Source:Fleming-fierce-indians/content
The story today is a continuation of last week's Western Pennsylvania history recalled by Indian names given Pittsburgh streets
BEFORE proceeding with the topics discussed today some words of explanation arising from a mis-statement are necessary.
"D. L. M." writes the Gazette Times calling attention to the fact that the date when Forbes left Pittsburgh is fixed by Christian Frederick Post in his second journal as December 3, 1758. D. L. M.'s letter was printed in the Gazette Times of April 1. He quotes Post:
While I waited here I saw the General march off from Pittsburgh, which made me sorry I could not have the pleasure of speaking with him.
Post had one champion, an Indian, son of Ketiuscund. Post calls him "a noted Indian," but does not give his tribe. The two got to the Allegheny and landed on Smoky Island opposite the Point, and there they were marooned and passed a miserable night, hungry and cold. While on the island they saw Forbes march away. Post called across to the men about the ruined fort (Duquesne), but there were no boats to bring them over. The rest of Post's companions came up the next day.
Post Is Rescued.
The Indians found a raft hid in the bushes and some crossed and the next day, very hungry, the whole party was brought over the same way.
Post's journals are to be found in the Pennsylvania archives and in Rupp's "History of Pennsylvania and the West," Appendix I, the quotation above on page 122 of that appendix.
The story of Post, who was then returning from his mission to the Shawanese and Delawares on the Ohio, has been reserved for a future article.
The part Post played in the founding of Pittsburgh, the dangers he incurred, the weakening of the French defense by the withholding at a critical time the assistance of their former allies, the Delawares and Shawanese, was a great part.
Pennsylvania Indians.
Ye say their say their cone-like cabins
That clustered o'er the vale
Have fled away like withered leaves
Before the autumn gale;
But their memory liveth on your hills,
Their baptism on your shore,
Your everlasting rivers speak
Their dialect of yore.
Old Massachusetts wears it
Upon her lordly crown,
And broad Ohio bears it
Amid his young renown.
—Mrs. Sigourney.
One enduring impress left upon Pennsylvania by the Indians and undoubtedly the most conspicuous is the names of places, and especially of flowing waters. The reason is plain. They are not only beautiful, but sensible and expressive.
True, there are some corruptions. The originals retain their beauty, the changed forms are less pleasing.
It may also have been apparent that all the names of Indian origin that appear in our street nomenclature were not enumerated in last Sunday's story. There was omitted mention of Natchez and Cherokee, commemoratinfi [sic] neighboring tribes, but of different families, and this mention leads us to the question of contiguity (the type made us say "continuity" last week).
Natchez street is on Mt. Washington and Cherokee street on Herron Hill.
It needs no argument to prove that a system that places all Indian names in one section of the city would be a practical and sensible system—a clue always to the location of a street bearing an Indian name. But these names having come singly and at varying periods it is unwise now to change them; such changing would become complex. The time and opportunity for it have passed.
We have in addition to the names enumerated last week the following:
Catawba, Comanche, Dakota, Erie, Hiawatha, Huron, Itasca, Iowa, Iroquois, Juniata, Kanawha, Kearsarge, Kenesaw, Lehigh, Mohawk, Ontario, Ossipee, Penobscot, Pocussett, Sachem, Sciota, Shamokin, Sioux, Tomahawk, Wampum, Wicheta, Winnebago and Wyoming.
Families and Tribes.
Undoubtedly some of these names, especially the geographical ones, have been applied through fancy, just as one fond couple names the little dear Gwendolyn Gladys and other parents none the less loving, think Mary Jane just the thing. It is the old story of the rose and its perfume.
No doubt there are other names of Indian origin in our street designations Sufficient have been given for the purposes of illustration. Those above given tell their own stories.
It may be remarked, however, that all are not tribal designations. Iroquois, the French and most common name for the Six Nations; Hurons and Sioux or Dakota are family appelations [sic]; Natchez and Cherokee are both family and tribal, and each distinct. Family names being ethnological in scope will not be touched upon. That would be going outside of the realm of history.
The coming of the Delawares and the Shawanese to the region of the upper Ohio, driven hither by the dominant Iroquois, was dwelt on last week. The provincial authorities of Pennsylvania and Virginia did not rest easy with these tribes under the French influence.
Tired of the persecutions of the white settlers, for the pioneer was often base; tired of the arrogance and domineering of the Iroquois, their red masters, these tribes refused to leave their villages on LaBelle [sic] Rivier, and stayed here and helped make history. And here their vassal age became more nominal and amounted at the end of a quiet submissiveness and an ever recurring and expedient acknowledgment of the superiority of the Iroquois. The truculent spirit of the latter gradually modified, though the overlords of the Six Nations were never withdrawn.
The Delawares and Shawanese became allies of the French nevertheless, and the French without this aid could not have stayed, for when Post withheld it the power of Onontis, as they called the French king, went heavenward in the smoke of their burning fort—Du Quesne.
The story of the Lenape (Delawares) being conquered by stratagem rather than arms, as told by the Lenape themselves, binds a ready belief in Heckwelder and is accepted also in good faith by Bishop Loskiel, also a Moravian historian.
But these men were missionaries among the Delawares and Heckwelder, for many years among them, looks at everything through Delaware eyes. Parkman dismisses the story as absurd, that "a people so acute and suspicious, could be the dupes of so palpable a trick, and it is equally incredible that a high-spirited tribe could be induced by the most persuasive rhetoric to assume the name of women which in Indian eyes is the last confession of object abasement."
Truly so—for the woman was the Indian's slave.
Neville B. Craig speaking of the Shawnese [sic] relations with the Iroquois, says:
At a treaty at Fort Pitt in May, 1768, a little incident occurred which showed that the Shawanese also submitted very patiently to the rebukes of the Iroquois and tended to prove that the latter well deserved the name given them by the late DeWitt Clinton—"The Romans of America."
The Indian Demands.
Nymwha, a Shawanese, addressing the Pennsylvania commissioners, George Croghan, Indian agent; Alexander McKeig, his deputy, and the officers present, said:
"We afterwards desired you to destroy your forts as that would be the way to make all nations of Indians believe you were sincere in your friendship, and we now repeat the same argument to you again. We also desired you not to go down the river, etc."
The next day (May 4, 1768), Keyashuta, a Seneca chief (one of the Indians by the way, who accompanied Washington from Logstown to Le Boef [sic], in 1753, and whom the writer well recollects), arose with a copy of the treaty of 1764 with Colonel Bradstreet, in his hand, and addressing the commissioners, said:
"By this treaty we agreed that you had a right to build forts and trading houses where you pleased and to travel the road of peace from the sun rising to the sun setting. At that treaty the Shawanese and Delawares were with me, and know all this well, and I am surprised that they should speak to you as they did yesterday."
Two days afterward, Kassinaughta, a Shawnese [sic] chief, arose and said:
"You desired us to speak from our hearts, and tell you what gave us uneasiness of mind and we did so. We are very sorry we should have said anything to give offense; and we acknowledge we are wrong."
Craig's Indian Story.
Craig has something to say of the Shawanoes or Shawanese and other tribes and things about Pittsburgh.
The Shawanese are described as a restless people who constantly engaged in war with some of their neighbors. They were originally from the South; the French say from the Cumberland River.
Mr. Heckewelder was told by other Indians that they were from Florida, and Mr. Johnson, United States agent at Piqua, O., states that they came from the Suanee River, Florida, and that it derived its name from them. He also states, that they, only, of all the Indian tribes, have a tradition that their ancestors crossed the sea. Also that they kept a yearly sacrifice for their safe arrival.
About 1698 they first appeared in Pennsylvania, as Mr. Heckewelder states, at Montour's Island (now Neville Island, six miles below Pittsburg). Some of them went to Conestoga and other settled at the headwaters of the Susquehanna and Delaware.
In 1728 they were agin in motion to the West, and located near the Allegheny and Ohio. In 1732 of 700 warriors in the state 350 were Shawanese.
They had several villages within the limits of the present counties of Allegheny and Beaver. Post passed through three Shawanese villages between Fort Duquesne and Sawcunk, which we believe, was near the mouth of the Beaver River about where the town of Beaver now stands. Their principal residence was afterwards on the Scioto.
Of the six nations the Senecas were the most western. Their homes extended from the headwaters of the Allegheny River some distance down the Ohio, and to this nation belonged Tanacharison, also Gayashuta and Cornplanter.
These various nations strangely mixed together and yet preserving their distinctive and separate organizations were dwelling here in peace when the white man appeared among them. The Englishman claiming title under a charter from a distant king, strengthened by a treaty with the Iroquois. The Frenchman resting upon the first discovery. (That of LaSalle.)
It is useless now to inquire which had the better or worse title. Certainly it was easy enough for either claimant to find sufficient flaws in his adversary's title to excuse his resistance to it; especially in a case where only a plausible pretext was needed.
France in Possession.
France then held extensive possessions in North America, Canada and Louisiana, belonging to her, and she was anxious to strengthen herself and circumscribe her adversary, by establishing a line of posts from her northern to her southern colony. The point at the junction of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers, at once became a commanding position in this great scheme.
In 1749 Capt. Celoron came, deposited his leaden plates, only not claiming the country, but taking renewed possession of the River Ohio, "and of all those which fall into it and of all the territories on both sides as far as the source of said rivers as the preceding kings of France have possessed or should possess them."
The story could not be better told. From this act of Celoron's began the stirring history of all the region about the Forks of the Ohio, and to quote a writer of our own times, the Rev. Dr. George P. Donehoo of Coudersport, now secretary of the Historical Commission of Pennsylvania:
Historic development works out along strange lines. Had there been no migration of the Delawares and Shawnese [sic] to the Ohio, there would have been no rivalty [sic] between the French and English traders—no French and Indian war.
Had there been no French and Indian war, there would have been no tax on tea.
Had there been no tax on tea there would have been no American revolution and no United States.
Consequently, when the first hardy pioneers commenced to build their cabins on the banks of the Conodoguinet Creek (at Carlisle) they were commencing the erection of the greatest empire the world has yet known.
There are no trivial events in history. The migration of a red, feather-crested warrior with his squaw and pappoose [sic] from the waters of the Susquehanna was a trivial event in itself. But it meant the closing of one period of human history, and the dawning of a new era for a great continent.
It meant the final destruction of the forest and the wild, free life of the mountains and valleys and the beginning of the Empire of Cities, threaded by its network of steel highways.
The long silence of centuries which had brooded over the sweeping forest was to be broken by the sound of the woodsman's ax, as he cut down the trees to build his home, and later on the Indian trial [sic] was to become a trail of steel over which a nation would send its wealth to the uttermost parts of the earth.
The rhetoric here is both beautiful and appealing. We admit its truth.
This brings us to the consideration of other phases of the subject. History is not built up on hypotheses. The red feather-crested warriors did come and prone as we are to speculate, history must in its very definition—a record of past events—human events—pass by the fanciful and the might have been. Too often has the fate of nations hung upon a thread and often times the thread has broken.
The migrating Indians followed definite paths. The Indian of the woods was a foot soldier and until the English came he had never seen a horse or a cow. He followed the trail of centuries.
The story of these trails is interesting but not wholly within the scope of today's article. The trail developed into a historic highway and some of these highways we have yet in our streets as has ben [sic] noted. The Braddock road, Nemacolin's path, the Forbes road and others may be recalled.
The trails widened into rough frontier roads over which came the star of empire to the West.
The Delawares and Shawanese who came not voluntarily to our region remained here while all the great events of the eighteenth century were happening, and then there came a day when they knew the beautiful valley of the Upper Ohio no more.
Before they left they hurled a bold defiance to their overlords.
It was White Eyes who threw off the ever galling fetters of the Iroquois, the allies of the English, who considering the Delawares bound to operate with them, commanded their vassals to be in readiness.
"I shal [sic] do as I please," said White Eyes, "I wear no petticoat as you falsely pretend. I am no woman, but a man and you shall find me to act as such."
The meaning of the word Lenape is men, and the Delawares were themselves again. They were warriors once more, and the chain of events that followed proved to the colonists of Pennsylvania how bloody their warfare could be. The spoliation of their lands by the Penns, the unlicensed intrusion of the settlers, the rum traffic and the crowning massacre of the Christian Delawares at the Moravian towns in Ohio, all combined to keep warm the boding discontent and a long smothered anger burst at last into a consuming flame.
Indians Make Protest.
The Iroquois, especially in the Ohio region, shared in these feelings. Remonstrances to the authorities of the colony were followed by angry complaints, not alone from the Delawares but from the Iroquois, who said they had given the lands on the Juniata which were their [sic] by right of conquest, to their cousins, the Delawares, for hunting grounds, and by no treaty had they permitted settlements.
This was long before the Revolution, but the fire of discontent never died out, and when it leaped into an appalling fire it was indeed devastating.
The Iroquois were the allies of the English because for a century or more they had hated the French who, from the days of Champlain had sought to overpower them—not that they loved the English more but that they loved the French less.
The Delawares and Shawanese, driven to the debatable land on the Ohio, came within the French influence during the few years that influence was exerted and the Shawanese at heart were ever the foes of the Americans.
The war parties of these tribes that went to the frontiers of Pennsylvania followed the well known trails.
Many Indian villages were in our region, Shamoppin's [sic] town, Alliquippa's town, San Kunk and Logstown have been mentioned. There were vast tracts reserved by the Indians as hunting grounds, game preserves we call them now. Whenever the whites encroached upon these there was trouble. Once there was not an Indian village in the whole Kentucky region.
The subjugated Delawares and Shawanese were not kept thus by garrisons of Iroquois warriors. The fear of Iroquois vengeance was sufficient and remained sufficient until the day came when the yoke should be lifted.
Parkman thinks this was about the beginning of the Revolution.
He states that at the time the Delawares boldly asserted their freedom and in a few years the Six Nations conferred at a public council that the Lenape were no longer women, but men. Ever since they have stood in high repute for bravery, generosity and all the savage virtues and the settlers on the frontier have often found to their cost that the "women" of the Iroquois have been transformed into a race of formidable warriors. At the present day the small remnant settled beyond the Mississippi among the brave marauders of the West."
Parkman wrote in 1851. There are still a few Delawares on reservations. The fiercer Shawanese have come nearer extermination and no one grieves thereat.
