Source:Fleming-delaware/content
A BIT of tribal history evolved from most familiar geographical names of Indian origin applied to Pittsburgh streets; another dip into biography of some equally familiar names of individuals, and the phase of this storytelling from the commemoration of the red race will be concluded.
In last Sunday's story the extinction of the Eries was mentioned and incidentally the account of their destruction by the Iroquois by Charles McKnight in his book, "Our Western Border," and the comment was made that he was chary in giving his authority for his history of the Eries. It was discovered a few days since.
Opening Neville B. Craig's "The Olden Time," Vol. I, at random, the story of the Eries was found verbatim as McKnight has it. Craig, always watchful for anything pertaining to the early history of our region, found the story in the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser in 1845 and reproduced it with due credit and some comment.
Craig admits the account is mere Indian tradition and perhaps, in some degree, fabulous, but thinks the authority for the narrative equal to that of which we have of the early periods of Greece and Rome.
The account in the Buffalo paper, the editor stated, came from the lips of Blacksnake and other venerable chiefs of the Senecas and Tonewandas who still cherish the traditions of their fathers.
Indian tradition never loses anything that impairs the prowess of their ancestors. But this account of the Eries, while too long for insertion here, is nevertheless good reading and he who may desire to read can find the books in which it is contained in our public libraries. Much of this history can be found in Hanna's "Wilderness Trails" and in Vol. XIV of the "Jesuit Relations."
Juniata is another sweet-sounding Indian name, both in Pennsylvania geography and in a Pittsburgh street.
Name Once Well Known.
It was once a well-known name in commerce—for instance Juniata iron. The name was originally applied to a tribe who, like the Eries, melted away in the consuming blasts of Iroqouis [sic] vengeance.
Verily the Iroquois deserved the appellation bestowed by DeWitt Clinton, "The Romans of America." They were the worst of conquerors. Parkman tells us:
Inordinate pride and the lust of blood and dominion were the mainsprings of their warfare, and their victories were stained with every excess of savage passion.
Though leaving us not a trace of the Eries, Andastes and Juniatas, the conquerors could not prevent the names of the conquered coming down to us in commemoration, not only in geography, but in song and story.
Prof. Bolles, one of our best Pennsylvania historians, says:
The Juniatas dwelt in the center of the province. Before the advent of the white man they were gone, vanquished probably by the invincible Iroquois. Throughout the entire region not a solitary wigwam was seen or a war-whoop heard; it was a conquered, empty interior, used as a hunting ground.
After many of the peaceable Tuscaroras in Carolina had been killed or sold into slavery, and despoiled of their possessions by the whites, the remainded [sic] fled northward and were permitted by the Iroquois to settle in the Juniata country.
This is one way of stating the facts, but it is not complete.
It was about 1711 that the Tuscaroras came to Pennsylvania. We know that they subsequently moved farther north and that the Juniata region became the hunting ground of the Delawares by permission of the Iroquois.
Juniata is an Iroquois word and means "the standing stone," designating the tall stone nearly square and seven feet high that once stood on the site of the town of Huntingdon.
Names Are Changed.
Hanna tells us Juniata is a corruption from the original Onojutta, the letter "j" pronounced as "y," and that the word Oneida has the same meaning. It is most likely. Many original Indian names have been Anglicized, notably Allegheny.
We come now to the brief history of the celebrated Alliquippa, the so-called queen, a well-known local name. Samuel G. Drake calls her "the squaw chief of the Yohoghany."
Conrad Weiser, in his journal of his mission to Logstown, writes, August 27, 1748:
We dined in a Seneka town where an old woman reigns with great authority. We dined at her house, and they all used us very well at this and the last mentioned Delaware town.
Alliquippa's town mentioned by Weiser was at the Written Rock, known to us as McKees Rocks, on the Ohio. Chartiers Creek was called for some years Alliquippas Creek, and in early surveys there is found Alliquippas Island, since known as Brunots Island.
Alliquippa's town here is shown on the Ohio Company's map, made in 1750. A year after Weiser, Celoron came to this region, claiming it for the French. He passed through Shanoppin's town, which was on the Allegheny about Thirty-third street. He writes:
I re-embarked and visited the village which is called the "Written Rock." The Iroquois inhabit this place and it is an old woman of this nation who governs it.
Devoted to the English.
She regards herself as a sovereign. She is entirely devoted to the English. This place is one of the most beautiful I have seen on La Belle Riviere.
Messrs. Patton, Fry and Lomax, commissioners sent by Gov. Dinwiddie of Virginia to treat with the Ohio Indians, were here on May 30, 1752. They record that they "crossed to the opposite shore where Queen Alliquippa lives." They visited her and presented her with a brass kettle and other articles.
Some old maps show Alliquippa's town on the north side of the Ohio. She seems to have shifted about, for in December, 1753, Washington visited her at the mouth of the Youghiogheny and records in his journal:
As we intended to take horses here (Frazer's fost, at Turtle Creek) I went up about three miles to the mouth of the Youghioghany to visit Queen Aliquippa, who had expressed great concern that we passed her on going to the fort. I made her a present of a match coat and a bottle of rum, which latter was thought much the better present of the two.
Very diplomatic in G. W. indeed; even in the wilderness he found the efficacy of finery and firewater.
Before her removal to the Ohio region Alliquippa lived at Alloguapys Gap, five miles east of Raytown, now Bedford. This was prior to 1731.
Mother of Chief.
The name is a variation; most historians spell it as written herein.
Charles A. Hanna says that Alliquippa is generally spoken of as a Seneca woman, but she was probably a Mohawk, as her son became a chief of that tribe. She was the widow, Hanna thinks, of a Conestoga chief or a Seneca chief who had settled among the Conestogas about Lancaster.
It is of record that she accompanied her husband to New Castle, Del., in 1701, to bid farewell to William Penn at the time of his final departure for England.
Note that the queen's social relations are of high caste. With Penn and Washington on her visiting list she was fully entitled to a line in the Blue Book.
The queen's son under different names figures largely in the colonial records of Pennsylvania. He was one of 10 Indians from the Ohio at the conference in Philadelphia in November, 1747, when they informed the Pennsylvania authorities that they had taken up the hatchet against the French. Alliquippa's son, then called Conachquasy, was the principal speaker.
The English subsequently named him Capt. Newcastle.
He is often called Cashuwayon. He was really a great warrior and was one of 10 Indians who participated in the Battle of the Monongahela under Monacatoocha, on the side of the English, remaining to fight against the French in spite of Braddock's harsh treatment.
Chief Acts As Spy.
He died the next year, 1756, in Philadelphia of smallpox. For a year he had acted in the perilous role of a spy and messenger of the Governor among the hostile tribes of the upper Susquehanna.
Alliquippa is sometimes alluded to as a Delaware, but incorrectly. After the defeat of Washington at Great Meadows Alliquippa fled to the vicinity of Raystown. She died about 1754.
In the Pennsylvania archives, in the correspondence of George Croghan, under date of December 23, 1754, the line occurs:
"Alequeapy, ye old Queen, is dead and left several children."
The sovereignty of a woman among the Indians was surely anomalous. Alliquippa is a sure-enough historical character in Pittsburgh's history and we honor her rightly in a street name.
We have another historical character, Logan; if not commemorated, the name of that street serves to recall him, but his story is known to every school child.
Then there is Manhattan, undoubtedly familiar; a street so named on the North Side. But its meaning is little known.
When the Dutch first came to the mouth of the Hudson they brought plenty of rum along and there was a high time on the site of the future Great White Way. It was an enduring drunk and gave rise to an enduring name: "Manhattan—the island where we all got drunk."
No wonder his royal highness, the Duke of York, changed the name.
Famous Medicine Man.
Besides Alliquippa, we have Kilbuck as a commemorative name of a fairly good Indian.
Kilbuck was famous as a medicine man as well as a war chief. He was a deputy with White Eyes, the great sachem of the Delawares, and Capt. Pipe, who burned Crawford, in the most remarkable treaty ever made in behalf of the United States.
All of the Indian tribes were in league with the British except the Delawares, and the Delawares, under Kilbuck, by so treating, on September 17, 1778, and forming an open union with the colonies, exposed themselves to absolute destruction by the British and their savage allies, the Iroquois, but White Eyes was firm in what he thought was right and the records of this famous treaty have been kept in a manuscript letter book by Col. George Morgan and that book is now in possession of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
A request was made by Chief White Eyes that Col. George Gibson be appointed Indian agent in place of Morgan, who was in Philadelphia at the time of the treaty.
Kilbuck, who succeeded White Eyes, sent Morgan word that he had disagreed with the great chief and did not want a change, and the next year came the gift to Col. Morgan from the Delawares of what was then called the Sewickley Bottom, consisting of the lowlands along the Ohio in the vicinity of the town of Sewickley, a gift inspired by the high regard the Indians had for Morgan.
He was greatly angered at the imputations of White Eyes and denounced them as villainous, because the chief had said that the Delawares were convinced that Gibson had always been honest with them and they were convinced also that he would make their common good his chief study and not think only how he might get rich. The Colonel refused the ground because it was a premium on doing his duty.
White Eyes died in Pittsburgh in 1780 of smallpox. This is Drake's story. According to Heckewelder, the chief died a year earlier while on an expedition to the Muskingum towns with Gen. Lachlan McIntosh.
Edgar W. Hassler, confirming Boyd Crumrine, states that White Eyes was treacherously put to death; it was believed shot by a Virginia militiaman.
Treaty Lasts Two Years.
White Eyes, whose Indian name was Cochquacaukehlton, had other Indian names, but do not try to pronounce them. Among these was Koquethagaeehlon, a variation of the above. He was also known as Gray Eyes. He figures extensively in the history of our border and his passing gave the sachemship to Kilbuck.
Of the three sub-tribes of the Delawares about Fort Pitt, Beaver was war chief of the Turkey tribe, White Eyes sachem; Custologa chief of the Wolves, succeeded by the villainous Capt. Pipe, and New Comer chief of the Turtles, succeeded by Kilbuck, who proved as unswerving a friend to the Americans as his great predecessor, White Eyes.
For two years the treaty of 1778 was outwardly observed, but with White Eyes dead Kilbuck could only delay by his influence the union of the Delawares with the hostile nations. Col. Daniel Broadhead, for the Americans, had nothing to give, but the British agents from Detroit had presents as well as promises.
The influence of the hostiles triumphed and the Delawares broke away and in 1781, during the absence of Kilbuck at Fort Pitt, hostile bands of Delaware warriors were permitted by a council held at Coshocton to go out against the Pennsylvania and Virginia borders.
Kilbuck feared to return to Coshocton, for threats were boldly made against his life. He took up his residence with the Moravian, or converted Indians, on the eastern bank of the Tuscarawas River in Ohio near the present town of New Philadelphia.
He professed Christianity, was baptized and received a Christian name, William Henry, in honor of a distinguished citizen of Lancaster, Pa. Kilbuck, who held a commission from Congress, was proud to call himself "Col. Henry."
A few Delawares—his own family, that of White Eyes and the war captains, Big Cat and Nanowland, removed to Salem, also a Moravian town. From this place Kilbuck wrote, by the hand of Heckewelder, the missionary, a long letter to Col. Broadhead, informing him of the action of the council at Coshocton.
John Montour brought this letter and one from the missionary to Fort Pitt.
Heckewelder suggested an expedition against Coshocton, which was made, resulting in the destruction of the twon. This warfare arrayed Kilbuck against his own tribesmen.
Settle on Island.
As a result of the Coshocton campaign the hostile Delwares emigrated to the neighborhood of upper Sandusky, where Crawford most unfortunately found them, while the remnant adhering to Kilbuck came to Pittsburgh and settled upon the island once called Kilbuck's, but later Smoky Island, at the mouth of the Allegheny.
The name Kilbuck, for many years applied to the street in old Allegheny, was changed in the recent street renaming to Hypolite. We read in the street directory that Kilbuck street extends from Giddings street to Graphic, Thirteenth Ward, and is not opened.
Hypolite street, old Kilbuck, is close to the great chief's former residence and the scene of the events herein narrated. The name Kilbuck, historic and commemorative, should never have been removed.
We learn also that this street extends from Cremo (smoke up) to Scotland. As Andrew Carnegie, when a boy, lived in this neighborhood, we may assume that the name Scotland is a compliment to him.
Naming streets for nickel smokes is not commendable. This was formerly Craig street.
As for Hypolite—how do you pronounce it? What do the denizens of the neighborhood call it?
Over 25 years ago, in one of the frequent revolutions in Haiti, some miscreant shot at the president of the Black republic who bore the name, whereupon the uncertainty of its pronunciation arose. This led one newspaper man to inquire:
Is it very impolite
To shoot at Hoppolite [sic]?
Or very indiscreet
To shoot at Hippolite?
In France it would be, but in Spain, Italy, and surely in Haiti, the versifier contended, it was:
Simply jollity
To shoot at Hippolite.
And he added that in mythology, hagiology and Haiti Hip has always had a hard time, and he predicted Hip's right eye would be knocked out by the first printer that knew the reason.
It was! And our street renamers followed suit.
Poor old Kilbuck! To think he had to give way to Hip. But we have his township yet.
So much for the Indians once here.
As a race they have withered from the land. Their arrows are broken, their springs are dried up, their cabins are in the dust. Their council fire has long since gone out on the shore.
