History of the Early Settlement of the Juniata Valley. U. J. Jones
off this galling yoke, through the influence of Zeedyusung, a powerful chief, who extorted from the Iroquois an acknowledgment of their independence at a treaty held at Tioga in 1756.
"The humiliation of tributary nations was, however, tempered with a paternal regard for their interests in all negotiations with the whites; and care was taken that no trespasses should be committed on their rights, and that they should be justly dealt with."
So says the record; and yet we find that the sachems of the Six Nations, who had evidently learned from the whites both the use and abuse of money, in July, 1754, at Albany, sold all the lands in the State, not previously purchased, "lying southwest of a line beginning one mile above the mouth of Penn's Creek, and running northwest-by-west to the western boundary of the State." This sold the land from under the feet of the Delawares, Shawnees, and Monseys, of the Juniata Valley, notwithstanding the Six Nations had guaranteed it to them forever as a sacred hunting-ground. This act of treachery on the part of the Iroquois, and the insatiate appetite of the proprietors to add broad acres to their extensive domain, caused many of these homeless tribes to go over to the French, and, as a writer truly adds, "the blood of Braddock's soldiers was added to the price of the land."
But to return to the original settlement of the valley. The Indians unquestionably received the white adventurers with open arms, and extended to them such a hearty welcome as must have banished all fears for the future. The savages looked upon the death-dealing rifle with superstitious awe; and the saw, the axe, the plane, and other implements of handicraft in the possession of the whites, made them a high order of beings, endowed with peculiar gifts by the Great Spirit, in the eyes of the Indians, and their persons were regarded as sacred. They shared with them their rude huts, and left nothing undone within their power to render them comfortable.
And for this noble and magnanimous conduct on the part of the Indian, what return did the white man make? Such a one only, we regret to say, as makes no bright page in their history. They were taught all the vices of civilization, but to teach them its virtues was deemed a work of supererogation. The ignorant Indian and his primitive habits were treated with disdain, and he was deemed a fit subject for robbery whenever opportunity offered—this more especially by the lawless, who considered themselves out of the reach of government and its officers. A gradual encroachment upon the Indian's sacred hunting-grounds, and the refusal of the white man to look upon him as any thing but a degraded being or to associate with him on an equality, soon taught the Indian that he had taken into fellowship the crafty white man only to enable him to suck out his existence by his superior skill and his subtle cunning. The keen penetration of the savage soon discovered the position he occupied by the side of his white brother. Smarting under the indignities offered, and foreseeing the degradation to which he would be subjected in time, the red man and the white man did not long dwell together in unity. While the latter commenced tilling the land and surrounding himself with the comforts of civilization, the former fled before him to the mountains and valleys where he was monarch of the land—where the council-fire could blaze, the green-corn dance and song be heard, and the calumet of peace be smoked without the presence of the white man.
Yet, with all the encroachments upon their rights by the settlers, the Indians exercised great forbearance. They knew the warlike appliances in the power of the proprietary government; hence they repeatedly declared their wish to "keep bright the chain of friendship;"—in less figurative language, they did not want to go to war. No depredations were committed upon the whites, of any consequence, before the French tampered with them and the Six Nations perfidiously sold the land they had given "their cousins" as a sacred hunting-ground. Nor even then, although the aggravation was great, did all the Indians leave the valley to join the French. Many who were friendly toward the proprietary government remained until war broke out between the colonies and Great Britain; and some few peaceably-disposed fragments of tribes even lingered in the valley until the close of the Revolutionary war.
During the French and Indian war, and at its close, many of the Indians returned, and lived for some years in the valley unmolested. But in 1761–62 the footprints of the white man were seen in their paths, and civilization began to crowd them. The white adventurers crowded so thick upon them, that, after the war of 1764, the greater portion of them left; nor did they return again until 1777, when they appeared as allies to the British crown, to massacre and scalp the unprotected frontier-men. To stimulate them to this inhuman warfare, the British not only impressed it upon them that they were redressing grievances, but they actually paid them a stipulated price for every scalp, of child as well as adult, brought to the Canadian frontier.
The Indians who figured in the predatory incursions from 1776 to 1781 were probably Delawares, Monseys, Nanticokes, Shawnees, and Tuscaroras; but they were then only known as Delawares, all other titles having been merged into that of the most powerful tribe. That these tribes were the ones who committed most of the depredations, we judge from the fact that the elder chiefs and captains emigrated to the Canadian frontier from the Juniata Valley, and consequently knew every foot of the valley, from the base of the Alleghany Mountains to the very mouth of the river.
CHAPTER II.
HISTORY OF THE EARLY SETTLERS.
It appears from all authentic evidence that white traders ventured into the valley as early as 1740, but always left again after transacting their business. It was about the year 1741 that bold and daring men pushed into the valley with the evident determination of making it their home. They were nearly all Scotch-Irish—a hardy race of devout Christians, whose ancestors had been persecuted in the north of Scotland, by Charles I., and driven to the north of Ireland, and who, fearful of the provisions of the Schism Bill, in their turn fled from Ireland to America, between the years 1714 and 1720. The first of them located near or about the line (then in dispute) between Maryland and Pennsylvania. Logan, the secretary of the province, who was probably an adherent to the religion professed by the proprietors, was very much annoyed at the Scotch-Irish assumption and maintenance of "squatter's rights." In a letter to the Provincial Government, in 1724, he said, "They (the Scotch-Irish and Scotch) have generally taken up the western lands; and as they rarely approach me to propose to purchase, I look upon them as bold and indigent strangers, giving as their excuse, when challenged for titles, that we had solicited for colonists, and they had come accordingly."
Notwithstanding this, they were not molested, for they were exempted from the payment of rents by an ordinance passed in 1720, in consequence of their being frontier-men, and forming a cordon of defence to the colony.
Logan, it must be admitted, had no friendly feeling toward the new comers. In 1725 he stated that they had taken possession of one thousand acres of land, resolutely sat down and improved it without having any right to it, and he expressed himself much at a loss to determine how to dispossess them. On this occasion he admitted that among them were a number of Germans.
In 1730, Logan wrote to the government, or probably the proprietors, complaining of the Scotch-Irish, in an audacious and disorderly manner, possessing themselves of the whole of Conestoga Manor, of fifteen thousand acres, being the best land in the country. In doing this by force, they alleged that it was against the laws of God and nature that so much land should be idle while so many Christians wanted it to labor on and raise their bread. They were finally dispossessed by the sheriff and his posse, and their cabins, to the number of thirty, were burned.
These men apparently held in contempt the sham purchases of Penn from the Indians; asserted that the treaties by which the lands were secured to the proprietors were nothing more than downright farces; and they justified their course by assuming that if the Penn family had a right to "fillibuster" on an extensive scale, the same right to enjoy enough land to support their families should not be denied them. If the disciples of George Fox, by craft and cunning, could obtain from the Indians thousands upon thousands of acres of land by a royal grant and the presentation of baubles that shamed the idea of a purchase, the disciples of John Calvin thought they had an equal right to possess themselves of at least a portion of the acres wrested by stratagem from the Indians. They considered the Penns usurpers and pretenders,