LOCAL HISTORY: Tarring S. Davis, History of Blair County, Volume I, 1931, Blair County, PA - Chapter 2 Contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Judy Banja Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/blair/ html file: http://www.usgwarchives.net/pa/blair/1picts/davis/tdavis1.htm _______________________________________________ A HISTORY OF BLAIR COUNTY PENNSYLVANIA UNDER EDITORIAL SUPERVISION OF TARRING S. DAVIS LUCILE SHENK, ASSOCIATE EDITOR VOLUME I HARRISBURG: NATIONAL HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION, INC., 1931 CHAPTER II INDIANS AND INDIAN TRAILS INDIANS AND INDIAN TRAILS 7 THE Indians who frequented the present Blair County belonged to those groups that roamed throughout the Juniata Valley. They had no established homes and it is probable that aside from Captain Logan, a friendly Delaware who resided at Tyrone, there was only one Indian village of importance, the one at Frankstown. This place was called Assunepachla. Donehoo in his "Indian Villages and Place Names in Pennsylvania" identifies Assunepachla as a probable corruption of achsun or asun meaning stone, and pachsajeek, valley. In the examination of James LeTort in 1731 this settlement is referred to as "Assunnepachla upon Choniata (Juniata) distant about 100 miles by water and go by land from Ohesson (near Lewistown)." The Indians who settled here were Delawares and numbered in 1731, twelve families, thirty-six men. Captain Logan, a friendly Delaware, who lived near a large spring on the present site of Tyrone had been a chief of his tribe. While engaged in a battle against an enemy tribe on the Susquehanna River one of his eyes was hit by an arrow and he was permanently disfigured. His people considered him disgraced, demoted him from the position of chief, and he came to the Juniata Valley with his family. He was a faithful friend to the white settlers of the vicinity and is said to have given much information concerning the plans of Tories in the Sinking Valley to interested colonists. At the close of the American Revolution he lost his lands at Tyrone because white settlers had purchased them legally, whereas he had not. He moved with his family to the Indian town of Chiklacamoose where Clearfield now stands and ended his days there. He is a picturesque figure in the history of Blair County and his name is perpetuated in streams, townships and hotels. The Delawares, among whom the Munsee or Munsy clan was most prominent in Blair County, called themselves Lenni Lenape or "original people." Their tribal legend, Walum Olum, gives an excellent background for a history of the Indians of this region. According to this tradition the Lenape at one time lived west of the Mississippi River. For some unaccountable reason they were driven eastward to the Mississippi. There they met the Mengwe or Iroquois who had also migrated from the west and were located on the river banks further north than the Lenape. The latter sent spies into the land east of the river and they reported that it was occupied by a powerful tribe called Talligewi or Alligewi whose domain extended to the Allegheny Mountains. These Alligewi had large towns on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers and had erected mounds and fortifications. The Lenape described them as tall and stout in stature. According to the Walum Olum the Lenape asked them for permission to live in the land east of the river. The Alligewi refused them but gave them permission to move through their lands to uninhabited country east of the Allegheny Mountains. The Lenape prepared to move east and as they entered Alligewi territory the 8 BLAIR COUNTY HISTORY latter were surprised and dismayed at the great numbers of the Lenape tribe. They withdrew the proffered permission to the Lenape to cross their lands and threatened to destroy them if they came on. The Mengwe, who had remained in the background, offered their assistance to the Lenapes in fighting the Alligewi, provided they might share in the rewards of a war. A long struggle ensued but in the end, after the Lenapes had born the brunt of many battles the Alligewi were sent in terror down the Mississippi. Thus the Lenapes tell of their coming with the Iroquois or Mengwe to the eastern United States. The Delawares, as they came to be known, located along the river from which they took their most frequently used name, and the Iroquois made their strongholds in New York. The Munsee or Muncy Indians were of the Wolf Clan of Delawares. They used that animal for their totems and other symbols and believed themselves to be connected with it by powerful, mysterious bonds. They lived in eastern Pennsylvania when the white man came to this colony, and after being defrauded of their lands by the famous "Walking Purchase" of 1737, moved westward, first to the Susquehanna and later to the Ohio Valley. They were always more warlike than the other Delaware Clans, became bitter enemies of the white man and engaged in many battles on the frontier during the colonial wars. The Munsee Indians differed from the other Delawares in their dialect. Although the Delaware Indians were most numerous in the county the Shawnees dwelled there, too. They were a restless people, lawless and ferocious. They belonged to the Algonquian tribes and according to the Walum Olum were united with the Delawares before the Alligewi, or Cherokees as they were better known, were expelled from the north. The Shawnees separated from the Delawares and went south becoming Shawnees or southerners. Those who came north were members of the Piqua or Hathawekela clans of the tribe and began their migration to the north about 1677 because of trouble with the white settlers in the Carolinas. They did not move continuously but made various settlements such as at Winchester, Virginia, and at Old Town, Maryland. They hated the English who had taken sides with the old Shawnee enemy, the Catawbas, and continued this hostility through the colonial period. During the French and Indian War they were on friendly terms with the French and during the American Revolution with the British. About 1698 they settled along the Susquehanna River with their near relatives the Delawares. The Delawares were subject to the powerful Iroquois Confederation but the Shawnees never came completely under its control. Their actual settlement was near the Conestoga at Pequehan or Piqua Town at the mouth of Pequea Creek in Lancaster County. It is probable that later they moved on the Conestoga Creek opposite Safe Harbor. Pequea or Piqua was the name applied to one of the Shawnee clans. The first official appearance of the Shawnee is on February 23, 1701, when their King Opessah came with other Indian chiefs before William Penn and the Provincial Council for the purpose of making a treaty. After 1701, many Shawnees moved from South Carolina to the lower Susquehanna and upper Delaware Rivers. In 1727, they came into conflict with provincial traders, who sold rum to them, so INDIANS AND INDIAN TRAILS 9 they moved westward to the Ohio River. During this period they came into the Juniata Valley and Blair County. By 1732, several groups of them had moved west where they came under the influence of the French. This was in opposition to the interests of the province and the Iroquois were urged to use their influence to have them return. In 1735, the Iroquois reported to the Provincial Council at Philadelphia that they had unsuccessfully sent several chiefs to the Ohio to urge the return of the Shawnee. It is evident they were not on good terms with the Iroquois because at the Lancaster Conference in 1744 only one Shawnee chief was present. This hostility grew and the Shawnee used their influence with the Delawares to alienate them from the Iroquois also, and eventually from the English. The French made use of this hostility in their struggles against the English. Conrad Wieser who wielded the greatest influence of any colonist over the Indian policy is said to have had little use for the Delawares or the Shawnee. In 1748, several Shawnee appeared at council in Lancaster and asked for forgiveness for their friendship with the French. They had signed agreements at earlier meetings, had failed to keep them, so their plea was refused. They returned to the French who continued to make use of them. Both Delawares and Shawnee received gifts from the French over a long period of time before actually taking sides with them. They waited, characteristically, to learn which was the stronger nation, France or Great Britain. They made their decision in favor of the French after Braddock was defeated in 1755. Some Delawares of the Susquehanna Valley maintained loyalty to the English but the greatest number went to the French in the Ohio. During the American Revolution the Shawnee stood almost as one with the British. After 1783, most of them lived in Ohio and Illinois continuing to give trouble to the settlers. It was only after the Treaty of Greenville was signed in 1795 that they came to actual terms of peace with the white inhabitants. Much information concerning the customs, particularly the religious rites of the Shawnee, is obtained from the journal of Reverend David Brainerd, a missionary to the Indians. He traveled extensively throughout the Juniata Valley and kept an account of his experiences that was published with his biography by the American Tract Society. U. J. Jones, in his "History of the Juniata Valley," published in 1856, gives the following extracts, concerning the Shawnee, from Brainerd's Journal. "Their customs, in various respects, differ from those of the other Indians upon this river. They do not bury their dead in a common form, but let their flesh consume above the ground, in close cribs made for that purpose. At the end of a year, or sometimes a longer space of time, they take the bones, when the flesh is all consumed, and wash and scrape them, and afterward bury them with some ceremony. Their method of charming or conjuring over the sick seems somewhat different from that of the other Indians, though in substance the same. The whole of it, among these and others, perhaps, is an imitation of what seems, by Naaman's expression (2 Kings v. II), to have been the custom of the ancient heathen. It seems chiefly to consist of their 'striking their hands over the deceased,' repeatedly stroking them, 'and calling 10 BLAIR COUNTY HISTORY upon their God,' except the spurting of water like a mist, and some other frantic ceremonies common to the other conjurations which I have already mentioned." Reverend Brainerd gives an account of a medicine man who he met while traveling through the Juniata Valley. It is an excellent example of the degree of fanaticism to which some of the Indians went in their religious zealousness. "When I was in this region in May last, I had an opportunity of learning many of the notions and customs of the Indians, as well as observing many of their practices. I then traveled more than one hundred and thirty miles upon the river, above the English settlements, and in that journey met with individuals of seven or eight distinct tribes, speaking as many different languages. But of all the sights I ever saw among them, or indeed anywhere else, none appeared so frightful or so near akin to what is usually imagined of infernal powers, none ever excited such images of terror in my mind, as the appearance of one who was a devout and zealous reformer, or rather restorer of what he supposed was the ancient religion of the Indians. He made his appearance in his pontifical garb, which was a coat of bear-skins, dried with the hair on, and hanging down to his toes; a pair of bear-skin stockings, and a great wooden face, painted, the one-half black, the other half tawny, about the color of an Indian's skin, with an extravagant mouth, but very much awry; the face fastened to a bear-skin cap, which was drawn over his head. He advanced toward me with the instrument in his hand which he used for music in his idolatrous worship, which was a dry tortoise-shell with some corn in it, and the neck of it drawn on to a piece of wood, which made a very convenient handle. As he came forward, he beat his tune with the rattle, and danced with all his might, but did not suffer any part of his body, not so much as his fingers, to be seen. No one would have imagined, from his appearance or actions, that he could have been a human creature, if they had not had some intimation of it otherwise. When he came near me, I could not but shrink away from him, although it was then noonday, and I knew who it was, his appearance and gestures were so prodigiously frightful. He had a house consecrated to religious uses, with divers images cut upon the several parts of it. I went in, and found the ground beaten almost as hard as a rock with their frequent dancing upon it. I discoursed with him upon Christianity. Some of my discourse he seemed to like, but some of it he disliked extremely. He told me that God had taught him his religion, and that he never would turn from it, but wanted to find some who would join heartily with him in it; for the Indians, he said, were grown very degenerate and corrupt. He had thoughts, he said, of leaving all his friends, and traveling abroad, in order to find some who would join with him; for he believed that God had some good people somewhere, who felt as he did. He had not always, he said, felt as he now did; but he had formerly been like the rest of the Indians, until about four or five years before that time. Then, he said, his heart was very much distressed, so that he could not live among the Indians, but got away into the woods, and lived alone for some months. At length, he said, God comforted his heart, and showed him what he should do; and since that time he had known God and tried to serve him, and INDIANS AND INDIAN TRAILS 11 loved all men, be they who they would, so as he never did before. He treated me with uncommon courtesy, and seemed to be hearty in it. I was told by the Indians that he opposed their drinking strong liquor with all his power; and that if at any time he could not dissuade them from it by all he could say, he would leave them, and go crying into the woods. It was manifest that he had a set of religious notions, which he had examined for himself and had not taken for granted upon bare tradition; and he relished or disrelished whatever was spoken of a religious nature, as it either agreed or disagreed with his standard. While I was discoursing, he would sometimes say, 'Now that I like; so God as taught me,' etc., and some of his sentiments seemed very just. Yet he utterly denied the existence of a devil, and declared there was no such creature known among the Indians of old times, whose religion he supposed he was attempting to revive. He likewise told me that departed souls went southward, and that the difference between the good and bad was this: that the former were admitted into a beautiful town with spiritual walls, and that the latter would forever hover around these walls in vain attempts to get in. He seemed to be sincere, honest, and conscientious, in his own way, and according to his own religious notions, which was more than ever I saw in any other pagan. I perceived that he was looked upon and derided among most of the Indians as a precise zealot, who made a needless noise about religious matters; but I must say that there was something in his temper and disposition which looked more like true religion than any thing I ever observed among other heathens." The Tuscaroras were another Indian tribe who lived in Blair County and throughout the Juniata Valley. They belonged to the Iroquoian linguistic group and had been driven out of North Carolina and Virginia in 1712. They came north and sought the protection of the Five Nations (the Iroquois Confederacy, consisting of the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas and Senecas). This was granted them and in 1722 the Tuscaroras were admitted to the confederacy which was then called the Six Nations. They had suffered greatly in the south where some of them had been enslaved. In 1710, the chiefs of the different clans of the tribe petitioned the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania for permission to move here and come under the more just and friendly government. The Provincial Council asked them for a certificate of good behavior from their former home in North Carolina. This they could not produce, so, instead of protection from the province, they were pitied and protected by the Five Nations. Not all of the Tuscaroras came north at once. Some lost their identity in other southern tribes, individuals intermarried and the group that came north made their exodus over a period of go years. One body of them stopped in the Juniata Valley giving their names to many local landmarks. The Tuscaroras hunted and fished on Iroquois and Delaware territory as they pleased. Other Indian tribes not so outstanding as the Delawares, Shawnee and Tuscaroras, frequented the hills and valleys of Blair. A group of Conoy Indians came to the western Juniata Valley in 1748 from the Delaware Valley. C. Hale Sipe in his publication "The Indian Chiefs of Pennsylvania," says of the Conoys: 12 BLAIR COUNTY HISTORY "The Conoy, also called the Ganawese and the Piscataway, inhabited parts of Pennsylvania during the historic period. They were an Algonquin tribe, closely related to the Delawares, whom they called 'grandfathers,' and from whose ancestral stem they no doubt sprang. Heckewelder, an authority on the history of the Delawares and kindred tribes, believed them to be identical with the Kanawha, for whom the chief river of West Virginia is named; and it seems that the names, Conoy and Ganawese, are simply different forms of the name Kanawha, though it is difficult to explain the application of the same name to the Piscataway tribe of Maryland, except on the theory that this tribe once lived on the Kanawha." These Conoy Indians claimed that the proprietary government of Pennsylvania had offered to give them lands along the Juniata to replace some taken from them by white settlers in the Delaware Valley. A Seneca chief endeavored to get the land grant for the Conoys but failed. In 1748 and 1749, Nanticoke Indians settled near the mouth of the Juniata and gradually moved west and north. They were an Algonquin tribe also, and had lived in Maryland where they got into controversies with the white settlers. They were noted hunters and trappers and the Moravian missionary, Heckewelder, came in contact with them frequently. Some Iroquois other than the Tuscaroras settled in the valley about 1753. They were more peaceably disposed than most of the other Indians having come in contact with the Moravian missionaries, Heckewelder, Zinzendorf and Loskiel. They were devoted in their worship of Manitou, the great spirit, and periodically held feasts at Standing Stone, to honor him. The hostility between the Six Nations and the Delawares evidenced itself in battles from Duncan's Island at the mouth of the Juniata, all along the river to its various sources. The Delawares had been subjected to the domination of the Six Nations until 1756, when the latter acknowledged their independence at Tioga. Two years earlier representatives of the Six Nations met at Albany. This meeting was called by the British Ministry for the purpose of settling some problems arising between the Indians and colonists. Governor Hamilton of Pennsylvania was not present but John Penn and Richard Peters of the Provincial Council and Isaac Norris and Benjamin Franklin of the Assembly were commissioned to go in his stead. Although the conference was not satisfactory in every detail the Pennsylvania representatives succeeded in getting the Six Nations to deed land west of the Susquehanna River to the province. The deed was signed by the chiefs of the Six Nations on July 6, 1754. It conveyed to Pennsylvania "all the land extending on the west side of the Susquehanna River from the Blue Mountains to a mile above the mouth of Kayarondinhagh (Penn's) Creek; thence northwest by west to the western boundary of the Province; thence along the western boundary to the southern boundary; thence along the southern boundary to the Blue Mountains; and thence along the Blue Mountains to the place of beginning." Much of the land thus conveyed by the Six Nations at the Albany Conference was inhabited by Delawares and kindred tribes. It was characteristic of the Indian that he would generously give land to others INDIANS AND INDIAN TRAILS 13 without considering the wishes of other tribes who might hold an interest in the territory. Many instances of this sort are recorded in the history of the Indians' relations to the white man in North America. Often these gifts or sales caused hostility on the part of offended tribes who had not been considered in the transaction. In this instance the growing hostility of the Delawares toward the Iroquois and the English was kindled. No white settlers in the Juniata Valley could feel safe from Indian depredations until after the Revolutionary War. In the history of western expansion of the United States the roads followed by the first traders and settlers were Indian trails. The latter had always followed the lines of least resistance and these were usually paths that led by springs and salt rocks that had been marked out by herds of buffalo. It is curious to note that these trails instead of leading up hills and down into valleys were usually blazed along the ridges and summits of mountains. Very often they were more round-about for that reason. On the other hand the buffalo sought higher ground during storms and the Indian liked to have vantage points on high mountains to spy out possible enemies. Frankstown on the Juniata in Blair County was an important center for traders who went west into the Indian country. It was situated on the Kittanning Trail, frequently called the Frankstown Trail in Colonial Records, from Harris Ferry (Harrisburg) on the Susquehanna to the Delaware Indian town of Kittanning on the Allegheny River. This was a main artery in Colonial days between eastern settlements and the west. The Warrior's Trail from the Iroquois country in New York, along Warrior's Ridge through Pennsylvania, south to Virginia and North Carolina, met the Frankstown Trail at Warrior's Mark in Huntingdon County. This trail had various branches east and west, one of which led into Sinking Spring or Bald Eagle Valley in Blair County. The Warrior's Trail was used by the Iroquois in their numerous excursions to the south when at war with Indians there. Another trail ran south from Frankstown to Raystown (Bedford) where it joined a trail from southeastern Pennsylvania. The trail from Frankstown through Sinking Spring Valley, that joined the Warrior's Trail, led through the present Lock Haven, then called Big Island. Frankstown, at the junction of these trails, was in an important position in the Colonial period. Indians and traders passed over it often. Conrad Weiser, the great interpreter, George Croghan the famous trader and probably the immortal Moravian missionaries, Heckewelder, Zinzendorf and Zeisberger were familiar figures in the present Blair County. The middle of the 18th century saw these trails become the paths of empire leading eventually to the Pacific. The efforts of the Indian inhabitants to stave off the occupation of this county by white men will be the subject of consideration in a succeeding chapter.