine, on the Hammer bottom be- low Franklin, and elsewhere, were unmistakable signs of villages. On the Simmons farm there was visible until a recent date a ring inclosing nearly an acre and apparently forming the basis of a palisade. On the Trumbo farm, a mile farther down the South Fork, was a burial mound. On the Conrad farm, southeast of Fort Sey- bert, was also a mound, once of some size, but now demol- ished by repeated plowing. A mile south of Upper Tract village is a mound still preserving a height of two feet. One that was probably still larger stood a short distance west of the McCoy mill above Franklin. That one of these remains of a vanished race has not been preserved in its original ap- pearance is unfortunate. The Indians of the historic period were not themselves great mound-makers, and some of these levelled hillocks may have been of surprising age.
CHAPTER III
America and Virginia in 1748
The actual settlement of Pendleton begins with the open- ing of the year 1748. Before taking up this topic it is well worth while to spend a few moments in a general survey of the region which within thirty years took the name of the United States of America.
There were then thirteen colonies. These were to every intent and purpose thirteen English-speaking, independent nations, except that Delaware was under the authority of the government of Pennsylvania. Georgia, the youngest colony. had been established sixteen years. The settled area extended a thousand miles along the coast. Nearly all the people lived within a hundred miles of the shore, and the frontier settlements had scarcely crept more than two hun- dred miles inland at any point. As yet the dividing ridge of the Alleghanies was the westward boundary of this region. By the terms of their charters some of the colonial grants extended clear across the continent, but no colony had as yet asserted any rights west of the mountains, and the French were occupying the Mississippi valley. Consequently Pen- dleton lay at this time directly on the American frontier.
The population of the colonies was about 1,150,000, or nearly the same as the present number of people in West Virginia. The negroes were about 220,000, not over a tenth of them being north of Maryland. The number of inhabi- tants was doubling every twenty-three years. Only one- twentieth of the people lived in towns. The largest cities were Boston and Philadelphia, each having about 15,000 in- habitants. Philadelphia was a comparatively new place, having been founded only sixty-five years before. Virginia, the oldest and most populous colony, contained 150,000 whites and 90,000 blacks. The region below a line drawn through Richmond and Alexandria was quite well settled. Above that line the country was more thinly occupied, and settlement nearly ceased at the foot of the Blue Ridge. In the Valley of Virginia were possibly 5,000 people, all these having set- tled there within twenty years. The Virginians were dis- tributed among the plantations and farms. Williamsburg, the capital, was only a village. Norfolk, the only town, had possibly 3,000 people.
The roads being very bad and the streams seldom bridged,
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there was no journeying by land when it was possible to travel on the bays and rivers. To be in a stage coach was torture. There was an active commerce with England and the West Indies, but there was no intercourse with South America, and the waters of the Carribean were infested with pirate ships. The great Pacific was less known than is the Arctic today. Africa was known only along the coast, and the lands east of Russia or beyond our own Mis- sissippi were little else than a blank space on the map. It took several weeks for the sailing vessels of that day to make the voyage to Europe.
In the few cities and towns, and along the navigable waters. the people who were thought well to do had built as good homes as those they had gone out of in Europe. These houses were often roomy and comfortable, but inside they would look quite bare in comparison with the less substan- tial but better furnished houses of almost any American town of the present time. Inland the log house was the one al- most universally seen. Manufacturing was discouraged by law, the British government wishing to use the colonies as a market for the products of its own workshops. Farming was the one great occupation, and it was carried on in a crude, laborious, and wasteful way.
There were a few colleges, but outside of New Eng- land there was no scheme of general education. In all the colonies were not a few persons who were well versed in the higher education of that day. A large share of these were ministers and lawyers. The daily newspaper was entirely unknown, and the very few weeklies were in size about like our present Sunday school papers. The mails were few, slow, and irregular, and the frontier settlement did well if it received a mail once a month. In 1692 Virginia had estab.ish- ed one postoffice in each county. For a letter of a single sheet, the postage was 4 cents for a distance of not more than 80 miles, and 6 cents for a greater distance. For two sheets, the corresponding rates were 7 cents and 12 1-2 cents.
Religion was free only in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Elsewhere, a state church was supported by general taxation and all people were expected to attend; at least a certain num- ber of times a year. In Virginia this church was the Episco- pal, known also as the Church of England. Religious interest, even with the law behind it, was not of a high or- der, and with some worthy exceptions the Episcopal clergy were a disgrace to their calling.
The methods of legal procedure are very conservative, and since the time of which we speak they have undergone no radical change. All the colonial governments had a more or
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less aristocratic color, and the right to vote was very re- stricted. Even when the Federal government went into operation in 1789, less than four per cent of the American people were qualified voters.
The practice of medicine was barbaric. Quacks were numerous. In the South the doctor was not much thought of.
Taverns were quite frequent, and always kept liquor, the use of which was general. Southern taverns were very poor, but the traveler was sure of free entertainment in the homes of the planters. His visit was an appreciated break in the sameness of life in a sparsely settled country.
It is next in order to consider who were the white inhabi- tants of the colonies. Probably four-fifths of them were of English origin. These were of different types, like the Cav- aliers of Virginia, the Puritans of New England, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, and the Catholics of Maryland. The differ- ences between them were due in part to religious belief and in part to social condition. But they were of one common stock, and in England their ancestors had lived side by side.
In New York were many people of Dutch descent. In Delaware and Pennsylvania the few Swedes were fast losing their identity among the English settlers around them. In all the colonies there was a considerable though unequal sprinkling of Huguenots, Irish, and Welch. They mingled with the English colonists and did not maintain a separate identity.
Two new streams of immigration had lately set in to the American shore. These were the Scotch-Irish and the Ger- man. Some of the Scotch-Irish landed at Charleston. But by far the greater portion came direct to the port of Phila- delphia. because of the liberality of the Pennsylvania gov- ernment. But the inhabitants of the settled part of the col- ony preferred to see the newcomers pass on. So they moved inland in search of unoccupied land. The Scotch-Irish being on the whole the more venturesome went furthest. They penetrated the mountain valleys, spread northward and southward, and thus formed a heavy rim of settlement clear along the western frontier.
As now represented in Pendleton, the leading pioneer ele- ments would be the German, the Scotch-Irish, and the Eng- lish, in the order in which they are named. But for the purpose of historical presentation, it is better to consider them in the reverse order. However, the first element actu- ally to show itself here was the Dutch, although it is now represented by only three or four families. The Dutch were thrifty and industrious, and of strong trading and money- making propensities. Thus it came that a Dutch trader was
the first pathfinder in Pendleton. Intermingled with the leading elements were also a few Irish, French, and Welch settlers. These as we have seen were never inclined to band themselves into settlements of their own in any part of America.
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