Source:Lytle-gist/content
A wealth of romance is embodied in the historical background of Pittsburgh's street names. Some were written in blood. Some recall men of the sword who swaggered across the pages of this city's early history with a dash and color belonging to a bygone age. This is the fourth of a series of articles on the story behind the names of certain street signs.
THE TALL white man in buckskin appraised the Indian village with a calm, blue-eyed gaze that seemed directed on the hills across the river while it took in every detail of the encampment.
He slouched in his saddle as his tired horse plodded down the trail. The horse was too near exhaustion to heed the dogs that yelped at his heels. The man's weather-roughened hands balanced a rifle on the pommel of the saddle.
There was little in his dress or in his tanned face to distinguish him from the Indians who came to meet him. He wore the same kind of scalping knife and tomahawk in his belt. His feet were shod in moccasins. The long leggins that overlapped his hunting shirt left his thighs bare. His dark hair fell almost to his shoulders from beneath the coonskin cap. A trade blanket hung loosely around his back, like a cape.
He judged there must be 20 wigwams in the village, with about the same number of warriors. The river to the right must be the upper branch of the Ohio. (The Allegheny had no name of its own at this time, but was regarded as the continuation of the Ohio.) To his left were forested hills, reminiscent of the mountains through which he had passed.
This must be the 19th of November, he reflected. He had made good time from Colonel Cresap's plantation at Old Town (15 miles southeast of what is now Cumberland, Md.). He had left Cresap's on the last day of October.
Less than three weeks to the Ohio, he thought, as his horse carried him slowly toward the place where the braves had assembled to meet him. He had a right to be pleased with himself.
He had followed the Warrior's Path from the Potomac. A man could almost count on the fingers of his two hands the white chiefs who had traveled the Warrior's Path into the mapless West. He had reached the Juniata at the Warrior's Gap (eight miles east of Bedford). From there he had taken the lower trail to the Ohio.
Now this was Shannopin's Town, a village of the Delawares. Downstream from the town, several miles, the white man saw immense cliffs that rose as straight as the walls of a castle. Beyond the river on the right the hills rolled back to meet the purple horizon. It was an inspiring sight for a man who was never exactly happy inside the walls of ahouse.
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THAT was how Christopher Gist came to the site of Pittsburgh—eight years before the first English settlement; five years in advance of Braddock's army; three years before Washington.
He was the first of a long roll of famous pathfinders whou would come to the Forks of the Ohio in the next half century.
It was in 1750 that Gist rode into Shannopin's Town, which stood about where Thirtieth Street crosses Penn Avenue.
The man with the impassive, Indian-like face could never have guessed that a great city would rise on the land that he scouted for the Ohio Company. He would probably not have liked it, if he had known that a street that would climb along the flank of the hills to the left would bear his name. For Christopher Gist did not care much for towns.
At Shannopin's Town, he got corn for his horses and rested them until they were strong enough to carry him and his baggage forward. He swam his horses across the Allegheny (he called it the Ohio in his journal) and pressed on into the West.
England and France were working fast for knowledge of the wilderness behind their settlements. As soon as they found how desirable it was for settlement, the flags would follow the trails that men like Gist had blazed, and cannon would thunder in the forests.
Just now the tribes were more or less at peace with white men. But no man knew how soon the storm would break.
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ON CHRISTMAS day, 1750, Gist was in Muskingum, a village of the Wyandots on the site of Coshocton. He wrote in his journal:
"This being Christmas Day, I intended to read prayers, but after inviting some of the white men, they informed each other of my intentions, and being of several different persuasions, and few of them inclined to hear any God, they refused to come."
But a blacksmith went around among the traders and talked them into coming to hear Gist read the Bible. It was probably the first Protestant church service in what is now the state of Ohio.
The day after Christmas the Wyandots killed an Indian woman who had been their prisoner, had escaped, and been re-captured. Gist described the slaying in his journal:
"They carried her without the town, and let her loose, and when she attempted to run away, the persons appointed for that purpose pursued her, and struck her on the ear, on the right side of her head, which beat her flat on her face on the ground; they then struck her several times through the back with a dart to the heart, scalped her, and threw the scalp in the air, and another cut off her head. There the dismal spectacle lay till the evening."
On Feb. 11, near the site of Piqua, O., Gist obtained from the Indians the tooth of a mastodon, which he brought back for the edification of the heads of the Ohio Company.
The scout advanced down the river until he was within 15 miles of the Falls of the Ohio, at Louisville, when he turned back.
On the return journey, Gist took a southern trail, which led him through what is now West Virginia to his home on the Yadkin River, North Carolina.
The following year, Gist undertook another exploration for the Ohio Company, this time scouting the valleys of the Monongahela and Youghiogheny. He was accompanied by his sons. His journal records that they scared a panther from under a rock one night so they could sleep in its hiding place.
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MANY accounts have been written of the trip on which Gist guided George Washington, in 1753, to the French forts on the Upper Allegheny, to warn the soldiers away from territory which England claimed.
It was in what is now Butler County that an Indian almost assassinated the 21-year-old Virginia Major who was to lead the colonists in the Revolution a score of years later. Gist's journal relates the incident:
"But before we came to water, we came to a clear meadow. It was very light, and snow on the ground. The Indian made a stop, turned about; the Major saw him point his gun toward us and fire. Said the Major, 'Are you shot?' 'No,' said I.
"Upon which the Indian ran forward to a big, standing white oak, and to loading his gun; but we were soon with him. I would have killed him; but the Major would not suffer me to kill him."
They told the Indian he had better go forward to his cabin, and that they would rejoin him. He was glad to be off, and Gist and Washington traveled all night lest the savage might bring a war party down on them.
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GIST'S journal also recounts how Washington almost lost his life when he fell in the Allegheny River where the Washington Crossing Bridge now spans the stream.
"We set out early, got to the Allegheny, made a raft, and with much difficulty got over to an island, a little above Shannopin's Town. The Major having fallen in from off the raft, and my fingers frost-bitten, and the sun down, and very cold, we contented ourselves to encamp upon that island. It was deep water between us and the shore, but the cold did us some service, for in the morning it was frozen hard enough for us to pass over on the ice."
Gist was chief of scouts for Braddock's expedition. Two of his sons, Nathaniel and Thomas, accompanied him with that ill-fated commander. Before the battle, he went alone to within a half-mile of the fort and brought back information on the condition of the French forces.
After Braddock's expedition, Gist raised a company of scouts in Virginia and Maryland. In 1756, he went to the Carolinas to enlist the Cherokees in the English service. He died of smallpox while in Georgia in 1759. His son, Richard, was killed at the battle of King's Mountain, in the Revolution.
