tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">359

EARLY SETTLEMENT OF THE JUNIATA VALLEY.

CHAPTER I.

THE ABORIGINES OF THE VALLEY — THEIR HABITS AND THEIR CUSTOMS.

When the persevering and adventurous Anglo-Saxon first entered the wilds of the Juniata, his eye, as far as it could reach, beheld nothing but a dense forest; but his quick penetration observed its natural beauties, its advantages, and the fertility of its soil. Hence he did not long stand upon the crest of the Tuscarora Mountain, debating the advantages to be derived from making it his home, or the risk he was taking upon himself in doing so, but plunged boldly down into the valley and called it his own. He found it peopled with dusky warriors and their families, who received him with open arms; and the golden hues of hope for the future lightened his cares, and made his privations no longer a burden. On the banks of the beautiful river the majestic stag trod, a very monarch; and the pellucid stream, from the bubbling brooks that formed it, to its mouth, was filled with the noble salmon and sportive trout, with little to molest them; for the Indians did not possess the penchant for indiscriminate slaughter of game which characterized their successors. They held that the land was given to human beings by the good Manitou for a dwelling-place, and not for the purpose of being broken up and cultivated for game. The fish and game were also a free gift from the same spirit, for the support of his people. Hence hunting and fishing for more than what would supply immediate and absolute wants were held in supreme contempt by the red man.

The Indians found in the valley, when the whites first invaded it, belonged to three or four tribes—the Delawares, Monseys, Shawnees, and probably the Tuscaroras; all of whom, with the exception of the latter, belonged to one of the eight great Indian confederations scattered over the land, from the Rocky Mountains to what they called, in their figurative language, the rising of the sun. These Indians called themselves the Lenni Lenape, or "original people," of which the Delawares and Monseys were by far the most numerous of the tribes settled in the valley. The Shawnees, a restless, lawless, and ferocious band, were threatened with extermination by a powerful foe in Florida, when they came to Pennsylvania and craved the protection of the Lenapes, which was granted to them, and they were permitted to settle upon the lands of the Delawares. The Delaware Indians soon discovered that the Shawnees were quarrelsome and treacherous neighbors, and their company not desirable. Notice was given them to quit, and they settled upon the flats of the Susquehanna, near Wilkesbarre, and from thence they found their way to the Juniata; and there is little doubt but that they were first and foremost in the depredations committed during the French and Indian wars, as well as during the American Revolution. The Tuscaroras did not claim to belong to the Lenape tribes, yet a large portion of them lived in their territory. They came from the South, and joined the Aquanuschioni, or "united people," known in history as the Six Nations. As they did not speak the language of either the "united people" or the "original people," it would appear that they were people on their own account, enjoying a sort of roving commission to hunt the lands and fish the streams of any of "their cousins," as they styled all other tribes.

The Conoy Indians settled in the valley in 1748. They left the Delaware on the strength of a promise made them by the proprietary government that they should be remunerated. The debt, however, we presume, must have been repudiated, for we find that an Indian orator named Arruehquay, of the Six Nations, made application to Governor Hamilton, during a "talk" in Philadelphia on the 1st of July, 1749, for something for them. The governor, quite as much of an adept at wheedling the savages as the proprietors themselves, returned the Conoy wampum, and "talked" the Seneca orator out of the belief that they owed the Conoys a single farthing, in consequence of their having left their land and settled among the nations of the Juniata of their own free will and accord. He ruled out the Conoy claim, and confirmed his opinion by sending them a string of government wampum. Whether this satisfied the Conoys or not does not appear upon the record. We think not—at least we should not suppose that they were half as well satisfied as the Six Nation deputies, who carried away, among other plunder, a quantity of tobacco and pipes, fifty ruffled shirts, and a gross and a half of brass jewsharps!

The Nanticokes settled about the mouth of the Juniata in 1748 or 1749, and in after years spread westward toward the Ohio. This portion of the tribe, when it first came to the Juniata, was not very formidable; but it increased and became powerful.

A number of Mengues, Mingoes, or Iroquois, of the Six Nations, settled a few years afterward in Kishacoquillas Valley, now Mifflin county.

Of all the savages in the valley, the Mingoes were probably the most peaceably disposed, although it is a well-attested fact that they were a brave and warlike band. The fathers of the principal chiefs of the Mingoes, settled in the Juniata Valley, had been partially (if we may use the term) Christianized by the teachings of the Moravian missionaries, Heckwelder, Zinzendorf, and Loskiel; and this may account for their desire to live on terms of amity and friendship with their pale-faced brethren.

As the Delawares, or Lenapes, claimed to be the original people, we must come to the conclusion that they came toward the east before the Iroquois. They probably came from a northern direction, while the united people worked their way from the northwest to the northeast. To call these men original people, in the sense in which they applied it, may have been right enough; but to apply the term to them of original, as occupants of the country, is a misnomer, not only according to their own oral traditions, but according to the most indubitable evidence of antiquarians and geologists.

The traditions of the Lenapes were, in effect, that their ancestors were a mighty band of fierce warriors, who came from the setting of the sun, part of the way by canoes, and the balance of the way over land,—through dense forests, beautiful valleys, over lofty mountains. In their triumphant march they met but one foe, whom they trampled under their feet as the buffalo does the grass under his hoofs, and that this weak and effeminate foe was entirely exterminated.

These traditions, vague as they are, and as all oral traditions forever must be, have certainly a foundation in fact. Drake, whose Indian history is regarded as the most reliable, gives it as his opinion, formed only after all the facts could be collected and all the traditions fully digested, that the Indians originally came from Asia, by way of Behring's Straits.

The patient investigations made by antiquarians have long since settled the fact, to the entire satisfaction of most people, that a race did exist in this country prior to the advent and on the arrival of the Indians. The relics of this race, consisting of vases, pipes, earthenware, etc., found during the last century, indicate not only a race entirely different from the Indians, but one much farther advanced in civilization. The Indians, however, it would appear, either scorned their handicraft, or never took time to examine thoroughly the habits of these people before they exterminated them in order to possess their country. These relics bear a marked resemblance to those dug from ruins in Egypt, as well as those found in Peru. In fact, the vases, and some of the earthenware, bear such a strong resemblance to the Peruvian antiquities, that it is the settled conviction of some that the earlier settlers of both North and