THE IXDIAN OCCUPATION. apparent show of reason, have endeavored to prove ,oth above and belo; that point. These n-ere com- .that the builders were the ancient Aztecs, and finally 3osed of the Delaware and Shawanesel tribe3 and some have advanced the opinion that they mere erected jome colonized bands of Iroquois, or " Mingoes," as by descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. What- ;hey mere commonly called, who represented the ever may be said of these latter theories, the idea of pon-erful Six Nations of New York. These last named their construction by the French or Spanish seems were recognized as the red owners of the lands on wholly inadmissible, on account of the number and the upper Ohio, the Allegheny, and the Dlonongahela extent of the works west of the Alleghanies ; again, Rivers, and it was only by their permission2 that the on account of their evident antiquity, many of them Delawares and Shawanese mere allowed to occupy the having from every appearance been erected long before the discovery of America, and finally by their form, 1 Zeisberger, the Xora~ian,mys, "The Sllawanos, a warlike people, lired in Florida, but having been subdued in war by the Noshlios, they which is entirely different from any system of Euro- left their land arid mored to Susqnehanna,and from one place to another. pean fortification, ancient or modern. Meetiug a strong party of Delawres, and relating to them their forloru This much and no more may be set down as coudition, thy took them into their protrdtion as grandclcildren; the Sl~a\vauoscalled the Dell\\\-are nation their graadfall~er. They lived reasonably certain, that these works were reared by a tilereupon in tlre Forks of the Delaware, and settled for a time iu Wx- people who preceded those found here by the first Eu- oming. When they had increased again they rernovcdhy degrees to the ropean risitors, but whether they were Aztecs, Toltecs, Allegheny." Wl~enthey canlo from the East to the Ohio, they located at and near BIoutour's Island, below the confluence of the Allegheny or of Jewish origin, as some ha\-e supposed, is a ques- and RIonongaheIa. The Delawares came with then^ to the West, both tion which will probably never be solved. The imagi- tribes I~nvingbeen ordered away from the vallqs of the Delawrre and nation, unrestrained by facts, may roam at will in the Susquelinnua by the Iroquois, when they were compelled by conquest realm of ingenious speculation, but the subject is one to recognize as their nlnstm. 2 The fact that the Six N.ations werc the ac1;non'ledged owners of this of pure conjecture which it is not profitable to pursue. region of couut~y,and that the Shawancse asrl Delawares were here only on sufferance, seems clear. At the treaty held with the Iudians at Fort Pitt, in Mag, IiGS, a Shawanese chief complilined bitterly to the English of their encroacl~mente,and said, " We desired you to de- stroy our forts. . .. We also desired sou not to go down the river." Iu the uent day's c?uncil, Guyasuthl\ a chief of the Six Nations, rose, CHAPTER 111. with a copy of the treaty of 1334, ?ad =ill, "By this treaty you had a right to build Lrts and trading-houses diere you pleased, and to tra-iel THE INDIAN OCCUPATIOX. the roadof peace fmln the sun rising to the suu setting. At that treaty the Delawares and Sha\\-anese were with memd they lino\vall this well; THEBEis nothing found either in written history and they should never 11ave spoken to you as tl~eydid yesterday." Soon or in tradition to show that the section of country after; the Shawanese chief, Iiissinaughta, rose and said, apologeticallg, which now forms the county of Fayette was ever the to the English, "YIJ~desired us to speak from our hearts and tell you what gave us nneasiness of mind, aud we did so. We are Tery sorry permanent home of any considerable number of the we slroold lmve said anything to give offense, and we acknowledge we aboriginal people whom we know as Indians, the suc- were in the rvroug." , cessors of the mysterious mound-builders. In the s:um year (IiGS), when the Pennsjlvania commissioners, Allen and Shippen, prol)osed to tl~eIndians to scnd a deputation of When the first white traders (~hopreceded the chiefs with tho white messengers, Fl-azer null Thompson, to \\.a~'uoff the earliest actual settlers by several years) came into this white settle= who had located aithoat authority on tho Nouongal~el~~ region, they found it partially occupied by roving River and Redstonc Creek, in what is no\\' Fayette Conuty, the "White B1iug)rrp3'(whoso "Castle" \vas on tho vest side of tho Allegheny, a few Indian bands, who had here a fern temporary villages, mi!es above its moutl~)and thee other cl~iersof the Six Nations n-ere or more properly camps, but whose principal perma- selected to go on that nlission, but 110 notice 1s-as talien of the Delavarc nent settlements were within a few miles of the con- or Shawanese chiefs in the mattel; wliich shows clcarly enough that fluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, these two tribes were not regarded as having any mvnewl~ipinthe lands. And it is related Ily George Croghau, in his account of atreaty council held \\-it11 the Eis Sations at Logstown, on the Ohio, below Pittsburgh, its vicinity, he at last assigned it to the swine that generally. as he said, io 17.51, that "9 Dunkard from Virgiuia came to torn and requested attended theSpauish in those days, it being, in his opinion, yery necrssary leave to settle ou the Yo-yo-gaine [Yonghiogl~eny] River, a branch of in order to prevent them from becoming estrays and to ~rotectthem the Ohio. He was told that 11e must apply to the Onondaga Conncil from the depredations of the Indiaus. aud be recommended by the Guvernor of Pennsylvania." The 011ondaga "Lewis Dennie, a Frenchnnnn, aged uprrards of seventy, and who had Cuuucil was held on a hill near the present site of Syracuse, N. Y., and been settled and marlied among the Co~lirde~xtes(Six Xations) for nlure the centrnl lwadquarters of the Sis h'ntious.. than half a century, told me in lSlO that, according to the traditions of Atlother fact that show the Six h-:ttiuns to hare been the recognized the ancient Indians, these forts were erected by an army of Spaniard?, ownets of this region of country is that when the surveyors were about who were the first Europeans ever seen Ly then1 (the French nest, then to extend the lason and Dison linewesttvard, in 17G7, the proprietaries the Dntch, and finally the English); that this army first appeared at nskcd, not of the Dolawares and Sl~;~wnnescbut of the Iroquois (Sin Xa- Oswego in great force, and penetrated through the interior OF tke coun- tions) permision to do so. This permission was given by their chiefs, try searching for the precious metals; that they continued there two who also sent several of their warriors to accompany the surveying jears and then went down the Oliio." After givingseveral reasons why party. Their prcseucc afforded to the white men the desired protection, this account was to be considered nnWorthyof belief, Nr. Clintou con- and the Slia\vanese and Delawares dared not offer any nlolestntion. timed : L' It is equally clear that they were not the work of the Iudinnr. But after the Iroquois escort left (as they dill at a pointou the Xarylnud Until the Senecas, who nro rello\vned for their national vanity, Imd seen line) the other Indians became, in the absence of their mnstew, so de- the attention of the Americans attracted to these erections, aud 11d in- fiirut and threatening that the surveyem ;ere compelled to abandon the vented the fubulous account of which I have spoken, tho Indiaus of the runniug of the lino west of Dunkard Creek. present day did not pretend to know anything about the origin of these Finally, it vns not from the Delawares and Sl~ananesebut from the ~~orks.They were beyond tho reach of all their traditions, uud were Sis Nations tlmt the Penns purchased this territory by the traty of lost in the abyss of unexplored antiquity." Fort Stanvix in liGS. 20 IIISTORY OF FAYETTE COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

hunting-grounds estending from thehead of the Ohio There mas also an Indian village on the Jlononga- elstward to the Alleghenies. Still they always boldly heln, at the mouth of Catt's Run, and it is said that claimed thes; lands as their own, except when they this village mas at one time the home of the chief were confrontecl aild rebuked by the chiefs of the Sis Cornstalk, who commanded the Indian forces at the Sations. -4t a coofererice held with the Indians at battle of Point Pleasant, Va., in 1774. Fort Pitt in 1768, "the Beaver," a chief speaking in On the Monongahela, at the mouth of Dunlap's behalf of the Delawares and Mohicans, said, " Breth- Creek, where the town of Bro~~mvillenow stands, ren, the country lying between this river and the Al- was the residence of old Nemacolin, who, as it ap- legheny Mountain has always been our hunting- pears, was a chief, but with 1-ery few, if any, warriors ground, and ihe white people who hare scattered under him, though-it is not unlikely that he had had themselves over it hare by their hunting deprived a respectable following in the earlier years, before the us of the game which we look upon ourselves to have whites found him here. It mas this Indian who guided the only right to. . . ." And it is cwtain that, though Col. Thomas Cresap across the ~lle~hen'ies,in the first the Iroquois mere the owners of these hunting-grounds, journey which he made to the MTestfrom Old Town, they were occupied almost exclusively by the Dela- AM.,for the Ohio Company in 1749. The route which wares and Shawanese. Washington, in his journal they then pursued was known for many years as of a trip n~hichhe made down the Ohio from the " Keinacolin's path." Later in his life this Indian mouth of the Allegheny in 1770, says, "The In- removed from the Xonongahela and located on the dians who reside upon the Ohio, the upper part of it Ohio River. It is believed that the place to which at least, are con~posedof Shawanese, Delawares, and he renioved was the island now known as Blenner- some of the Ningoes. . . ." And in the journal of hassett's Island, in the Ohio, below Parkersburg, TV. his mission to the French posts 011 the Allegheny, Va.; the reason for this belief being that there is seventeen years before, he said, "About two miles found, in Gec. Richard Butler's journal of a trip from this (he then being at the month of the Alle- down that river in 1785, with Col. James Nonroe gheny), on the south side of the riser (Ohio), at the (afterwards President of the United States), to treat place where the Ohio Com'pany intended to lay off with the Miami Indians, mention of their passing, in their fort, lives Shingiss, king of the Delan-ares."' the rirer between the mouths of the Little Kanan-ha Thc exact point where this "king7' was located is and Hocking, an island called " Nemacolin's Island." said to have been at the mouth of Chartiers Creek, This was, without much doubt, the later residence of and the principal settlements of his people were clns- the old chief of that name. tered around the head of the Ohio. Froin here and An old Tndian named Bald Eagle, who had been a from the neighboring settlements of the Shawanese sonlewhat noted 11-arrior (but not a chief) of the Dela- went forth from time to time the hunting-parties of ware tribe, had his home somen-here on the Upper these tribes, which formed the principal part of the Monongahela, pr~bablyat the village at the lnouth Indian population of the territory of the present of Catt's Run, but whether there or higher up the county of Fnyette. river near Morgantown is not certainly horn. He These Indians had, as has already been remarked, was a very harmless and peaceable mall and friendly but very fen- settlements east of the Monongahela, to the settlers, yet he was killed x-ithout cause about nn:! most of those they had were more of the nature 1765, and the cold-blooded murder was charged by of temporary camps than of permanent villages. the Indians upon white men. Of the Bald Eagle and Judge Veech, in his "Monongahela of Old," men- the circumstances of his dcfith, Mr. Treech says, "He tions those which he knew of as existing within the mas on intimate terms with the early settlers, with limits of Fayette Conntg, as follows : " Our territory whom he hunted, fished, and visited. He mas well (Fayette County haring been an Indian hunting- known along our Monongnhela border, up and down ground. had within it but few Indian towns or vil- which he frequently passed in his canoe. Somewhere lages, and these of no great magnitude or celebrity. up the ri\-er, probably about the mouth of Cheat, he There was one on the farm of James Erving, near the mas killed, by whom or on what pretense is unknown.? southern corner of 'Redstone and the line betn-een His dead body, placed upright in his canoe, with n German and Luzerne townships, close to a fine lime- piece of corn-bread in his clinched teeth, was set stone spring. Near it, on a ridge, were many Indian adrift in the river. The canoe came ashore at Prov- graves. Another was near where Abram Brown 2 Withers, in his chronicles of Border Warfare," states the case dif- lived, about four miles xest of Uniontown. There fcrentlg, and givcs the names of the murderers. He says, "The Bald was also one on the land of John M. Austin, formerly Engle was an Indian of notoriety, not only among his own nation, bnt also with the inhabitants of the Korthwcstern frontier, wit11 x~homhe Samuel Stevens', near Sock. The only one we know was in the habit of nssociating and hunting. In one of his visits anlong of north of the Youg>iogheny was on the Strickler them he was discovered alone by Jacob Scott, William Hacker, and land, eastward of the Broad Ford." Elijah Runner, who, reckless of the conseqnencrs, niurdered Ilini, solely to gratify a nlost wanton thirst for Indian blood. After the coninlission 1 King Shingr-s, however, w'as iuferior in i-auk and p~rserto Tanncll- of lhis most outrageous enormity, they seated hiin in the stern of a arison, tho Half-King, who \!-as a sucllcm of the Six xttions, residing cnnoe, wit11 a picce of journeycake thrust into his mouth, and set him near the head of the Ohio. afloat in the MonongaLels." TEE INDIAN OCCUPATION.

ance's Bottom, where the familiar old Indian mas a to proceed farther west; and it was not until fifteen once recognized by the wife of William Yard Prov years later that the line was run beyond this trail. ance, who wondered he did not leave his canoe. 01 An Indian path much used by the natives w.as one close observation she found he was dead. She ha( which led from the " Forks of the Ohio" (now Pitts- him decently buried on the Fayette shore, near thl burgh) to the PotomacRiver at the mouth of Wills' enrly residence of Robert McClean, at mh,-t ma Creek (where Cumberland, Md., now stands). This known as McClean7s Ford. This murder mas re was known as " Nemacolin's Path" or trail, though garded by both whites and Indians as a great out it was doubtless traveled by Indian parties many rage, and the latter made it a prominent item in thei peaq and perhaps ages, before the birth of the old list of grievances." Delaware whose name it bore.3 This trail, starting from the head of the Ohio, joined the Cherokee trail A number of Indian paths or trails trarersed thi in Westmoreland County, and from the point of junc- county in various directions. The principal one o tion the hi-o trails mere nearly identical as far south these mas the great war-path over which the Seneca: as Nount Braddock, at which point Nemacolin's trail and other tribes of the Six Nations traveled from thei left the other, and took a southeasterly course, by may homes in the State of New York on their forays agains of the Great Meadows, in the present township of - Cherokees and other Southern tribes in the Carolinas Wharton, the Great Crossings of the Youghiogheny, Georgia, and Tennessee. This was knomn as thc near the southeast corner of Fayette County; thence Cherokee or Catan-ba Trail. Passing from the " Gen it crossed the southwestern corner of Somerset County esee country" of Western New York, down the vallej into Naryland. There were numerous other trails of the Allegheny, it left that river in the preseni traversing the county of Fayette, but none of them county of Armstrong, Pa., and traversing Westmore as important or as much traveled as those above men- land, entered the territory of Fayette near its north. tioned. eastern extremity, crossing Jacob's Creek at the moutk These trails mere the highways of the Indians,- of Bushy Run. From there its route was southwest. the thoroughfiares over which they journeyed on their n7ardly, passing near the present village of Pennsvill~ business of the chase or of mar, just as white people to the Youghiogheny Rii-er, which it crossed jusl pursue their travel and traffic over their graded roads. below the mouth of Opossum Itun ; thence up that " An erroneous impression obtains among many at small stream for some distance, and then on, by way the present day," says Judge Veech, "that the In- of Mount Rraddock, to Redstone Creek, at the point 3ian, in trareling the interminable forests which once where Uniontomn now stands. From there it passed :overed our towns and fields, roamed at random. like in a general southwesterly direction, through the pres- L modern afternoon hunter, by no fised paths, or that ent townships of South Union, Georges, and Spring he n-as guided in his long jonrneyings soiely by the Hill ; and crossing Cheat River at the mouth of Grassy sun and stars, or by the courses of t,he streams and Run, passed oilt of the county southw\.ard into Vir- nonntains. And true it is that these untutored sons ginia, on its route to the Holston River and the Caro- ~f the ivoods were considerable astronomers and geog- linas. From this main trail, at a point a little south xphers, and relied much upon these unerring guide- of Georges Creek, in Fayette County, there struck ofi narks of nature. Even in the most starless night a tributary path known as the Warrior Branch,' which .hey could determine their course by feeling the bark passed thence across the Cheat and Monongahela )f the oak-trees, which is alivays smoothest on the Rivers, and up the valley of Dunkard Creek into Vir- iouth side, and roughest on the north. But still they ginia. It was at this trail, near the second crossing lad their trails or paths, as distinctly marked as are of Dunkard Creek, that the surveyors who were run- )ur county and State roads, and often better located. ning the extension of the Mason and Dixon line, in l'he white traders adopted them, and often stole their October, 1767, were compelled to stop their work, on lames, to be in turn surrendered to the leader of some account of the threats of the Delaware and Shamanese Inglo-Saxon army, and finally obliterated by some warriors, and their positive refusal to allow the party :ostly highway of trarel and commerce. They are

-- 3 It receired tl~isnamefrom the factthat when theold" Ohio Company'' 1 The place ~-herethis trail crossed the Youghiogl~enywas identicd ras preparing to go into the Indian trade at the headof the Ohio,in the that where Gen. Braddock crossed his army, on his mvrcl~towards ear 1749, one of the priucipal agents of that company-Col. Thomas Fort Du Quesne, in 1755. :resap, of Old Town, 3Id.-employed the Indinn Nemacolin (who lived, Judge Veesh describes the route of this tmil (proceeding northward) s before mrntioned,at the month of Dunlap's Creek.on the Nonongahela) as follo\vs: "A tributary trail cdled the Warrior Brxncll, coming from 0 guide him over the bast route fora pack-horse path from the Potofuac Tennessee, through Kentucky and Sorrt1:ern Ohio, ame up Fish Creek 3 the Indian rillages on the Ohio, a~hortdistance below the conflnence and down Dunknrd, crossing Che:~tRiver at JIck'i~rland's. It ran out a f tho Allegheny and illonongahel~ The old Indian pdnted out the junction with the chief trail, intersectiig it at William Gans' sngnr- ath in question as being the most feasible route,and it \'as adopted. camp (betwecn Morris' Cross-Roads and Georges Creek, in Spring Hill n 1754, Wasliiugtm follotved its line with his troops as far north and tor\-nsltip), I~ntit kept on by Crotv's Xill, Jiirues Robinson's, and the old :est as Gist's plitnt:~tion,iu Filyette County ;and in li55, Gen. Brnddock PI^ factory (in Sicholson torvusl~ip)and thence towards the month of lade it, with few- variations, his route of marc11 from Fort Cumberlaud Redstone; intersecting the oldltedstone trail from the top of Laurel Ilill, 3 Gi-t's, and thence ~lorth\vardlyto near the point in Westmoreland Jackson's, or Grace Church, on the Satiooal road." 'ountg where hc first crossed the Monoug~hela. 23 XIISTORY OF PAITETTE COUSTY, PENNSYLVANIA. now almost wholly effaced and forgotten. Hundreds travel' along or plow across them, unconscious that CHAPTER IV. they are in the footsteps of the red man." THE FREKCH AXD ESGLISH CLBIXS TO THE TRARS-ALLEGHESY REGION-GEORGE TVASIIISG- The Indian history connected with the annals of TOS'S VISIT TO THE PRESCH FORTS IN 1'752. Fayette County is very meagre. During the military operations of the years 1754 and 1753, when the op- THE written history of the section of country em- posing forces of England and France marched to and braced in and between the valleys of the Xononga- fro over the hills and through the rales of this hela and Youghiogheny Rivers, like that of all this county, they were accompanied on both sides by In- part of the 'state of Pennsylvania, commences at dian allies, who did their share of the work of about the middle of the eighteenth century. ' At that slaughter, as mill be narrated in the history of those time both France and England were asserting their campaigns, given in sncceeding pages. After the respective claims to the dominion of this wilderness French and their Indian allies had expelled the Eng- region west of the mountains; and it was in the con- lish power from the region west of the Alleghenies, in flict which resulted from the attempts of each of 1'755, nearly all the Indians of the Allegheny and these rivals to expel the other, and to enforce their Nonongahela Va!leys sided mith the victorious own alleged rights by the fact of actual possession, ~rench;but many years elapsed from that time be- that the events occurred that are here to be narrated, fore there rere any white settlers here to be molested, and which mark the beginning of the history of the and when they did come to make their homes here southwestern counties of Pennsylvania. they suffered rery little from such ontrages as mere The claim which France made to the ownership of constantly committed by the savages upon the inhabit- this territory was based on the fact that the adventu- ants west of the Monongahela. This was doubtless rous explorer Ln Salle descended the Mississippi largely due to the fact that the red men regarded the River in 1652, and at its mouth, on the 9th of April people east of that river as Pennsylranians, with in that year, took formal possession, in the name of whom they were on comparatively friendly terms ; tbe French sovereign, of all the valley of the mighty while those west of the same stream were considered stream, and of all the regions, discovered and to be by them to be Virginians, against whom they held discorered, contiguous to it, or to any and all of its feeling of especial hatred and malignity. With the tributaries. Sixty-seven years later (l749), Captain exception of the murder of two men on Burnt Cabin Celeron, an officer in the service of the king of Run,' and the taking of some prisoners south of France, and having under his command a force of Georges Creek, the inhabitants of the territory that is about three hundred men, penetrated southward to now Fayette County vere entirely exempt from the the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela sarage incursions and barbarities with which the Rivers, where he took and confirmed the French pos- people living between them and the Oliio Rirer rere session of the mlleys of these tributaries, burying so often visited during the thirty years of Indian metallic plates, duly inscribed with a record. of the warfare and raiding3 which preceded Gen. Anthony event, as evidences of actual occupation. Waj-ne's decisive victory on the Maumee, in ~ugust, England, on the other hand, claimed the country 1794. by virtue of a treaty made mith the Six Nations at - - Lancaster in June, 1744, when the Indians ceded to 1 The circumstances attending this Indian antrage are thus narrated the British king an immense scope of territory ~cst by Jtrdge Veecl~:"This case, as related by Joseph Meudenl@ll, an old soldier and settler at tho plim known as Nendenhall's Darn, iu Menallen of the royal grant to Penn,2 co-extensive with the toxrnship, was thns: About three and a 11:tlF miles west of Uniontown, on limits of Virginia, which at that time were of indefi- the south side of*the State or Beatou road, which leads from the poor- nite extent. At a subsequent treaty held (in 1752) at house through Sew Salem, etc., and within fire or six rods of the road, on land uow (ISGD) of Josl~naTVoodward,are the remainsof an old clear- Logstomn, on the Ohio, below Pittsburgh, one of the ing of about one-fourth of an acre, and ~vithinit the remains of an old Iroquois chiefs, who had. also taken part in the Lan- cl~inmeg. Two or three rods soutl~e%stwdid a sm;rll spring, the dixin caster treaty, declared that it had not been the inten- of ~vl1ic1~lea& off rvestward into the 'Burnt Cabin fork' of Dnulap's or tion of his people to convey to the English any lands h'emacolin's Creek; and still farther south, some four or fire rods, is the old twil or path edled Dnnlnp's road. The story is that in very early west of the Alleghenies, but that, nevertheless, they times-perhaps about liG'i--two men &?me over the monut;iius hy this would not oppose the white man's definition of the path to hunt, etc., and began an improvement at this clearing, aud p:t boundaries. up a sniall cabin upon it. While asleep in tlieir cabin, some Indinns came to it and shot them, and then set fire to the cabin. Tlreir names The Six Nations in council had also decided that, are ;nkuown. So far as known, this is tire onlj case of thc kind that notwithstanding their friendship for the English, ever occurred within our wnnty limits." they would remain neutral in the contest which they saw was imminent between that nation and the French, both of which were now using every effort

2 It was snpposed xt that time that Penn's Western Boundary wonid not full to the westward of the Laurel Hill.