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.