■-. "% & <3f. / ^ :& ^ V - :■ ' \ *<** <** - -J? ~ ?% '-- %.$ ; ; -s^-c 1 . v ■ ,- "/* V- 1 ^t. t% •>*, = ^Cl. L - - \^ /$f~ 1 ^ # Digitized by the Internet Archive^, in 2010 with funding from : The Library of Congress = *% . T^o v •^ ,^c http://www.archive.org/details/pioneeroutlinebi01mckn & % ,# 0'' ^$ ■ - vu ••** l'r. V ■ A° ^ " ^^ o ' "^ W %. .* "^4 : -- - l.D. BROOKVILLE, PA. AUTHOR OF "MY FIRST RECOLLECTIONS OF BROOKVILLE, PENNSYLVANIA." "RECOLLECTIONS OK RIDGWAY, PENNSYLVANIA," ALSO OF THE " PIONEER HISTORY OF JEFFERSON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA*' Philadelphia PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 190,- I y THESE PAGES ARE AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED TO MRS. MARY (McKNIGHT) TEMPLETON Nee THOMPSON \ To write a pioneer history years and years after all the fathers and mothers have gone to that " country from whose bourn no traveller returns" is a task to appall the most courageous. To say it mildly, it is a task requiring a vast amount of labor and research, untiring perseverance, great patience, and discrimination. In undertaking this task I realized its magnitude, and all through the work I have determined that, if labor, patience, and perse- verance would overcome error and false traditions and establish the truth, the object of this book would be fully attained. This book is not written for gain, nor to laud or puff either the dead or the living. It is designed to be a plain, truthful narrative of pioneer men and events in the northwest. I have compiled, wherever I could, from the writings of others. This book it is hoped will enable you to " Lift the twilight curtains of the past And, turning from familiar sight and sound, Sadly and full of reverence, cast A glance upon tradition's shadowy ground." To accomplish this I have taken no account of travel, time, or expense, expecting all that to be a financial loss, but only working and desiring to make a true, reliable history. I am indebted to the following historical works, — viz., " Jefferson County Atlas," " Jefferson County History," Day's " Historical Recollections," Egle's " History of Pennsylvania," McKnight's pioneer history, and histories of Butler, Crawford, Clarion, Cameron, Elk, Forest, Lawrence, Mercer, McKean, Venango, Tioga, Potter, and Warren. I am also indebted to J. Sutton Wall for map tracings, and to the State Report of Public Instruction of 1877. 5 i PREFACE J A few errors in the " Pioneer History of Jefferson County" have since been discovered, and are corrected in this work. In every instance, as far as possible, credit has been given to the writings of those who have preceded me. But, dear reader. " Whoever thinks a faultless work to see, Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be. In every work regard the writer's end, Since none can compass more than they intend, And if the means be just, the conduct true, Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due." Brookville, Pennsylvania, 1905. W. J. McKnight. ./ V CONTENTS CHAPTER I PACE Introductory — Times, Privileges. Social Habits of the Pioneers, Christianity of those Days, etc 17 CHAPTER II Our Aborigines — The Iroquois, or Six Nations — Indian Towns, Villages, Graveyards, Customs, Dress, Huts, Medicines, Doctors, Bark-peelers, Burials, etc 22 CHAPTER III Cornplanter — Our Chief — Chief of the Senecas, One of the Six Nations — Brief History — Some Speeches — Life and Death 48 CHAPTER IV The Purchase of 1784 at Fort Stanwix (now Rome), New York 55 CHAPTER V Titles and Surveys — Pioneer Surveys and Surveyors — District Lines — Laws, References, and Reports — Streams and Highways — Donation Lands 76 CHAPTER VI Pioneer Animals — Beavers, Buffaloes, Elks, Panthers, Wolves, Wild-cats, Bears, and other Animals — Habits, etc. — Pens and Traps — Birds — Wild Bees ' 107 CHAPTER VII Bill Long, the " King Hunter" — The Hunter of Hunters in this Wilderness — Some of the Adventures and Life of " Bill Long" from his Childhood until he was Seventy Years Old 156 CHAPTER VIII te Old State Road — Early Roads and Trails — Why the State Road was made — The First Attempt to open the Road — Laws, etc., touching the Subject — The Survey — The Road completed — The Act of the Legislature v hich sanctioned the building of the road l8l r\ I V \ CONTENTS CHAPTER IX Retort of the Com: -Streams, etc 194 PA< Provision for opening a Road — Retort of the Commissioners to the Governor CHAPTER X Pioneer Settlement of Western Pennsylvania — Pioneer Pennsylvania Indian Traders — The Pioneer Road by Way of the South Branch of the Poto- mac and the Valley of the Kiskiminitas — The Pioneer Road from East to West, from Raystown (now Bedford) to Fort Duquesne (now Pitts- burg), a military Xecessity — General John Forbes opens it in the Sum- mer and Fall of 1758 — Colonel George Washington opposed to the Xew Road and in Favor of the Potomac Road — Death of General John Forbes — Pioneer Mail-Coaches, Mail-Routes, and Post-Offices 199 CHAPTER XI Susquehanna and Waterford Turnpike — The Old Toll-Gates along the Rol-te — A Full History' of the Old Turnpike 311 CHAPTER XII Pioneer Agriculture — How the Farmers in the Olden Time had to make Shift — The Pioneer Homes — Pioneer Food — Pioneer Evening Frolics — Trees, Snakes, and Reptiles — Soldiers of 1S12 — Pioneer Legal Relations of Man and Wife — Early and Pioneer Music — The First Screw Factory — Population of the State and of the United States 217 CHAPTER XIII Pioneer Missionary Work. Pioneer Churches, Organization, etc. — Rev. John Jamieson and others — Synods and Preachers 256 CHAPTER XIV Pioneer Circuit Courts — Pioneer Circuit Judges — President and Associates — Pioneer Bar and Early Lawyers 284 CHAPTER XV The Pioneer Doctor in Xorthwestern Pennsylvania — Brookville's Pioneer Resurrection; or. Who Skinned the Nigger?— The True Story of the Origin of the State Anatomical Law 28S CHAPTER XVI White Slavery— Origin— Xature in Rome, Greece, and Europe — African- Slavery in Pennsylvania— George Bryan— Pioneer Colored Settler in Jefferson County— Census, etc.— Days of Bondage in Jefferson County and the Xorthwest S I CONTENTS CHAPTER XVII PAGE Pioneer Money 342 CHAPTER XVIII " Scotch-Irish"— Origin of the Term under James I.— Lords and Lairds- Early Settlers in Pennsylvania " 346 CHAPTER XIX The Common School System — Its Inception — Introduction into America — State Effort — History of Education in the State — Progress of Educa- tion, etc 349 CHAPTER XX Statistics of 1840 361 CHAPTER XX I My First Recollections of Brookville 376 CHAPTER XXII Pioneer Preachers and Churches in Northwestern Pennsylvania 421 CHAPTER XXIII Odd Fellowship in Northwestern Pennsylvania 434 CHAPTER XXIV Pioneer Newspapers in Northwestern Pennsylvania 438 CHAPTER XXV Butler County — County - Erected — Location of County Seat — Pioneer Roads, Settlers, Churches, Schools, Courts, Officers, Towns, and Boroughs — Indian Trails — Townships — Marketing — Mails 444 CHAPTER XXVI Crawford County - — Formation of County - — Location of County Seat — Trails — Roads — Settlers — Lakes — The Meads — Turnpike — Holland Company — Churches— Canals — Boating — Animals — Oil — Elks — Pigeons — Salt Well — Weekly Mail — Murder — Lawyers — Villages — Soldiers of 1812 — Boroughs — Stage Route . . . .' 456 9 V \ CONTEXTS CHAPTER XXVI] r v.. I-. Ci \rion County — Formation of County — Location of County Seat — Roads — Courts — Turnpikes — Education — Churches — Settlers — Pioneer Conditions — Judge Clover — Trails — Captain Sam Brady — Lumbering — Furnaces — River — Storekeeper 474 CHAPTER X X A" IT I Cameron County — Formation' of County — Location of County Seat — Courts — Officers — Trails and Roads — Settlers — Transportation — Whiskey - — Ani- mals -John Brooks— Schools and Churches — Newspapers — The Clafflin Giri s — Desperadoes — Stores — Townships — Indian Atrocities 486 C HAPTER XX I X Elk County — Formation of County — Location of County Seat — Pioneer Roads, Settlers. Courts, Officers. Lawyers, Churches, and Schools — Judge Gillis — Rev. Jonathan Nichols — Mills — Tannery - — Boats and Rafting — Animals and Hunters— Staging — Pioneer Coal Mining 404 C HAPTER XXX Forest Count* (Old) — Formation of County — County Seat — Pioneers — Pio- neer Roads and Paths — Pioneer Elections. Mails, and Offices — Boat- Building 518 CHAPTER XXXI Jefferson County — Formation and Organization — Pioneer Settlers — Trees — Joseph Barnett — Indian Xames of Streams — Wagons — Roads — Stores — Murders — Court-House and Jail — Physicians — Militia — Bridges — Assess- ment and Settlers — Old Folks' Picnic 531 CHAPTER X X X 1 1 Lawrence County — When erected — County Seat located — Pioneer Court, Set- n er. Officers. Mails, Roads. Schools. Boroughs, Churches, and Preacher — Revolutionary Soldier Settlers 55S CHATTER XXXIII McKean County — Formation of County — Location of County Seat — Officers — Roads — Pioneer Settlers — Indian Xames of Streams — Hunters — Slaves — Hardships — Lands, etc 569 CHAPTER XXXIV Mercer County — Formation of County — Location of County Seat — Settlers — Courts — Officers — Mails — County Roads — Doctors — Industries — Schools — Churches — Townships — Soldiers of 1S1-; — Masonry — Boroughs 579 10 CONTENTS CHAPTER XXXV Potter County — Erection — Location of County Seat — Courts and Officers — Settlers — Roads — Hardships — Animals and Hunters — Allegheny River, etc 59^ CHAPTER XXXVI Tioga County — Formation of County — Location of County' Seat — Settlers — Roads — Courts — Redemptioners — Churches — Schools — Streams — In- dian Trails — Hunters — Indian Captives — Animals, Habits, Customs, etc... 607 C H A P T E R XXXVII Venango County — Formation of County' — Location of County Seat — Trails, Paths, Roads, and Turnpikes — Settlers — Stores — Schools and Churches — Canals — Steamboats — Mails — Merchants — Railroads — Seneca Oil — War of 1812 621 CHAPTER XXXVIII Warren County' — Formation of County — Settlers — Location of County Seat — Courts — Paths and Roads — River Travel — Lumbering — Indians — Slavery' — cornplanter reservation — churches and schools — stage travel, etc 637 CHAPTER XXXIX Allegheny City — Beaver City — Du Bois City — Towanda City' 659 APPENDIX Some Local History — A Lincoln Story — The Memorable Campaign of 1864 — The Teachers' Institute — Early Postal Routes and Rides — Pennsylvania System of Railroads— Pioneer Railroads in Northwestern Pennsylvania — Allegheny Railroads — Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburg Railroad — The Abduction of William Morgan — Arrest and Trial of James L. Gillis, and WHAT BECAME OF MORGAN, ETC. 669 V LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS William James McKnight Frontispiece Northwestern Pennsylvania in 1780 18 Captain George Smoke and John Smoke (Seneca Indians) 26 Indians moving 28 Indian stockade (bark houses) 43 Gy-ant-wa-ka (the Cornplanter) 49 Beaver 108 Buffalo (American bison) in Elk 114 Gray or timber wolf of Pennsylvania 118 Pennsylvania bear 121 Deer and Fawn in Mahoning Creek 126 Porcupine 129 Wild-cat 131 River otter 132 Red fox 133 Opossum (colored plate) 134 Squirrel 135 Raven 137 Bald eagle 138 Wild turkey 139 Blue-jay (colored plate) 140 Crow r 143 Woodpecker 144 Red-shouldered hawk 146 American goshawk 147 Sharp-shinned hawk 148 Wild pigeon 149 Grouse or pheasant 149 Belted kingfisher 15° Humming birds 150 Straw bee-scap I5 1 Bill Long, king hunter 15" Long fires at a panther 160 13 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE COMMON BROWN BEAK k\5 Bear and cubs 104 Fen \i e pan tHEs 1-4 Male panther ;... 1,-5 PmviN,; LOGS 19a CONESTOG \ \\ VGON 105 V vri \ b\k\ aia Port Barnett --14 1824 50 215 Clearing land 219 1 \K\;r SPINNING-WHEE1 222 Flax-brake 223 sptnning-w hee1 . ree1 . and bed-warmer ----4 > a \ voke \m> v1n lantern 225 b vnded rattlesn \kk _\?4 Copperhead 235 R vTTi ess \kk Pete catching ratti ers 237 Pk. Ferd. HOFFMAN, of Brookvtlle 23S Peter Gruber taking poison prom \ rattler -'40 Blacksnake 241 Pioneer cabin 251 ] UtfES McCURD} 253 Cabin barn 255 Branding si \\>ks 313 Ol \R1 ES BROW \ Sli VCK1 ED IN BROOKVIl I K ] VII . 1834 3 S I , x ernor Joseph Ritner 353 Cover s ■ > ■ orge Woi f 355 Pioneer schooi house 35* Hon. ["haddeus Stevens 35/ seer saw mill 373 Pioneer court-house \nd jail, iS.u 376 Bennett's stage and Morrow's re am 381 My mother 3&1 Brookville kitchen, 1S40 390 Rafting on North Fork , ; > " Western entrance ro Brookvills, 1S40 4^ John JAMIESON YpSILANTI THOMPSON 4oO Butler, 1843 4-44 Pioneer farm -W Meadville, iS\^ Clarion, 1843 ■;"" I Ion Peter O ovfr Turning a boat 4S4 >4 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PACK Pioneer court-house, 1845 499 Taking out a timber stick 504 Nelson Gardner (a mighty hunter) and wife Mary 505 Skidding logs 508 Banking logs 51 1 Joseph Smith Hyde 516 Cyrus Blood 521 Court-house 523 John Conrad 525 Rafting timber, Clarion River 527 Building boat on Clarion River 529 Robert Hamilton 546 Pioneer academy 550 Old folks' picnic 555 Lawrence County court-house, 1852 563 Paul Darling 575 Mercer, 1843 583 Potter County pioneer court-house and jail 597 Edwin Haskell 603 Mahlon J. Colcord 604 Head-waters of Allegheny River 605 John Du Bois 608 Rafting to Pittsburg on the Allegheny River 628 Old Warren 643 Pioneer court-house 652 Warren pioneer judges 655 Methodist church, 1835 657 Alexander Johnston Cassatt 661 Beaver in 1843 665 tona wanda in 1843 ^7 William Augustus Patton 690 Pioneer railroad train in the United States 693 Arthur G. Yates 713 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS LIST OF MAPS PACE Various purchases from the Indians 59 Northwestern Pennsylvania (purchase of 1784) 67 donation lands in pennsylvania (colored plate) 84 Butler County 445 Crawford County 457 Erie County 471 Clarion County' 475 Elk County" 495 Forest County 519 Jefferson County 533 Brookville, in Jefferson County 542 Lawrence County 559 McKean County - 57 [ Mercer County 581 Potter County 593 Tioga County 61 1 Venango County - 623 Warren County 639 A PIONEER OUTLINE HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY TIMES, PRIVILEGES, SOCIAL HABITS OF THE PIONEERS, CHRIS- TIANITY OF THOSE DAYS, ETC. " The deeds of our fathers in times that are gone, Their virtues, their prowess, the toils they endured." At this time all the pioneers have passed away, and the facts here given are collected from records and recollections. Every true citizen now and in the future of the northwest must ever possess a feeling of deep veneration for the brave men and courageous women who penetrated this wilderness and inaugurated civilization where savages and wild beasts reigned supreme. These heroic men and women migrated to this forest and endured all the hardships incidental to that day and life, and through these labors and tribu- lations they have transmitted to us all the comforts and conveniences of a high civilization. The graves have closed over all these pioneer men and women, and I have been deprived of the great assistance they could have been to me in writing this history. In 1780 railroads were unknown. To-day there are in the United States one hundred and seventy thousand miles of railroad. Over these roads there were carried, in 1897, five hundred million people and six hundred million tons of freight. Employed upon them are one million men, thirty thousand loco- motives, twenty-one thousand passenger cars, seven thousand baggage cars, and one million freight cars. The total capital invested is eight billion dollars. The disbursements for labor and repairs are yearly six hundred and fifty million dollars. And now, in 1905, as a Pennsylvanian, I am proud to say our own Pennsylvania road is the greatest, the best, and most perfect in management and construction of any road in the world. We have smoking- cars, with bath-room, barber-shop, writing-desks, and library ; we have dining- cars in which are served refreshments that a Delmonico cannot surpass ; we have parlor cars with bay-windows and luxurious furniture ; and we have cars with beds for sleeping soft as the " eider down." 2 17 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA In the year 17S0 men were imprisoned for debt and kept in prison until the last farthing was paid. The jails of that day were but little better than dungeons. There was no woman's Christian temperance union, no woman's relief corps, no society for the prevention of cruelty to animals or children. In 17S0 domestic comforts were few. No stove had been invented. Large, deep fireplaces, with cranes, andirons, and bake-ovens, were the only Northwestern Pennsylvania in 17S0 "A savage place — as lonely and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted." modes of heating and cooking". Friction-matches were unknown. If the tire of the house went out. you had to rekindle with a flint or borrow of vour neighbor. I have borrowed fire. House furniture was then meagre and rough. There were no window-blinds or carpets. Rich people whitewashed their ceilings and rooms, and covered their parlor-floors with white sand. Hence the old couplet : " " Oh, dear mother, my toes are sore A dancing over your sanded floor.' " ' lS \i c William James McKnight HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA Pine-knots, tallow-dipped candles burned in iron or brass candlesticks, and whale oil burned in iron lamps were the means for light in stores, dwell- ings, etc. Food was scarce, coarse, and of the most common kind, with no canned goods or evaporated fruits. In addition to cooking in the open fire- place, women had to spin, knit, dye, and weave all domestic cloths, there being no mills run by machinery to make woollen or cotton goods. Mrs. Winslow's soothing syrup and baby-carriages were unknown. The bride of 1790 took her wedding-trip on foot or on horseback behind the bridegroom on a " pillion." Men wore no beards, whiskers, or moustaches, their faces being as clean shaven and as smooth as a girl's. A beard was looked upon as an abomina- tion, and fitted only for Hessians, heathen, or Turks. In 1780 not a single cigar had ever been smoked in the United States. I wish I could say that of to-day. There were no aniline dyes, no electric lights, no anaesthetics and painless surgery, no gun-cotton, no nitroglycerine, no dynamite, giant powder, audiphones, pneumatic tubes, or type-writers, no cotton-gin, no planting-machine, no mower or reaper, no hay-rake, no hay-fork, no corn- sheller, no rotary printing-press, no sewing-machine, no knitting-machine, no envelopes for letters, no india-rubber goods, coats, shoes, or cloaks, no grain-elevator except man, no artificial ice, no steel pens, no telegraph or telephone, no street-cars, no steam-mills, no daguerreotypes or photographs, no steam-ploughs, no steam-thresher (only the old hand-flail), no wind-mill, and no millionaire in the whole country. General Washington was the richest man, and he was only worth eight hundred thousand dollars. Previous to 1800, or the settlement of Northwestern Pennsylvania, there were about nine inventions in the world, — to wit, the screw, lever, wheel, windlass, compass, gunpowder, movable type, microscopes, and telescopes. About everything else has been invented since. To-day France averages about nine thousand and the United States twelve thousand a year. In 1800 the United States contained a population of 5,305,925. In 1800 Philadelphia and New York were but overgrown villages, and Chicago was unknown. Books were few and costly, ignorance the rule, and- authors famed the world over now were then unborn ; now we spend annually one hundred and forty million dollars for schools. Then there was no tele- graph, telephone, or submarine cable ; now the earth is girdled with telegraph wires, and we can speak face to face through the telephone a thousand miles apart, and millions of messages are sent every year under the waters of the globe. To-day in the United States an average of one to twelve telegraphic messages are sent every minute, day and night, the year through. In 1800 emigrants to America came in sailing-vessels. Each emigrant had to provide his own food, as the vessel supplied only air and water. The trip required a period of from thirty days to three months. Now this trip can be made by the use of Jefferson County coal in less than six days. Now 19 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA ocean travel is a delight. Then canals for the passage of great ships and transatlantic steamers were unknown. In 1800 electricity was in its infancy, and travel was by sail, foot, horse- back, and by coach. Now we have steamers, street-cars, railroads, bicycles, and horseless carriages. Gas was unheard of for stoves, streets, or lights. Pitch-pine, fat, and tallow candles gave the only light then. In 1800 human slavery was universal, and irreligion was the order of the day. Nine out of every ten workingmen neither possessed nor ever opened a Bible. Hymn-books were unknown, and musical science had no system. Medicine was an illiterate theory, surgery a crude art, and dentistry unknown. No snap shots were thought of. Photography was not heard of. Now this science has revealed " stars invisible" and microscopic life beyond computation. In 1800 there were but few daily papers in the world, no illustrated ones, no humorous ones, and no correspondents. Modern tunnels were unknown, and there was no steam-heating. Flint and tinder did duty for matches. Plate-glass was a luxury undreamed of. Envelopes had not been invented, and postage-stamps had not been introduced. Vulcanized rubber and celluloid had not begun to appear in a hundred dainty forms. Stationary washtubs, and even washboards, were unknown. Carpets, furniture, and household accessories were expensive. Sewing-machines had not yet supplanted the needle. Aniline colors and coal-tar products were things of the future. Stem- winding watches had not appeared ; there were no cheap watches of any kind. So it was with hundreds of the necessities of our present life. In the social customs of our day, many minds entertain doubts whether we have made improvements upon those of our ancestors. In those days friends and neighbors could meet together and enjoy themselves, and enter into the spirit of social amusement with a hearty good-will, a geniality of manners, a corresponding depth of soul, both among the old and young, to which modern society is unaccustomed. Our ancestors did not make a special invitation the only pass to their dwellings, and they entertained those who visited them with a hospitality that is not generally practised at the present time. Guests did not assemble then to criticise the decorations, furniture, dress, manners, and surroundings of those by whom they were invited. They were sensible people, with clear heads and warm hearts ; they visited each other to promote mutual enjoyment, and believed in genuine earnestness in all things. We may ignore obligations to the pioneer race, and congratulate our- selves that our lot has been cast in a more advanced era of mental and moral culture ; we may pride ourselves upon the developments which have been made in science and art ; but, while viewing our standard of elevation as immeasurably in advance of that of our forefathers, it would be well to emu- late their great characteristics for hospitality, honor, and integrity. The type of Christianity of that period will not suffer by comparison with that of the present day. If the people of olden times had less for costly \ / HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA apparel and ostentatious display, they had also more for offices of charity and benevolence ; if they did not have the splendor and luxuries of wealth, they at least had no infirmaries or paupers, very few lawyers, and but little use for jails. The vain and thoughtless may jeer at their unpretending manners and customs, but in all the elements of true manhood and true womanhood it may be safely averred that they were more than the peers of the generation that now occupy their places. That race has left its impress upon our times, — whatever patriotism the present generation boasts of has descended from them. Rude and illiterate, comparatively, they may have been, but they possessed strong minds in strong bodies, made so by their compulsory self-denials, their privations and toil. It was the mission of many of them to aid and participate in the formation of this great commonwealth, and wisely and well was the mission performed. Had their descendants been more faithful to their noble teachings, harmony would now reign supreme where violence and discord now hold their sway in the land. The pioneer times are the greenest spot in the memories of those who lived in them ; the privations and hardships they then endured are consecrated things in the recollection of the survivors. Our fathers established the first Christian, non-sectarian government in the world, and declared as the chief corner-stone of that government Christ's teaching, that all men are " born free and equal ;" love your neighbor as your- self. Since this thought has been carried into effect by our non-sectarian government, it has done more to elevate and civilize mankind in the last one hundred years than had ever been accomplished in all time before. Under the humane and inspiring influence of this grand idea put into practice, the wheels of progress, science, religion, and civilization have made gigantic strides, and our nation especially, from ocean to ocean, from arctic ice to tropic sun, is filled with smiling, happy homes, rich fields, blooming gardens, and bright firesides, made such by Christian charity carried into national and State con- stitutional enactment. ff^rav* «vrav* e^vs s^ravd c/"\d *£%d md tni «o* eCita eO» eO^ fws ?P? eO» ew^ ewte edte CHAPTER II OUR ABORIGINES THE IROQUOIS, OR SIX NATIONS INDIAN TOWNS, VILLAGES, GRAVEYARDS, CUSTOMS, DRESS, HUTS, MEDICINES, DOCTORS, BARK-PEELERS, BURIALS, ETC. Aquanuschioni, or " united people," is what they called themselves. The French called them the Iroquois ; the English, the Six Nations. They formed a confederate nation, and as such were the most celebrated and power- ful of all the Indian nations in North America. The confederacy consisted of the Mohawks, the fire-striking people; the Oneidas, the pipe-makers; the Onondagas, the hill-top people ; the Cayugas, the people from the lake ; the Tuscaroras, unwilling to be with other people ; and the Senecas, the mountaineers. The aborigines were called Indians because Columbus thought he had discovered India, and they were called Red Men because they daubed their faces and bodies with red paint. The Iroquois, or Six Nations, were divided into what might be called eight families, — viz., the Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Turtle, Deer, Snipe, Heron, and Hawk. Each of the Six Nations had one of each of these families in their tribe, and all the members of that family, no matter how wide apart or of what other tribe, were considered as brothers and sisters, and were forbidden to marry in their own family. Then a Wolf was a brother to all other Wolves in each of the nations. This family bond was taught from infancy and enforced by public opinion. " If at any time there appeared a tendency toward conflict between the different tribes, it was instantly checked by the thought that, if persisted in, the hand of the Turtle must be lifted against his brother Turtle, the toma- hawk of the Beaver might be buried in the brain of his kinsman Beaver. And so potent was the feeling that, for at least two hundred years, and until the power of the league was broken by the overwhelming outside force of the whites, there was no serious dissension between the tribes of the Iroquois. " In peace, all power was confined to ' sachems ;' in war, to ' chiefs.' The sachems of each tribe acted as its rulers in the few matters which required the exercise of civil authority. The same rulers also met in council to direct the affairs of the confederacy. There were fifty in all, of whom the Mohawks Note. — For much in this chapter I am indebted to Rupp's History. 22 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA had nine, the Oneidas nine, the Onondagas fourteen, the Cayugas ten, and the Senecas eight. These numbers, however, did not give proportionate power in the councils of the league, for all the nations were equal there. There was in each tribe, too, the same number of war-chiefs as sachems, and these had absolute authority in time of war. When a council assembled, each sachem had a war-chief near him to execute his orders. But in the war-party the war-chief commanded and the sachem took his place in the ranks. This was the system in its simplicity. " The right of heirship, as among many other of the North America tribes of Indians, was in the female line. A man's heirs were his brother, — that is to say, his mother's son and his sister's son, — never his own son, nor his brother's son. The few articles which constituted an Indian's personal property — even his bow and tomahawk — never descended to the son of him who had wielded them. Titles, so far as they were hereditary at all, followed the same law of descent. The child also followed the clan and tribe of the mother. The object was evidently to secure greater certainty that the heir would be of the blood of his deceased kinsman. The result of the application of this rule to the Iroquois system of clans was that if a particular sachemship or chieftaincy was once established in a certain clan of a certain tribe, in that clan and tribe it was expected to remain forever. Exactly how it was filled when it became vacant is a matter of some doubt; but, as near as can be learned, the new official was elected by the warriors of the clan, and was then inaugurated by the council of the sachems. " If, for instance, a sachemship belonging to the Wolf clan of the Seneca tribe became vacant, it could only be filled by some one of the Wolf clan of the Seneca tribe. A clan council was called, and, as a general rule, the heir of the deceased was chosen to his place, — to wit, one of his brothers, reckoning only on the mother's side, or one of his sister's sons, or even some more dis- tant male relative in the female line. But there was no positive law, and the warriors might discard all these and elect some one entirely unconnected with the deceased, though, as before stated, he must be one of the same clan and tribe. While there was no unchangeable custom compelling the clan council to select one of the heirs of the deceased as his successor, yet the tendency was so strong in that direction that an infant was frequently chosen, a guar- dian being appointed to perform the functions of the office till the youth should reach the proper age to do so. All offices were held for life, unless the incum- bent was solemnly deposed by a council, an event which very seldom occurred. Notwithstanding the modified system of hereditary power in vogue, the con- stitution of every tribe was essentially republican. Warriors, old men, and women attended the various councils and made their influence felt. Neither in the government of the confederacy nor of the tribes was there any such thing as tyranny over the people, though there was a great deal of tyranny by the league over conquered nations. In fact, there was very little government 2.3 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA of any kind, and very little need of any. There was substantially no property interests to guard, all land being in common, and each man's personal prop- erty being limited to a bow, a tomahawk, and a few deer-skins. Liquor had not yet lent its disturbing influence, and few quarrels were to be traced to the influence of women, for the American Indian is singularly free from the warmer passions. " His principal vice is an easily aroused and unlimited hatred ; but the tribes were so small and enemies so convenient that there was no difficulty in gratifying this feeling (and attaining to the rank of a warrior) outside of his own nation. The consequence was that although the war-parties of the Iro- quois were continually shedding the blood of their foes, there was very little quarrelling at home. " Their religious creed was limited to a somewhat vague belief in the existence of a Great Spirit and several inferior but very potent evil spirits. They had a few simple ceremonies, consisting largely of dances, one called the ' green-corn dance,' performed at the time indicated by its name, and others at other seasons of the year. From a very early date their most impor- tant religious ceremony has been the ' burning of the white dog,' when an unfortunate canine of the requisite color is sacrificed by one of the chiefs. To this day the pagans among them still perform this rite. " In common with their fellow-savages on this continent, the Iroquois have been termed ' fast friends and bitter enemies.' Events have proved, how- ever, that they were a great deal stronger enemies than friends. Revenge was the ruling passion of their nature, and cruelty was their abiding characteristic. Revenge and cruelty are the worst attributes of human nature, and it is idle to talk of the goodness of men who roasted their captives at the stake. All Indians were faithful to their own tribes, and the Iroquois were faithful to their confederacy ; but outside of these limits their friendship could not be counted on, and treachery was always to be apprehended in dealing with them. " In their family relations they were not harsh to their children and not wantonly so to their wives ; but the men were invariably indolent, and all labor was contemptuously abandoned to their weaker sex. " Polygamy, too, was practised, though in what might be called mod- eration. Chiefs and eminent warriors usually had two or three wives, rarely more. They could be discarded at will by their husbands, but the latter seldom availed themselves of their privilege. " Our nation — the Senecas — was the most numerous and comprised the greatest warriors of the Iroquois confederacy. Their great chiefs, Corn- planter and Guyasutha, are prominently connected with the traditions of the head-waters of the Allegheny, Western New York, and Northwestern Penn- sylvania. In person the Senecas were slender, middle-sized, handsome, and straight. The squaws were short, not handsome, and clumsy. The skin was reddish brown, hair straight and jet-black. 24 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " After the death of a Seneca, the corpse was dressed in a new blanket or petticoat, with the face and clothes painted red. The body was then laid on a skin in the middle of the hut. The war and hunting implements of the deceased were then piled up around the body. In the evening after sunset, and in the morning before daylight, the squaws and relations assembled around the corpse to mourn. This was daily repeated until interment. The graves were dug by old squaws, as the young squaws abhorred this kind of labor. Before they had hatchets and other tools, they used to line the inside of the grave with the bark of trees, and when the corpse was let down they placed some pieces of wood across, which were again covered with bark, and then the earth thrown in, to fill up the grave. But afterwards they usually placed three boards, not nailed together, over the grave, in such a manner that the corpse lay between them. A fourth board was placed as a cover, and then the grave was filled up with earth. Now and then a proper coffin was procured. " At an early period they used to put a tobacco-pouch, knife, tinder-box, tobacco and pipe, bow and arrows, gun, powder and shot, skins and cloth for clothes, paint, a small bag of Indian corn or dried bilberries, sometimes the kettle, hatchet, and other furniture of the deceased, into the grave, sup- posing that the departed spirits would have the same wants and occupation in the land of souls. But this custom was nearly wholly abolished among the Delawares and Iroquois about the middle of the last century. At the burial not a man shed a tear ; they deemed it a shame for a man to weep. But, on the other hand, the women set up a dreadful howl." They carried their dead a long way sometimes for burial. THE ORIGINAL BARK-PEELERS An Indian hut was built in this manner. Trees were peeled abounding in sap, usually the linn. When the trees were cut down the bark was peeled with the tomahawk and its handle. They peeled from the top of the tree to the butt. The bark for hut-building was cut into pieces of six or eight feet ; these pieces were then dried and flattened by laying heavy stones upon them. The frame of a bark hut was made by driving poles into the ground, and the poles were strengthened by cross-beams. This frame was then covered inside and outside with this prepared linn-wood bark, fastened with leather-wood bark or hickory withes. The roof ran upon a ridge, and was covered in the same manner as the frame ; and an opening was left in it for the smoke to escape, and one on the side of the frame for a door. HOW THE INDIAN BUILT LOG HUTS IN HIS TOWN OR VILLAGE They cut logs fifteen feet long and laid these logs upon each other, at each end they drove posts in the ground and tied these posts together at the top with hickory withes or moose bark. In this way they erected a wall of logs HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA fifteen feet long to the height of four feet. In this same way they raised a wall opposite to this one about twelve feet away. In the centre of each end of this log frame they drove forks into the ground, a strong pole was then laid upon these forks, extending from end to end, and from these log walls they set up poles for rafters to the centre pole ; on these rafters they tied poles for sheeting, and the hut was then covered or shingled with linn- wood bark. This bark was peeled from the tree, commencing at the top, Captain George Smoke and his cousin John Smoke, who stood for this picture as a special favor for the author. They are Seneca Indians dressed and equipped as the Senecas of Northwestern Pennsylvania four hundred years ago with a tomahawk. The bark-strips in this way were sometimes thirty feet long and usually six inches wide. These strips were cut as desired for roofing. At each end of the hut they set up split lumber, leaving an open space at each end for a door-way, at which a bear-skin hung. A stick leaning against the outside of this skin meant that the door was locked. At the top of the hut, in place of a chimney, they left an open place. The fires were made in the inside of the hut, and the smoke escaped through this open space. For bedding they had linn-wood bark covered with bear-skins. Open places between logs the squaws stopped with moss gathered from old logs. There was no door, no windows, and no chimney. Several families occu- pied a hut, hence they built them long. Other Indian nations erected smaller 26 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA huts, and the families lived separate. The men wore a blanket and went bare- headed. The women wore a petticoat, fastened about the hips, extending a little below the knees. Our nation, the Senecas, produced the greatest orators, and more of them than any other. Cornplanter, Red Jacket, and Farmer's Brother were all Senecas. Red Jacket once, in enumerating the woes of the Senecas, exclaimed, — " We stand on a small island in the bosom of the great waters. We are encircled, we are encompassed. The evil spirit rides on the blast, and the waters are disturbed. They rise, they press upon us, and the waters once settled over us, we disappear forever. Who then lives to mourn us? None. What marks our extinction ? Nothing. We are mingled with the common elements." The following is an extract from an address delivered by Cornplanter to General Washington in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1790: " Father, — When you kindled your thirteen fires separately the wise men assembled at them told us that you were all brothers, the children of one Great Father, who regarded the red people as his children. They called us brothers, and invited us to his protection. They told us he resided beyond the great waters where the sun first rises, and he was a king whose power no people could resist, and that his goodness was as bright as the sun. What they said went to our hearts. We accepted the invitations and promised to obey him. What the Seneca nation promises they faithfully perform. When you refused obedience to that king he commanded us to assist his beloved men in making you sober. In obeying him we did no more than yourselves had bid us promise. We were deceived ; but your people, teaching us to confide in that king, had helped to deceive us, and we now appeal to your breast. Is all the blame ours? " You told us you could crush us to nothing, and you demanded from us a great country as the price of that peace which you had offered us, as if our want of strength had destroyed our rights." " Drunkenness, after the whites were dealing with them, was a common vice. It was not confined, as it is at this day among the whites, principally to the ' strong-minded,' the male sex ; but the Indian female, as well as the male, was infatuated alike with the love of strong drink ; for neither of them knew bounds to their desire : they drank while they had whiskey or could swallow it down. Drunkenness was a vice, though attended with many serious conse- quences, nay, murder and death, that was not punishable among them. It was a fashionable vice. Fornication, adultery, stealing, lying, and cheating, principally the offspring of drunkenness, were considered as heinous and scandalous offences, and were punished in various ways. HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " The Delawares and Iroquois married early in life ; the men usually at eighteen and the women at fourteen ; but they never married near relations. If an Indian man wished to marry he sent a present, consisting of blankets, cloth, linen, and occasionally a few belts of wampum, to the nearest relations of the person he had fixed upon. If he that made the present, and the present pleased, the matter was formally proposed to the girl, and if the answer was affirmatively given, the bride was conducted to the bridegroom's dwelling without any further ceremony ; but if the other party chose to decline the proposal, they returned the present by way of a friendly negative. " After the marriage, the present made by the suitor was divided among the friends of the young wife. These returned the civility by a present of Indian corn, beans, kettles, baskets, hatchets, etc., brought in solemn pro- cession into the hut of the new married couple. The latter commonly lodged in a friend's house till they could erect a dwelling of their own. " As soon as a child was born, it was laid upon a board or straight piece of bark covered with moss and wrapped up in a skin or piece of cloth, and Indians moving when the mother was engaged in her housework this rude cradle or bed was hung to a peg or branch of a tree. Their children they educated to fit them to get through the world as did their fathers. They instructed them in re- ligion, etc. They believed that Manitou, their God, ' the good spirit,' could be propitiated by sacrifices ; hence they observed a great many superstitious and idolatrous ceremonies. At their general and solemn sacrifices the oldest men performed the offices of priests, but in private parties each man brought a sacrifice, and offered it himself as priest. Instead of a temple they fitted up a large dwelling-house for the purpose. " When they travelled or went on a journey they manifested much care- lessness about the weather: yet. in their prayers, they usually begged ' for a 28 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA clear and pleasant sky.' They generally provided themselves with Indian meal, which they either ate dry, mixed with sugar and water, or boiled into a kind of mush ; for they never took bread made of Indian corn for a long journey, because in summer it would spoil in three or four days and be unfit for use. As to meat, that they took as they went. " If in their travels they had occasion to pass a deep river, on arriving at it they set about it immediately and built a canoe by taking a long piece of bark of proportionate breadth, to which they gave the proper form by fastening it to ribs of light wood, bent so as to suit the occasion. If a large canoe was required, several pieces of bark were carefully sewed together. If the voyage was expected to be long, many Indians carried everything they wanted for their night's lodging with them, — namely, some- slender poles and rush-mats, or birch-bark." When at home they had their amusements. Their favorite one was dancing. " The common dance was held either in a large house or in an open field around a fire. In dancing they formed a circle, and always had a leader, to whom the whole company attended. The men went before, and the women closed the circle. The latter danced with great decency and as if they were engaged in the most serious business ; while thus engaged they never spoke a word to the men, much less joked with them, which would have injured their character. " Another kind of dance was only attended by men. Each rose in his turn, and danced with great agility and boldness, extolling their own or their forefathers' great deeds in a song, to which all beat time, by a monotonous, rough note, which was given out with great vehemence at the commencement of each bar. " The war-dance, which was always held either before or after a cam- paign, was dreadful to behold. None took part in it but the warriors them- selves. They appeared armed, as if going to battle. One carried his gun or hatchet, another a long knife, the third a tomahawk, the fourth a large club, or they all appeared armed with tomahawks. These they brandished in the air, to show how they intended to treat their enemies. They affected such an air of anger and fury on this occasion that it made a spectator shudder to behold them. A chief led the dance, and sang the warlike deeds of himself or his ancestors. At the end of every celebrated feat of valor he wielded his tomahawk with all his might against a post fixed in the ground. He was then followed by the rest ; each finished his round by a blow against the post. Then they danced all together ; and this was the most frightful scene. They affected the most horrible and dreadful gestures ; threatened to beat, cut, and stab each other. They were, however, amazingly dexterous in avoiding the threat- ened danger. To complete the horror of the scene, they howled as dreadfully as if in actual fight, so that they appeared as raving madmen. During the dance they sometimes sounded a kind of fife, made of reed, which had a shrill 29 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA and disagreeable note. The Iroquois used the war-dance even in times of peace, with a view to celebrate the deeds of their heroic chiefs in a solemn manner. " The Indians, as well as ' all human flesh,' were heirs of disease. The most common were pleurisy, weakness and pains in the stomach and breast, consumption, diarrhoea, rheumatism, bloody flux, inflammatory fevers, and occasionally the small-pox made dreadful ravages among them. Their gen- eral remedy for all disorders, small or great, was a sweat. For this purpose they had in every town an oven, situated at some distance from the dwellings, built of stakes and boards, covered with sods, or dug in the side of a hill, and heated with some red-hot stones. Into this the patient crept naked, and in a short time was thrown into profuse perspiration. As soon as the patient felt himself too hot he crept out, and immediately plunged himself into a river or some cold water, where he continued about thirty seconds, and then went again into the oven. After having performed this operation three times successively, he smoked his pipe with composure, and in many cases a cure was completely effected. " In some places they had ovens constructed large enough to receive sev- eral persons. Some chose to pour water now and then upon the heated stones, to increase the steam and promote more profuse perspiration. Many Indians in perfect health made it a practice of going into the oven once or twice a week to renew their strength and spirits. Some pretended by this operation to prepare themselves for a business which requires mature deliberation and artifice. If the sweating did not remove the disorder, other means were applied. Many of the Indians believed that medicines had no efficacy unless administered by a professed physician : enough of professed doctors could be found : many of both sexes professed to be doctors. " Indian doctors never applied medicines without accompanying them with mysterious ceremonies, to make their effect appear supernatural. The ceremonies were various. Many breathed upon the sick ; they averred their breath was wholesome. In addition to this, they spurted a certain liquor made of herbs out of their mouth over the patient's whole body, distorting their features and roaring dreadfully. In some instances physicians crept into the oven, where they sweat, howled, roared, and now and then grinned horribly at their patients, who had been laid before the opening, and frequently felt the pulse of the patient. Then pronounced sentence, and foretold either recovery or death. On one occasion a Moravian missionary was present, who says, 'An Indian physician had put on a large bear-skin, so that his arms were covered with the forelegs, his feet with the hind legs, and his head was en- tirely concealed in the bear's head, with the addition of glass eyes. He came in this attire with a calabash in his hand, accompanied by a great crowd of people, into the patient's hut. singing and dancing, when he grasped a handful of hot ashes, and scattering them into the air, with a horrid noise, approached 30 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA the patient, and began to play several legerdemain tricks with small bits of wood, by which he pretended to be able to restore him to health.' " The common people believed that by rattling the calabash the physician had power to make the spirits discover the cause of the disease, and even evade the malice of the evil spirit who occasioned it. " Their materia medica, or the remedies used in curing diseases, were such as rattlesnake-root, the skins of rattlesnakes dried and pulverized, thorny ash, toothache-tree, tulip-tree, dogwood, wild laurel, sassafras, Canada shrubby- elder, poison-ash, wintergreen, liverwort, Virginia poke, jalap, sarsaparilla, Canadian sanicle, scabians or devil's-bit, bloodwort, cuckoo pint, ginseng, and a few others. " Wars among the Indians were always carried on with the greatest fury, and lasted much longer than they do now among them. The offensive weapons were, before the whites came among them, bows, arrows, and clubs. The latter were made of the hardest kind of wood, from two to three feet long and very heavy, with a large round knob at one end. Their weapon of defence was a shield, made of the tough hide of a buffalo, on the convex side of which they received the arrows and darts of the enemy. But about the middle of the last century this was all laid aside by the Delawares and Iro- quois, though they used to a later period bows, arrows, and clubs of war. The clubs they used were pointed with nails and pieces of iron, when used at all. Guns were measurably substituted for all these. The hatchet and long- knife was used, as well as the guns. The army of these nations consisted of all their young men, including boys of fifteen years old. They had their cap- tains and subordinate officers. Their captains would be called among them commanders or generals. The requisite qualifications for this station were prudence, cunning, resolution, bravery, undauntedness, and previous good fortune in some fight or battle. ' To lift the hatchet,' or to begin a war. was always, as they declared, not till just and important causes prompted them to it. Then they assigned as motives that it was necessary to revenge the injuries done to the nation. Perhaps the honor of being distinguished as great warriors may have been an ' ingredient in the cup.' " But before they entered upon so hazardous an undertaking they care- fully weighed all the proposals made, compared the probable advantages or disadvantages that might accrue. A chief could not begin a war without the consent of his captains, nor could he accept of a war-belt onlv on the condition of its being considered by the captains. " The chief was bound to preserve peace to the utmost of his power. But if several captains were unanimous in declaring war, the chief was then obliged to deliver the care of his people, for a time, into the hands of the captains, and to lay down his office. Yet his influence tended greatly either to prevent or encourage the commencement of war, for the Indians believed 3i HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA that a war could not be successful without the consent of the chief, and the captains, on that account, strove to be in harmony with him. After war was agreed on, and they wished to secure the assistance of a nation in league with them, they notified that nation by sending a piece of tobacco, or by an embassy. By the first, they intended that the captains were to smoke pipes and consider seriously whether they would take part in the war or not. The embassy was intrusted to a captain, who carried a belt of wampum, upon which the object of the embassy was described by certain figures, and a hatchet with a red handle. After the chief had been informed of his commission, it was laid before a council. The hatchet having been laid on the ground, he delivered a long speech, while holding the war-belt in his hand, always closing the address with the request to take up the hatchet, and then delivering the war- belt. If this was complied with, no more was said, and this act was considered as a solemn promise to lend every assistance ; but if neither the hatchet was taken up nor the belt accepted, the ambassador drew the just conclusion that the nation preferred to remain neutral, and without any further ceremony returned home. " The Delawares and Iroquois were very informal in declaring war. They often sent out small parties, seized the first man they met belonging to the nation they had intended to engage, killed and scalped him, then cleaved his head with a hatchet, which they left sticking in it, or laid a war-club, painted red, upon the body of the victim. This was a formal challenge. In consequence of which, a captain of an insulted party would take up the weapons of the murderers and hasten into their country, to be revenged upon them. If he returned with a scalp, he thought he had avenged the rights of his own nation. " Among the Delawares and Iroquois it required but little time to make preparations for war. One of the most necessary preparations was to paint themselves red and black, for they held it that the most horrid appearance of war was the greatest ornament. Some captains fasted and attended to their dreams, with the view to gain intelligence of the issue of the war. The night previous to the march of the army was spent in feasting, at which the chiefs were present, when either a hog or some dogs were killed. Dog's flesh, said they, inspired them with the genuine martial spirit. Even women, in some instances, partook of this feast, and ate dog's flesh greedily. Now and then, when a warrior was induced to make a solemn declaration of his war inclina- tion, he held up a piece of dog's flesh in sight of all present and devoured it, and pronounced these words, ' Thus will I devour my enemies !' After the feast the captain and all his people began the war-dance, and continued till daybreak, till they had become quite hoarse and weary. They generally danced all together, and each in his turn took the head of a hog in his hand. As both their friends and the women generally accompanied them to the first night's encampment, they halted about two or three miles from the town, danced the war-dance once more, and the day following began their march. 32 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA Before they made an attack they reconnoitred every part of the country. To this end they dug holes in the ground ; if practicable, in a hillock, covered with wood, in which they kept a small charcoal fire, from which they discovered the motions of the enemy undiscovered. When they sought a prisoner or a scalp, they ventured, in many instances, even in daytime, to execute their designs. Effectually to accomplish this, they skulked behind a bulky tree, and crept slyly around the trunk, so as not to be observed by the person or persons for whom they lay in ambush. In this way they slew many. But if they had a family or town in view, they always preferred the night, when their enemies were wrapped in profound sleep, and in this way killed, scalped, and made pris- oners of many of the enemies, set fire to the houses, and retired with all pos- sible haste to the woods or some place of safe retreat. To avoid pursuit, they disguised their footmarks as much as possible. They depended much on stratagem for their success. Even in war they thought it more honorable to distress their enemy more by stratagem than combat. The English, not aware of the artifice of the Indians, lost an army when Braddock was defeated. " The Indian's cruelty, when victorious, was without bounds ; their thirst for blood was almost unquenchable. They never made peace till compelled by necessity. No sooner were terms of peace proposed than the captains laid down their office and delivered the government of the state into the hands of the chiefs. A captain had no more right to conclude a peace than a chief to begin war. When peace had been offered to a captain he could give no other answer than to mention the proposal to the chief, for as a warrior he could not make peace. If the chief inclined to peace, he used all his influence to effect that end, and all hostility ceased, and, in conclusion, the calumet, or peace-pipe, was smoked and belts of wampum exchanged, and a concluding speech made, with the assurance ' that their friendship should last as long as the sun and moon give light, rise and set; as long as the stars shine in the firmament, and the rivers flow with water.' " The weapons employed by our Indians two hundred years ago were axes, arrows, and knives of stone. Shells were sometimes used to make knives. The Indian bow was made as follows : the hickory limb was cut with a stone axe, the wood was then heated on both sides near a fire until it was soft enough to scrape down to the proper size and shape. A good bow measured forty-six inches in length, three-fourths of an inch thick in the centre, and one and a quarter inches in width, narrowing down to the points to five-eighths of an inch. The ends were thinner than the middle. Bow-making was tedious work. " The bow-string was made of the ligaments obtained from the vertebra of the elk. The ligament was split, scraped, and twisted into a cord by rolling the fibres between the palm of the hand and the thigh. One end of the string was knotted to the bow, but the other end was looped, in order that the bow could be quickly strung." 3 33 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA Quivers to carry the arrows were made of dressed buckskin, with or without the fur. The squaws did all the tanning. The arrow-heads were made of flint or other hard stone or bone ; they were fastened to the ash or hickory arrows with the sinews of the deer. The arrow was about two feet and a half in length, and a feather was fastened to the butt end to give it a rotary motion in its flight. Poisoned arrows were made by dipping them into decomposed liver, to which had been added the poison of the rattlesnake. The venom or decom- posed animal matter no doubt caused blood-poisoning and death.* Bows and arrows were long used by the red men after the introduction of fire-arms, because the Indian could be more sure of his game without revealing his presence. For a long time after the introduction of fire- arms the Indians were more expert with the bow and arrow than with the rifle. Their tobacco-pipes were made of stone bowls and ash stems. Canoes were made of birch or linn-wood bark, and many wigwam utensils of that bark. This bark was peeled in early spring. The bark canoe was the Ameri- can Indian's invention. When runners were sent with messages to other tribes the courier took an easy running gait, which he kept up for hours at a time. It was a " dog- trot," an easy, jogging gait. Of course he had no clothes on except a breech- clout and moccasins. He always carried both arms up beside the chest with the fists clinched and held in front of the breast. He ate but little the day before his departure. A courier could make a hundred miles from sunrise to sunset. When a young squaw was ready to marry she wore something on her head as a notice. Then kettles were made of clay, or what was called " pot stone." The stone hatchets were in the shape of a wedge ; they were of no use in felling trees. They did this with a fire around the roots of the tree. Their stone pestles were about twelve inches long and five inches thick. They used bird-claws for " fish-hooks." They made their ropes, bridles, nets, etc., out of a wild weed called Indian hemp. The twine or cords were manufactured by the squaws, who gathered stalks of this hemp, separating them into filaments, and then taking a number of filaments in one hand, rolled them rapidly upon their bare thighs until twisted, locking, from time to time, the ends with fresh fibres. The cord thus made was finished by dressing with a mixture of grease and wax, and drawn over a smooth groove in a stone. * It was originally the practice of our Indians, as of all other savage people, to cut off in war the heads of their enemies for trophies, but for convenience in retreat this was changed to scalping. 34 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA Their hominy-mills can be seen yet about a mile north of Samuel Teinple's barn, in Warsaw Township, Jefferson County. Corn, potatoes, and tobacco were unknown until the discovery of America. All the stone implements of our Indians except arrows were ground and polished. How this was done the reader must imagine. Indians had their mechanics and their workshops or " spots'' where implements were made. You must remember that the Indian had no iron or steel tools, only bone, stone, and wood to work with. The flint arrows were made from a stone of uniform density. Large chips were flaked or broken from the rock. These chips were again deftly chipped with bone chisels into arrows, and made straight by pressure. A lever was used on the rock to separate chips, — a bone tied to a heavy stick. From Jones's " Antiquities of the Southern Indians" the writer has gleaned most of the following facts : They had a limited variety of copper implements, which were of rare occurrence, and which were too soft to be of use in working so hard a material as flint or quartzite. Hence it is believed that they fashioned their spear- and arrow-heads with other implements than those of iron or steel. They must have acquired, by their observation and numerous experiments, a thorough and practical knowledge of cleavage, — that is, " the tendency to split in certain directions, which is characteristic of most of the crystallizable minerals." Captain John Smith, speaking of the Virginia Indians in his sixth voyage, says, " His arrow-head he quickly maketh with a little bone, which he weareth at his bracelet, of a splint of a stone or glasse, in the form of a heart, and these they glue to the ends of the arrows. With the sinews of the deer and the tops of deers' horns boiled to a jelly they make a glue which will not dissolve in cold water." Schoolcraft says, " The skill displayed in this art, as it is exhibited by the tribes of the entire con- tinent, has excited admiration. The material employed is generally some form of horn stone, sometimes passing into flint. No specimens have, how- ever, been observed where the substance is gun-flint. The horn-stone is less hard than common quartz, and can be readily broken by contact with the latter." Catlin, in his " Last Ramble among the Indians," says, " Every tribe has its factory in which these arrow-heads are made, and in these only certain adepts are able or allowed to make them for the use of the tribe. Erratic bowlders of flint are collected and sometimes brought an immense distance, and broken with a sort of sledge-hammer made of a rounded pebble of horn- stone set in a twisted withe, holding the stone and forming a handle. The flint, at the indiscriminate blows of the sledge, is broken into a hundred pieces, and such flakes selected as from the angles of their fracture and thickness will answer as the basis of an arrow-head. The master-workman, seated on the ground, lays one of these flakes on the palm of his hand, holding it firmly down with two or more fingers of the same hand, and with his right hand, between the thumb and two forefingers, places his chisel or punch on the 35 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA point that is to be broken off, and a co-operator — a striker — in front of him, with a mallet of very, hard wood, strikes the chisel or punch on the upper end, flaking the flint off on the under side below each projecting point that is struck. The flint is then turned and chipped in the same manner from the opposite side, and that is chipped until required shape and dimensions are obtained, all the fractures being made on the palm of the hand. In selecting the flake for the arrow-head a nice judgment must be used or the attempt will fail. A flake with two opposite parallel, or nearly parallel, planes of cleavage is found, and of the thickness required for the centre of the arrow- point. The first chipping reaches nearly to the centre of these planes, but without quite breaking it away, and each clipping is shorter and- shorter, until the shape and edge of the arrow-head is formed. The yielding elasticity of the palm of the hand enables the chip to come off without breaking the body of the flint, which would be the case if they were broken on a hard substance. These people have no metallic instruments to work with, and the punch which they use, I was told, was a piece of bone, but on examining it, I found it to be of substance much harder, made of the tooth — incisor — of the sperm whale, which cetaceans are often stranded on the coast of the Pacific." " A considerable number of Indians must have returned and settled along the Red Bank as late as 1815-16. James White, of 'Mexico,' informed the writer that three hundred of them, about that time, settled along this stream below Brookville, partly in Armstrong County. Respecting their return to this section, Dr. M. A. Ward wrote to Eben Smith Kelly, at Kittanning, from Pittsburg, January 18, 1817, — " ' I am not at all surprised that the sober, industrious, religious inhabi- tants of Red Bank should be highly incensed at their late accession of emi- grants, not only because by them they will probably be deprived of many fat bucks and delicious turkeys, to which, according to the strict interpretation of all our game laws, they have as good a right, if they have the fortune to find and the address to shoot them, as any " dirty, nasty" Indians whatever, but because the presence and examples of such neighbors must have a very de- praving influence upon the morals. Their insinuating influence will be apt to divert the minds of the farmers from the sober pursuits of agriculture and inspire a propensity for the barbarous pleasures of the chase. . . . But what is worse than all, I have heard that they love whiskey to such an inordinate degree as to get sometimes beastly drunk, and even beat their wives and behave unseemly before their families, which certainly must have a most demoralizing tendency on the minds of the rising generation.' " — History of Armstrong County. The Delaware Indians styled themselves " Lenni Lenape," the original or unchanged people. The eastern division of their people was divided into three tribes, — the Unamies, or Turtles of the sea-shore ; the Unochlactgos, or Turkeys of the woods ; and the Minsi-monceys, or Wolves of the mountains. 36 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA A few of the Muncy villages of this latter division were scattered as far west as the valley of the Allegheny. . . . i From Penn's arrival in 1682 the Delawares were subject to the Iroquois, or the confederacy of the Six Nations, who were the most warlike savages in America. The Iroquois were usually known among the English people as the Five Nations. The nations were divided and known as the Mohawks, the fire-striking people, having been the first to procure fire-arms. The Senecas, mountaineers, occupied Western New York and Northwestern Pennsylvania. They were found in great numbers along the Allegheny and its tributaries. Their great chiefs were Cornplanter and Guyasutha. This tribe was the most numerous, powerful, and warlike of the Iroquois nation, and comprised the Indians of Northwestern Pennsylvania. " But these were Indians pure and uncorrupted. Before many a log fire, at night, old settlers have often recited how clear, distinct, and immutable were their laws and customs ; that when fully understood a white man could transact the most important business with as much safety as he can to-day in any commercial centre. " In this day and age of progress we pride ourselves upon our railroads and telegraph as means of rapid communication, and yet, while it was well known to the early settlers that news and light freight would travel with incomprehensible speed from tribe to tribe, people of the present day fail to understand the complete system by which it was done. " In many places through the western counties you will find traces of pits, which the early settlers will tell you were dug by white men looking for silver, which, as well as copper, was common among the Indians, and was supposed by first comers to be found in the vicinity; but experience soon proved the copper came, perhaps, from Lake Superior, by this Indian express, as we might term it, and the silver, just as possible, from the far West. Our rail- roads wind along the valleys, almost regardless of length or circuit, if a gradual rise can only be obtained. To travellers on wheels straight distances between points are much less formidable than is generally supposed. We find traces of the example of the Indian in the first white men. The first settlers of 1799 and 1805 took their bags of grain on their backs, walked fifty miles to a mill, and brought home their flour the same way." " The following is taken from the ' Early Days of Punxsutawney and Western Pennsylvania,' contributed a few years ago to the Punxsutawney Plaindealer by the late John K. Coxson, Esq., who had made considerable research into Indian history, and was an enthusiast on the subject. According to Mr. Coxson, ' More than eighteen hundred years ago the Iroquois held a lodge in Punxsutawney (this town still bears its Indian name, which was their sobriquet for "gnat town"), to which point they could ascend with their canoes, and go still higher up the Mahoning to within a few hours' travel of the summit of the Allegheny Mountains. There were various Indian trails 37 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA traversing the forests, one of which entered Punxsutawney near where Judge Mitchell now (1898) resides. " ' These trails were the thoroughfares or roadways of the Indians, over which they journeyed when on the chase or the " war-path," just as the people of the present age travel over their graded roads. " An erroneous impression obtains among many at the present day that the Indian, in travelling the inter- minable forests which once covered our towns and fields, roamed at random, like a modern afternoon hunter, by no fixed paths, or that he was guided in his long journeyings solely by the sun and stars, or by the course of the streams and mountains ; and true it is that these untutored sons of the woods were considerable astronomers and geographers, and relied much upon these unerring guide-marks of nature. Even in the most starless nights they could determine their course by feeling the bark of the oak-trees, which is always smoothest on the south side and roughest on the north. But still they had their trails, or paths, as distinctly marked as are our county and State roads, and often better located. The white traders adopted them, and often stole their names, to be in turn surrendered to the leader of some Anglo-Saxon army, and, finally, obliterated by some costly highway of travel and commerce. They are now almost wholly effaced or forgotten. 1 lundreds travel along, or plough over them, unconscious that they are in the footsteps of the red men." * It has not taken long to obliterate all these Indian landmarks from our land; little more than a century ago the Indians roamed over all this western coun- try, and now scarce a vestige of their presence remains. Much has been written and said about their deeds of butchery and cruelty. True, they were cruel, and in many instances fiendish, in their inhuman practices, but they did not meel the first settlers in this spirit. Honest, hospitable, religious in their belief, reverencing their Manitou, or Greal Spirit, and willing to do anything to please their white brother, — this is how they met their first white visitors; hut when they had seen nearly all their vast domain appropriated by the invaders, when wicked white men had introduced into their midst the " wicked fire-water," which is to-day the cause of many an act of fiendishncss perpe- trated by those who are not untutored savages, then tin- Indian rebelled, all the savage in his breast was aroused, and he became pitiless and cruel in the extreme. ' It is true that our broad domains were purchased and secured by treaty, but the odds were always on the side of the whites. The " Colonial Records" give an account of the treaty of [686, by which a deed for " walking purchase was executed, by which the Indians sold as far as a man could walk in a day. lint when the walk was to he made the most active white man was obtained, who ran from daylight until dark, as fast as he was able, without stopping to eat or drink. This much dissatisfied the Indians, who expected to walk leis- * This paragraph was taken from Judge Vecch. 38 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA urely, resting at noon to cat and shoot game, and one old chief expressed his dissatisfaction as follows: ' Luii, lun, lun ; no lay down to drink; no stop to shoot squirrel, bnt Inn, Inn, Inn all day; me no keep up; Inn, Inn for land.' That deed, it is said, does not now exist, but was confirmed in 1737." 'When the white man came the Indians were a temperate people, and their chiefs tried hard to prohibit the sale of intoxicating drinks among their tribes; and when one Sylvester Garland, in 1701, introduced rum among them and induced them to drink, at a council held in Philadelphia, Shemeken- whol, chief of the Shawnese, complained to Governor William Penn, and at a council held on the 13th of October, 1701, this man was held in the sum of one hundred pounds never to deal rum to the Indians again; and the bond and sentence was approved by Judge Shippen, of Philadelphia. At the chief's suggestion the council enacted a law prohibiting the trade in rum with the Indians. Still later the ruling chiefs of the Six Nations opposed the use of rum, and Red Jacket, in a speech at Buffalo, wished that whiskey would never be less than " a dollar a quart." He answered the missionary's remarks on drunkenness thus : " Go to the white man with that." A council, held on the Allegheny River, deplored the murder of the Wigden family in Butler County by a Seneca Indian while under the influence of whiskey, approved the sen- tence of our law, and again passed their prohibitory resolutions, and implored the white man not to give rum to the Indian.' "Mr. Coxson claims that the council of the Delaware's, Muncys, Shaw- nese, Nanticokes, Tuscorawas, and Mingos, to protest against the sale of their domain by the Six Nations, at Albany, in 1754, was held at Punxsutawney, and cites Joncaire's 'Notes on Indian Warfare,' 'Life of Bezant,' etc. ' It is said they ascended the tributary of La Iic-lle Riviere to the mountain village 011 the way to Chinklacamoose (Clearfield) to attend the council.' :: At that council, though Sheklemas, the Christian king of the Delawares, and other Christian chiefs, tried hard to prevent the war, they were overruled, and the tribes decided to go to war with their French allies against the colony. ' Trav- ellers, as early as 1731. reported to the council of the colony of a town si\i\ miles from the Susquehanna.' f ''After the failure of the expedition against Fort Duquesne, the while captives were taken to Kittanning, Logtown, and Pukeesheno (Punxsutaw- ney). The sachem, Pukeesheno (for whom the town was called), was the father of Tccumsch and his twin brother, the Prophet, and was a Shawnese. We make this digression to add another proof that Punxsutawney was named after a Shawnese chief as early as 1750.' J " ' 1 went with Captain Brady on an Indian hunt up the Allegheny River. We found a good many signs of the savages, and I believe we were so much like the savages (when Brady went on a scouting expedition lie always dressed 'Joncaire. t Bezant. \ History of Western Pennsylvania, p. 302. 39 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA in Indian costume) that they could hardly have known us from a band of Shawnese. But they had an introduction to us near the mouth of Red Bank. General Brodhead was on the route behind Captain Brady, who discovered the Indians on the march. He lay concealed among the rocks until the painted chiefs and their braves had got fairly into the narrow pass, when Brady and his men opened a destructive fire. The sylvan warriors returned the volley with terrific yells that shook the caverns and mountains from base to crest. The fight was short but sanguine. The Indians left the pass and retired, and soon were lost sight of in the deepness of the forest. We returned with three children recaptured, whose parents had been killed at Greensburg. We imme- diately set out on a path that led us to the mountains, to a lodge the savages had near the head-waters of Mahoning and Red Bank. ' We crossed the Mahoning about forty miles from Kittanning, and entered a town, which we found deserted. It seemed to be a hamlet, built by the Shawnese. From there we went over high and rugged hills, through laurel thickets, darkened by tall pine and hemlock groves, for one whole day, and lay quietly down on the bank of a considerable stream (Sandy Lick). About midnight Brady was aroused by the sound of a rifle not far down the creek. We arose and stole quietly along about half a mile, when we heard the voices of Indians but a short distance below us ; there another creek unites its waters with the one upon whose banks we had rested. We ascer- tained that two Indians had killed a deer at a lick. They were trying to strike a light to dress their game. When the flame of pine-knots blazed brightly and revealed the visages of the savages, Brady appeared to be greatly excited, and perhaps the caution that he always took when on a war-path was at that time disregarded. Revenge swallowed and absorbed every faculty of his soul. He recognized the Indian who was foremost, when they chased him, a few months before, so closely that he was forced to leap across a chasm of stone on the slippery rock twenty-three feet; between the jaws of granite there roared a deep torrent twenty feet deep. When Brady saw Conemah he sprang forward and planted his tomahawk in his head. The other Indian, who had his knife in his hand, sprang at Brady. The long, bright steel glistened in his uplifted hand, when the flash of Farley's rifle was the death-light of the brave, who sank to the sands. . . . Brady scalped the Indians in a moment, and drew the deer into the thicket to finish dressing it, but had not completed his under- taking when he heard a noise in the branches of the neighboring trees. He sprang forward, quenched the flame, and in breathless silence listened for the least sound, but nothing was heard save the rustling of the leaves, stirred by the wind. One of the scouts softly crept along the banks of the creek to catch the faintest sound that echoes on the water, when he found a canoe down upon the beach. The scout communicated this to Brady, who resolved to embark on this craft, if it was large enough to carry the company. It was found to be of sufficient size. We all embarked and took the deer along. We had not 40 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA gone forty rods down the stream when the savages gave a war-whoop, and about a mile off they were answered with a hundred voices. We heard them in pursuit as we went dashing down the frightful and unknown stream. We gained on them. We heard their voices far behind us, until the faint echoes of the hundreds of warriors were lost ; but, unexpectedly, we found ourselves passing full fifty canoes drawn up on the beach. Brady landed a short distance below. There was no time to lose. If the pursuers arrived they might over- take the scouts. It was yet night. He took four of his men along, and with great caution unmoored the canoes and sent them adrift. The scouts below secured them, and succeeded in arriving at Brodhead's quarters with the scalps of two Indians and their whole fleet, which disabled them much from carrying on their bloody expeditions.' " In the legend of Noshaken, the white captive of the Delawares, in 1753, who was kept at a village supposed to have been Punxsutawney, occurs the following : ' The scouts were on the track of the Indians, the time of burning of the captives was extended, and the whole band prepared to depart for Fort Venango with the prisoners. . . . They continued on for twenty miles, and encamped by a beautiful spring, where the sand boiled up from the bottom near where two creeks unite. Here they passed the night, and the next morning again headed for Fort Venango. " ' This spring is believed to have been the " sand spring" at Brookville.' " The Indian wampum, or money, was of two kinds, white and purple ; the white is worked out of the inside of the great shells into the form of a bead, and perforated, to string on leather ; the purple is taken out of the inside of the mussel shell ; they are woven as broad as one's hand and about two feet long ; these they call belts, which they give and receive at their treaties as the seals of friendship; for lesser matters a single string is given. Every bead is of known value, and a belt of a less number is made to equal one of a greater by fastening so many as is wanting to the belt by a string. PUNXSUTAWNEY Punxsutawney was an Indian town for centuries and, like all other towns of the Indian before the white man reached this continent with fire-arms, was stockaded. The word " punxsu" means gnat. The land was a swamp, and alive with gnats, mosquitoes, turtles, and reptiles. For protection against the gnats the Indians anointed themselves with oil and ointments made of fat and poisons. Centuries ago the Indians of Punxsutawney dressed themselves in winter with a cloak made of buffalo, bear, or beaver skins, with a leather girdle, and stock- ings or moccasins of buckskin. It might be well to state here that the beavers were of all colors, white, yellow, spotted, gray, but mostly black. The Indian subsisted mostly on game, but when pressed for food ate acorns, nuts, and the 41 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA inside bark of the birch-tree. As agriculturists each was apportioned a piece of land outside of the stockade, which was planted by the squaws in corn, squashes, and tobacco. A hole was made in the ground with a stick and a grain of corn put in each hole. Population among Indians did not increase rapidly. Mothers often nursed their papooses until they were five, six, and seven years old. Not knowing how to dig wells, they located their ga-no-sote and villages on the banks of runs and creeks, or in the vicinity of springs. About the period of the formation of the league, when they were exposed to the inroads of hostile nations, and the warfare of migratory bands, their villages were compact and stockaded. Having run a trench several feet deep around five or ten acres of land, and thrown up the ground on the inside, they set a continuous row of stakes, burned at the ends, in this bank of earth, fixing them at such an angle that they inclined over the trench. Sometimes a village was surrounded by a double or even triple row of stakes. Within this enclosure they constructed their bark houses and secured their stores. Around it was the village field, consisting oftentimes of several hundred acres of cultivated land, which was subdivided into planting lots; those belonging to different families being bounded by uncultivated ridges. The entrances to the stockade were anciently contrived so that they could be defended from assault by a very few men. The Iroquois were accustomed to live largely in villages, and the stock- ades built about these villages protected them from sudden assaults and ren- dered it possible for the houses within to be built according to a method of construction such that they might last for a long time. At the two ends of the houses were doors, either of bark hung on hinges of wood, or of deer- or bear-skins suspended before the opening, and however long the house, or whatever number of fires, these were the only entrances. Over one of these doors was cut the tribal device of the head of the family. Within, upon the two sides, were arranged wide seats, also of bark boards, about two feet from the ground, well supported underneath, and reaching the entire length of the house. Upon these they spread their mats of skins, and also their blankets, using them as seats by day and couches at night. Similar berths were constructed on each side, about five feet above these, and secured to the frame of the house, thus furnishing accommodations for the family. Upon cross-poles near the roof were hung in bunches, braided together by the husks, their winter supply of corn. Charred and dried corn and beans were generally stored in bark barrels and laid away in corners. Their implements for the chase, domestic utensils, weapons, articles of apparel, and miscella- neous notions were stored away, and hung up wherever an unoccupied place was discovered. A house of this description would accommodate a family of eight, with the limited wants of the Indian, and afford shelter for their necessary stores, making a not uncomfortable residence. After they had 42 p. gip ° 3 § 3" O « 2» : as- p. n «» p o ■< t/: ffl < P * ra V - i— , fc) HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA learned the use of the axe, they began to substitute houses of logs, but they constructed them after the ancient model. Our Indians were the Senecas, and they had six yearly festivals. These festivals consisted of dancing, singing, and thanksgiving to the Great Spirit for his gifts. The New Year was an acknowledgment for the whole year, and the white dog was sent to the Great Spirit to take to him their messages. The dog was the only animal they could trust to carry their messages. i. The Maple Festival, for yielding its sweet water. 2. The Planting Festival. 3. The Strawberry Festival. 4. Green Corn Festival. 5. The Harvesting Festival. 6. New Year or White Dog Sacrifice. The Indians had no Sunday. Our Indians called themselves Nun-ga- wah-gah, " The Great Hill People," and their legend was that they sprung from the ground. The civil chiefs wore horns as an emblem of power. The moccasin was an Indian invention, and one of great antiquity. The needle was made from a bone taken from the ankle-joint of the deer, and the thread was from the sinews. The deer-skin was tanned by the use of the brains of the deer. The brains were dried in cakes for future use. Bear-skins were not tanned, but were used for cloaks and beds. Indian corn was red and white flint. They ground it in mortars and sifted it in a basket, and then baked it in loaves an inch thick and about six inches in diameter. They had a way of charring corn so it would keep for years. They would pick ears while green, roast it, dry it in the sun, mix with it about a third of maple sugar, and pound it into flour. This they carried with them on long trips. For ropes and straps, raw hide and barks were used ; the bark made the best ropes. The inside bark of the elm or bass-wood was boiled in ashes, separated into filaments, and then braided into rope. • Their knives were made of flint and horn-stone. Tomahawks were made of stone. They buried food with their dead. Their cooking-vessels could not be exposed to fire, hence they used large upright vessels made of birch-bark, in which to boil food. Repeatedly putting stones red-hot into the water in these vessels, forcing them to boil. The Indian was a great ball-player and fond of games, swift in races ; in truth, the Indian was built for fleetness and not for strength ; his life of pursuit educated him that way. Their feathers and war-paint was nothing else than crude heraldry. The squaws did the work, they were more apt than the braves. Paint spread upon the face and body indicated the tribe, prowess, honor, etc., of the individual and family, and the arbitrary methods employed by the squaws made their heraldry hard to understand. The facial heraldry was unique both in representation and subject. Every picture had its signifi- 45 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA cance. If a squaw was in love she daubed a ring around one of her eyes. This meant I am ready for a proposal. This symbol worn by a buck indicated he was in the market, too. When love matters were running smoothly with a squaw she painted her cheeks a cherry-red, and a straight mark on her fore- head, which meant a happy road. A zigzag mark on the forehead meant lightning. In case of a death in the family the squaw painted her cheeks black. Before a battle each warrior had smeared on the upper part of his body a wolf, herron, snipe, etc., to indicate his tribe, so that if he was killed his tribe could recognize his body and come for it. In 1762 the great Moravian missionary, Rev. John Heckewelder, may have, and probably did, spend a day or two in Punxsutawney. In or about the year 1765 a Moravian missionary — viz., Rev. David Zeisberger — estab- lished a mission near the present town of Wyalusing, Bradford County, Penn- sylvania, He erected forty frame buildings, with shingle roofs and chimneys, in connection with other improvements, and Christianized a large number of the savages. The Muncy Indians were then living in what is now called Forest County, on the Allegheny River. This brave, pious missionary deter- mined to reach these savages also, and, with two Christian Indian guides, he traversed the solitude of the forests and reached his destination on the 16th of October, 1767. He remained with these savages but seven days; they were good listeners to his sermons, but every day he was in danger of being murdered. Of these Indians he wrote, — " I have never found such heathenism in any other parts of the Indian country. Here Satan has his stronghold. Here he sits on his throne. Here he is worshipped by true savages, and carries on his work in the hearts of the children of darkness." These, readers, were the Indians that roamed over our hills, then either Lancaster or Berks County. In 1768 this brave minister returned and put up a log cabin, twenty-six by sixteen feet, and in 1769 was driven back to what is now called Wyalusing by repeated attempts on his life. He says in his journal, " For ten months I have lived between these two towns of godless and malicious savages, and my preservation is wonderful." In 1768 the six Indian nations having by treaty sold the land from " under the feet" of the Wyalusing converts, the Rev. Zeisberger was com- pelled to take measures for the removal of these Christian Indians, with their horses and cattle, to some other field. After many councils and much consid- eration, he determined to remove the entire body to a mission he had estab- lished on the Big Beaver, now Lawrence County, Pennsylvania. Accordingly, "on the nth of June, 1772, everything being in readiness, the congregation assembled for the last time in their church and took up their march toward the setting sun." They were "divided into two companies, and each of these were subdivided. One of these companies went overland by the Wyalusing path, up the Sugar Run, and down the Loyal Sock, via Dushore. This com- pany was in charge of Ettwein, who had the care of the horses and cattle. 46 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA The other company was in charge of Rothe, and went by canoe down the Susquehannah and up the west branch." The place for the divisions to unite was the Great Island, now Lock Haven, and from there, under the lead of Rev. John Ettwein, to proceed up the west branch of the Susquehanna, and then cross the mountains over the Chinklacamoose path, through what is now Clearfield and Punxsutawney, and from there to proceed, via Kittanning, to the Big Beaver, now in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania. Reader, just think of two hundred and fifty people of all ages, with seventy head of oxen and a greater number of horses, traversing these deep forests, over a small path sometimes scarcely discernible, under drenching rains, and through dismal swamps, and all this exposure continued for days and weeks, wild beasts to the right and to the left of them, and the path alive with rattlesnakes in front of them, wading streams and overtaken by sickness, and then, dear reader, you will conclude with me that nothing but " praying all night in the wilderness" ever carried them successfully to their destination. This story of Rev. Ettwein is full of interest. I reprint a paragraph or two that applies to what is now Jefferson County, — viz. : " 17^2, Tuesday, July 14. — Reached Clearfield Creek, where the Buffaloes formerly cleared large tracts of undergrowth, so as to give them the appearance of cleared fields. Hence the Indians called the creek ' Clearfield.' Here we shot nine deer. On the route we shot one hundred and fifty deer and three bears. " Friday, July 17. — Advanced only four miles to a creek that comes down from the Northwest." This was and is Anderson Creek, near Curwensville, Pennsylvania. " July 18. — Moved on . . . " Sunday, July 19. — As yesterday, but two families kept up with me, because of the rain, we had a quiet Sunday, but enough to do drying our effects. In the evening all joined me, but we could hold no service as the Ponkies were so excessively annoying that the cattle pressed toward and into our camp to escape their persecutors in the smoke of the fire. This vermin is a plague to man and beast by day and night, but in the swamp through which we are now passing, their name is legion. Hence the Indians call it the Ponsetunik, i.e., the town of the Ponkies." This swamp was in what we now call Punxsutawney. These people on their route lived on fish, venison, etc. CHAPTER III COKXPLAXTER. — OUR CHIEF CHIEF OF THE SENECAS. ONE OF THE SIX XATIOXS BRIEF HISTORY SOME SPEECHES LIFE AND DEATH In the year 17S4 the treaty to which Cornplanter, or Beautiful Lake, was a party was made at Fort Stanwix, ceding the whole of Northwestern Penn- sylvania to the Commonwealth, with the exception of a small individual reserve to Cornplanter. The frontier, however, was not at peace for some years after that, nor. indeed, until Wayne's treaty in 1705. Notwithstanding his bitter hostility, while the war continued, he became the fast friend of the Cnited States when once the hatchet was buried. His sagacious intellect comprehended at a glance the growing power of the Cnited States, and the abandonment with which Great Britain had requited the fidelity of the Senecas. He therefore threw all his influence at the treaty of Fort Stanwix. now Rome. New York, and Fort Harmar in favor of peace. And notwithstanding the large concessions which he saw his people were necessi- tated to make, still, by his energy and prudence in the negotiation, he retained for them an ample and beautiful reservation. For the course which he took on those occasions the State of Pennsylvania granted him the fine reservation upon which he resided on the Allegheny. The Senecas. however, were never satisfied with his course in relation to these treaties, and Red Jacket, more artful and eloquent than his elder rival, but less frank and honest, seized upon this circumstance to promote his own popularity at the expense of Cornplanter. Having buried the hatchet. Cornplanter sought to make his talents useful to his people by conciliating the good will of the whites and securing from further encroachment the little remnant of his national domain. On more than one occasion, when some reckless and bloodthirsty whites on the frontier had massacred unoffending Indians in cold blood, did Cornplanter interfere to restrain the vengeance of his people. During all the Indian wars from 1701 to 1704. which terminated with Wayne's treaty. Cornplanter pledged himself that the Senecas should remain friendly to the Cnited States. He often gave notice to the garrison at Fort Franklin of intended attacks from hostile parties, and even hazarded his life on a mediatorial mission to the ■Western tribes. The following is an extract from a speech of Cornplanter to representa- tives of the Cnited States government appointed to meet him at Fort Franklin. Sth of March. 1700: 43 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " I thank the Almighty for giving us luck to meet together at this time, and in this place as brethren, and hope my brothers will assist me in writing to Congress what I have now to say. " I thank the Almighty that I am speaking this good day. I have been through all Nations in America, and am sorry to see the folly of many of the _J people. What makes me sorry is they all tell lies, and I never found truth amongst them. All the western Nations of Indians, as well as white people, have told me lies. Even in Council I have been deceived, and been told things which I have told to my chiefs and young men, which I have found not to be so, which makes me tell lies by not being able to make good my word, but I 4 49 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA hope they will all see their folly and repent. The Almighty has not made us to lie. but to tell the truth one lo another, for when two people meet together, it they lie one to the other. I hem people cannot be at peace, and so it is with nations, and that is the cause of so much war. " General Washington, the father of us all, hear what 1 have now to say. and take pity on us poor people. The Almighty has blest you, and not us. Ho has given you education, which enables you to do many things that we cannot do. You can travel by sea as well as by land, and know what is doing in any other country, which we poor people know nothing about. Therefore you ought to pity us. When the Almighty first put us on this land he gave it to us to live on. And when the white people first came to it they were very poor, and we helped them all in our power ; did not kill them, but received them as brothers. And now it appears to me as though they were agoing to leave us in distress.'* — Pennsylvania Archives. " After peace was permanently established between the Indians and the United States, Cornplanter retired from public life and devoted his labors to his own people, lie deplored the evils of intemperance, and exerted himself to suppress it. The benevolent efforts of missionaries among his tribe always received his encouragement, and at one time his own heart seemed to be soft- ened by the words of truth, yet he preserved in his later years many of the peculiar notions of the Indian faith. " In 1821- 22 the commissioners of Warren County assumed the right to tax the private property of Cornplanter, and proceeded to enforce its collec- tion. The old chief resisted it. conceiving it not only unlawful, but a personal indignity. The sheriff again appeared with a small posse of armed men. Cornplanter took the deputation to a room around which were ranged about a hundred ritles, and, with the sententious brevity of an Indian, intimated that for each rifle a warrior would appear at his call. The sheriff and his men speedily withdrew, determined, however, to call out the militia. Several pru- dent citizens, fearing a sanguinary collision, sent for the old chief in a friendly way to come to Warren and compromise the matter. He came, and after some persuasion, gave his note for the tax. amounting to forty-three dollars and seventy-nine cents. He addressed, however, a remonstrance to the governor of Pennsylvania, soliciting a return of his money and an exemption from such demands against lands which the State itself had presented to him. The 1 egislature annulled the tax. and sent two commissioners to explain the affair to him. He met them at the court-house in Warren, on which occasion he delivered the following speech, eminently characteristic of himself and his race : " ' Brothers, yesterday was appointed for us all to meet here. The talk which the governor sent us pleased us very much. I think that the Great Spirit is very much pleased that the white people have been induced so to assist the Indians as they have done, and that he is pleased also to see the 50 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA great men of this State and of the United States so friendly to us. We are much pleased with what has been done. " ' The Great Spirit first made the world, and next the flying animals, and found all things good and prosperous. He is immortal and everlasting. After finishing the flying animals, he came down on earth and there stood. Then he made different kinds of trees and weeds of all sort, and people of every kind. He made the spring and other seasons and the weather suitable for planting. These he did make. But stills to make whiskey to be given to the Indians he did not make. The Great Spirit bids me tell the white people not to give Indians this kind of liquor. When the Great Spirit had made the earth and its animals, he went into the great lakes, where he breathed as easily as anywhere else, and then made all the different kinds of fish. The Great Spirit looked back on all that he had made. The different kinds he had made to be separate and not to mix with or disturb each other. But the white people have broken his command by mixing their color with the Indians. The Indians have done better by not doing so. The Great Spirit wishes that all wars and fightings should cease. " ' He next told us that there were three things for our people to attend to. First, we ought to take care of our wives and children. Secondly, the white people ought to attend to their farms and cattle. Thirdly, the Great Spirit has given the bears and deers to the Indians. He is the cause of all things that exist, and it is very wicked to go against his will. The Great Spirit wishes me to inform the people that they should quit drinking intoxi- cating drink, as being the cause of disease and death. He told us not to sell any more of our lands, for he never sold lands to any one. Some of us now keep the seventh day, but I wish to quit it, for the Great Spirit made it for others, but not for the Indians, who ought every day to attend to their business. He has ordered me to quit drinking intoxicating drink, and not to lust after any woman but my own, and informs me that by doing so I should live the longer. He made known to me that it is very wicked to tell lies. Let no one suppose that I have said now is not true. " ' I have now to thank the governor for what he has done. I have informed him what the Great Spirit has ordered me to cease from, and I wish the governor to inform others what I have communicated. This is all I have at present to say.' " — Day's Collections. The old chief appears after this again to have fallen into entire seclusion, taking no part even in the politics of his people. He died at his residence on the 7th of March, 1836, at the age of one hundred and four years. " Whether at the time of his death he expected to go to the fair hunting-grounds of his own people or to the heaven of the Christian is not known." " Notwithstanding his profession of Christianity, Cornplanter was very superstitious. ' Not long since,' says Mr. Foote, of Chautauqua County, ' he said the Good Spirit had told him not to have anything to do with the white 51 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA people, or even to preserve any mementos or relics that had been given to him from time to time by the pale-faces, whereupon, among other things, he burnt up his belt and broke his elegant sword.' " In reference to the personal appearance of Cornplanter at the close of his life, a writer in the Democratic Arch (Venango County) says, — " I once saw the aged and venerable chief, and had an interesting inter- view with him about a year and a half before his death. I thought of many things when seated near him, beneath the wide-spreading shade of an old svcamore, on the banks of the Allegheny, — many things to ask him, the scenes of the Revolution, the generals that fought its battles and conquered, the Indians, his tribe, the Six Nations, and himself. He was constitutionally sedate, was never observed to smile, much less to indulge in the luxury of a laugh. When I saw him he estimated his age to be over one hundred ; I think one hundred and three was about his reckoning of it. This would make him near one hundred and five years old at the time of his decease. His person was stooped, and his stature was far short of what it once had been, not being over five feet six inches at the time I speak of. Mr. John Struthers, of Ohio, told me, some years since, that he had seen him near fifty years ago, and at that period he was at his height, — viz., six feet one inch. Time and hardship had made dreadful impressions upon that ancient form. The chest was sunken and his shoulders were drawn forward, making the upper part of his body resemble a trough. His limbs had lost size and become crooked. His feet (for he had taken oft" his moccasins) were deformed and haggard by injury. I would say that most of the fingers on one hand were useless ; the sinews had been severed by the blow of a tomahawk or scalping-knife. How I longed to ask him what scene of blood and strife had thus stamped the enduring evidence of its existence upon his person ! But to have done so would, in all probability, have put an end to all further conversation on any subject. The information desired would certainly not have been received, and I had to forego my curiosity. He had but one eye, and even the socket of the lost organ was hid by the overhanging brow resting upon the high cheek-bone. His remaining eye was of the brightest and blackest hue. Never have I seen one, in young or old, that equalled it in brilliancy. Perhaps it had borrowed lustre from the eternal darkness that rested on its neighboring orbit. His ears had been dressed in the Indian mode, all but the outside ring had been cut away. On the one ear this ring had been torn asunder near the top, and hung down his neck like a useless rag. He had a full head of hair, white as the driven snow, which covered a head of ample dimensions and admirable shape. His face was not swarthy, but this may be accounted for from the fact, also, that he was but half Indian. He told me he had been at Franklin more than eighty years before the period of our conversation, on his passage down the Ohio and Mississippi with the warriors of his tribe, in some expe- dition against the Creeks or Osages. He had long been a man of peace, and 52 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA I believe his great characteristics were humanity and truth. It is said that Brandt and Cornplanter were never friends after the massacre of Cherry Valley. Some have alleged, because the Wyoming massacre was perpetrated by Senecas, that Cornplanter was there. Of the justice of this suspicion there are many reasons for doubt. It is certain that he was not the chief of the Senecas at that time. The name of the chief in that expedition was Ge-en- quah-toh, or He-goes-in-the-smoke. As he stood before me — the ancient chief in ruins — how forcibly was I struck with the truth of that beautiful figure of the old aboriginal chieftain, who, in describing himself, said he was ' like an aged hemlock, dead at the top, and whose branches alone were green' ! After more than one hundred years of most varied life, — of strife, of danger, of peace, — he at last slumbers in deep repose on the banks of his own beloved Allegheny. " Cornplanter was born at Conewongus, on the Genesee River, in 1732, being a half-breed, the son of a white man named John O'Bail, a trader from the Mohawk Valley. In a letter written in later years to the governor of Penn- sylvania he thus speaks of his early youth : ' When I was a child I played with the butterfly, the grasshopper, and the frogs ; and as I grew up I began to pay some attention and play with the Indian boys in the neighborhood, and they took notice of my skin being of a different color from theirs, and spoke about it. I inquired from my mother the cause, and she told me my father was a resident of Albany. I still ate my victuals out of a bark dish. I grew up to be a young man and married a wife, and I had no kettle or gun. I then knew where my father lived, and went to see him, and found he was a white man and spoke the English language. He gave me victuals while I was at his house, but when I started to return home he gave me no provisions to eat on the way. He gave me neither kettle nor gun.' " Little further is known of his early life beyond the fact that he was allied with the French in the engagement against General Braddock in July, 1755. He was probably at that time at least twenty years old. During the Revolution he was a war chief of high rank, in the full vigor of manhood, active, sagacious, brave, and he most probably participated in the principal Indian engagements against the United States during the war. He is sup- posed to have been present at the cruelties of Wyoming and Cherry Valley, in which the Senecas took a prominent part. He was on the war-path with Brandt during General Sullivan's campaign in 1779, and in the following year, under Brandt and Sir John Johnson, he led the Senecas in sweeping through the Schoharie and Mohawk Valleys. On this occasion he took his father a prisoner, but with such caution as to avoid an immediate recognition. After marching the old man some ten or twelve miles, he stepped before him, faced about, and addressed him in the following terms: " ' My name is John O'Bail, commonly called Cornplanter. I am your son. You are my father. You are now my prisoner, and subject to the custom 53 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA of Indian warfare; but you shall not be harmed. You need not fear. I am a warrior. Many arc the scalps which 1 have taken. Many prisoners have I tortured to death. 1 am your son. 1 was anxious to see you and greet you in friendship. 1 went to your cabin and took you by force ; but your life shall be spared. Indians love their friends and their kindred, and treat them with kindness. If you now choose to follow the fortunes of your yellow son and to live with our people, 1 will cherish your old age with plenty of venison, and you shall live easy. But if it is your choice to return to your fields and live with your white children, I will send a party of trusty young men to conduct you back in safety. 1 respect you, my father. You have been friendly to Indians, and they are your friends.' The elder O'Bail preferred his white children and green fields to his yellow offspring and the wild woods, and chose to return. " Cornplanter was the greatest warrior the Senecas, the untamable people of the hills, ever had, and it was his wish that when he died his grave would remain unmarked, hut the Legislature of Pennsylvania willed otherwise, and erected a monument to him with this beautiful inscription: " ' Gy-axt-wa-chia. The Corn-planter, John- O'Bail, Am \s Cornplanter, DIED At Cornplanter Town. Feb. iS. A.D. 1836, Aged about 100 years.' " Upon the west side is the following inscription: " ' Chief of the Seneca tribe, and a principal chief of the Six Nations from the period of the Revolutionary War to the time of his death. Distinguished for talent. courage, eloquence, sobriety, and love for tribe and race, to whose welfare he devoted his time, his energy, and his means during a long and eventful life.' " ?w? ?w« eGTM ^QK» ewK» ?w» ew» ew^ ei**» CHAPTER IV THE PURCHASE OF I/S4 AT FORT STANWIX (NOW ROME), NEW YORK I reproduce from McKnight's " Pioneer History of Jefferson County" the following: " At the close of the war of the Revolution, in the year 1783, the owner- ship of a large area of the territory within the charter boundaries of Pennsylva- nia was still claimed by the Indians of the several tribes that were commonly known as the Six Nations. The last purchase of lands from the Six Nations by the proprietary government of the province was made at Fort Stanwix in November, 1768, and the limit of this purchase may be described as extending to lines beginning where the northeast branch of the Susquehanna River crosses the northern line of the State, in the present county of Bradford; thence down the river to the mouth of Towanda Creek, and up the same to its head-waters ; thence by a range of hills to the head-waters of Pine Creek, and down the same to the west branch of the Susquehanna; thence up the same to Cherry Tree ; thence by a straight line, across the present counties of Indiana and Armstrong, to Kittanning,* on the Allegheny River, and thence down the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers to the western boundary line of the province. The Indian claim, therefore, embraced all that part of the State lying to the northwest of the purchase lines of 1768, as they are here de- scribed. With the close of the Revolutionary struggle, the authorities of the new Commonwealth, anxiously looking to its future stability and prosperity, soon found themselves confronted with duties and responsibilities different in many respects from those that had engaged their serious attention and earnest effort during the previous seven years of war. They were to enact just and equitable laws for the government of a new State, and to devise * " Canoe Place," so-called in the old maps of the State to designate the head of navigation on the west branch of the Susquehanna River, is the point at which the pur- chase line of 176S from that river to Kittanning, on the Allegheny River, begins. A survey of that line was made by Robert Galbraith in the year 1786, and a cherry-tree standing on the west bank of the river was marked by him as the beginning of his sur- vey. The same cherry-tree was marked by William P. Brady- as~ the southeast cor- ner of a tract surveyed by him "at Canoe Place," in 1794, on warrant No. 3744, in the name of John Nicolson. Esq. The town of Cherry Tree now covers part of this ground. The old tree disappeared years ago. Its site, however, was regarded as of some historic importance, and under an appropriation of fifteen hundred dollars, granted by the Legislature in 1S93, a substantial granite monument has been erected to mark the spot where it stood. 55 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA such measures as would stimulate its growth in wealth and population and promote the development, settlement, and improvement of its great domain. " As early as the I2th of March, 17S3. the General Assembly had passed an act setting- apart certain lands lying north and west of the Ohio and Alle- gheny Rivers and Conewango Creek to be sold for the purpose of redeeming the depreciation certificates given to the officers and soldiers of the Penn- sylvania Line who had served in the war of the Revolution, and also for the purpose of making donations of land to the same officers and soldiers in compliance with a promise made to them by a resolution passed in 17S0. It will be observed that when this act was passed the Indian claim of title to the lands mentioned was still in force ; but the State authorities, though seem- ingly slow and deliberate in their actions, were no doubt fully alive to the necessity of securing as speedily as possible the right to all the lands within the State — about five-sixteenths of its area — that remained unpurchased after the treaty at Fort Stanwix in 176S. With that purpose in view, the first movement made by the General Assembly to be found on record was on the 35th day of September, 17S3. This action is in the form of a resolution passed on that day by the recommendation of the report of a committee that had been previously appointed ' to digest such plans as they might conceive necessary to facilitate and expedite the laying off and surveying of the lands' set apart by the act of the previous March. The resolution reads. — Resolved, unanimously. That the supreme executive council be. and they are hereby authorized and empowered to appoint commissioners to hold a meeting with the Indians claiming the unpurchased territory within the acknowledged limits of the State, for the purpose of purchasing the same. agreeable to ancient usage, and that all the expenses accruing from the said meeting and purchase be defrayed out of the Treasury of the State." — Penn- sylvania Archives, vol. x. p. in. " It next appears by a minute of the Supreme Executive Council, of Feb- ruary 23, 17S4. that Samuel John Atlee. William Maclay. and Francis John- ston were on that day chosen commissioners to treat with the Indians as proposed in the resolution of the General Assembly. The gentlemen named — all of them prominent citizens — were informed on the 29th of the same month of their appointment, but they did not acknowledge the receipt of President Dickinson's letter until the 17th of May following. On that day Messrs. Atlee and Johnston reply in a letter of thanks for the honor conferred upon them. and explain the delay as having been caused by circumstances that required Mr. Maclay and Colonel Atlee to visit their families, the first named still remaining absent. The letter also contains a statement of their views upon various matters pertaining to the mission upon which they are about to enter. They suggest Samuel Weiser, a son of Conrad Weiser. the noted Indian mis- sionary, as a proper person to notify the Indians of the desire to treat with them. and. from his familiarity with their language and customs, to act as 50 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA interpreter. The time and place for holding the treaty are mentioned, but nothing- definite suggested, owing to the fact that the Continental Congress had likewise appointed commissioners to meet the Six Nations for the purpose of treating with them in relation to the lands of the Northwest, beyond the limits of Pennsylvania, and it was deemed proper to permit the representatives of Congress to arrange for the meeting.* Fort Stanwix, in the State of New York, was finally agreed upon as the place where the meeting should be held, and thither the commissioners on the part of Pennsylvania were directed to proceed. On the 25th of August, 1784, a committee of the General Assembly, having Indian affairs under consideration, made the following report: " ' That weighty reasons have occurred in favor of the design for hold- ing a conference with the Indians on the part of this State, and if under the present situation of Continental affairs that measure can be conducted on sure ground and without too unlimited an expense, it ought to take place and be rendered as effective as this House can make it, under whose auspices a foun- dation would thus be laid of essential and durable advantage to the public, by extending population, satisfying our officers and soldiers in regard to their donation lands and depreciation certificates, restoring that ancient, friendly, and profitable intercourse with the Indians, and guarding against all occasions of war with them.' — Pennsylvania Archives, vol. x. p. 316. " To aid the commissioners in their efforts to attain objects so worthy and laudable, the above report was accompanied by a resolution that authorized the Supreme Executive Council to expend nine thousand dollars in the pur- chase of ' such goods, merchandise, and trinkets 7 as would be acceptable to the Indians, to be given them as part of the consideration in the event of a pur- chase being made. In pursuance of this resolution the council promptly ordered a warrant to be issued by the treasurer in favor of the commissioners for the sum of £3375 (equivalent in Pennsylvania currency to nine thousand one hundred dollars), to be expended by them in purchasing the necessary articles. f " After a tedious and fatiguing journey, in which they met with a number of unexpected delays, the commissioners reached Fort Stanwix early in the month of October, where they found some of the tribes already assembled, and with them the commissioners of the Continental Congress. In a letter to President Dickinson, dated October 4, 1784, they announce their arrival, and state that the negotiations had already commenced, and while they would not venture an opinion as to the final issue, they say the disposition of the Indians appeared to be favorable. The negotiations continued until the 23d of * Pennsylvania Archives, vol. x. p. 265. t For a list of the articles designated in the order see Colonial Records, vol. xiv. p. 186. After the negotiations at Fort Stanwix had been concluded the commissioners gave an obligation for an additional thousand dollars in goods, to be delivered at Tioga. For this list see Pennsylvania Archives, vol. x. p. 496. 57 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA the same month, and on that day ended in an agreement by which the Indian title to all the lands within the boundaries of the State that remained after the treaty of 1768 was extinguished. The Indians represented at the con- ference were the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Onondagas, the Senecas, the Cayugas, and the Tuscaroras. The consideration fixed for the surrender of their rights was five thousand dollars. The deed is dated October 23, 1784, is signed by all the chiefs of the Six Nations and by the Continental commis- sioners as witnesses. The boundaries of the territory ceded are thus de- scribed : ' Beginning on the south side of the river Ohio, where the western boundary of the State of Pennsylvania crosses the said river, near Shingo's old town, at the mouth of Beaver Creek, and thence by a due north line to the end of the forty-second and the beginning of the forty-third degrees of north latitude, thence by a due east line separating the forty-second and the forty-third degree of north latitude, to the east side of the east branch of the Susquehanna River, thence by the bounds of the late purchase made at Fort Stanwix, the fifth day of November, Anno Domini one thousand seven hun- dred and sixty-eight, as follows : Down the said east branch of Susquehanna, on the east side thereof, till it comes opposite to the mouth of a creek called by the Indians Awandac, and across the river, and up the said creek on the south side thereof, all along the range of hills called Burnet's Hills by the English and by the Indians , on the north side of them, to the head of a creek which runs into the west branch of Susquehanna, which creek is by the Indians called Tyadaghton, but by the Pennsylvanians Pine Creek, and down the said creek on the south side thereof to the said west branch of Susque- hanna, thence crossing the said river, and running up the south side thereof, the several courses thereof to the forks of the same river, which lies nearest to a place on the river Ohio called Kittanning, and from the fork by a straight line to Kittanning aforesaid, and thence down the said river Ohio by the several courses thereof to where said State of Pennsylvania crosses the same river at the place of beginning.' After the commissioners had accomplished in so satisfactory a manner the object for which they had journeyed to Fort Stanwix, it became necessary to appease the Western Indians, the Wyandots and the Delawares, who also claimed rights in the same lands. The same commissioners were therefore sent to Fort Mcintosh, on the Ohio River, at the site of the present town of Beaver, where, in January, 1785, they were suc- cessful in reaching an agreement with those Indians for the same lands. This deed, signed by the chiefs of both tribes, is dated January 21, 1785, and is in the same words (except as to the consideration money, which is two thousand dollars) and recites the same boundaries as the deed signed at Fort Stanwix in the previous month of October.* * The conference of the commissioners at Fort Stanwix and Fort Mcintosh with the deeds signed at those places are published in the Appendix to the General Assembly for the session of February to April, 1785. 58 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA "After the purchase of 1768 a disagreement arose between the proprie- tary government and the Indians as to whether the creek flowing into the west branch of the river Susquehanna, and called in the deed ' Tyadaghton.' was intended for Lycoming Creek or Pine Creek. The Indians said it was the former, and that the purchase only extended that far ; the proprietaries claimed the latter stream to be the extent of the purchase, but, in order to avoid any trouble that might arise from the dispute, it was wisely determined that no rights should be granted for lands west of Lycoming Creek. This deter- mination, however, did not deter or prevent adventurous pioneers from enter- ing upon and making settlements within the disputed territory, and from their persistency in so doing arose an interesting, not to say serious, condition of affairs, to which reference will again be made. The commissioners at Fort Stanwix were instructed to ascertain definitely from the Indians which of the two streams they meant by ' Tyadaghton.' They then admitted that it was Pine Creek, being the largest emptying into the west branch of the Sus- quehanna. " The Indian claim of right to the soil of Pennsylvania, within its charter limits, had thus, in a period of a little more than one hundred years, ceased to exist. A glance at a map of the State will show that within the magnificent domain that comprises the purchase of 1784 are to be found at the present day the counties of Tioga, Potter, McKean, Warren, Crawford, Venango, Forest, Clarion, Elk, Jefferson, Cameron, Butler, Lawrence, and Mercer, and parts of the counties of Bradford, Clinton, Clearfield, Indiana, Armstrong, Allegheny, Beaver, and Erie.* This large and important division of our great Commonwealth, now teeming with population and wealth, the abiding- place of a noble civilization, and containing within its boundaries thousands upon thousands of homes of comfort and many of elegance and luxury, fertile valleys to reward the labor* of the husbandman, thriving villages, busy towns, and growing, bustling cities, was, in 1784, largely an uninhabited and untrav- ersed wilderness. " LANDS EAST OF THE ALLEGHENY RIVER AND CONEWANGO CREEK " The General Assembly of the State did not delay in enacting laws which would open to settlers and purchasers that part of the late acquisition that had not been otherwise appropriated. As a matter of fact, in anticipation of the purchase, an act was passed on the 1st day of April, 1784, in which it was provided that as soon as the Indians were ' satisfied for the unpurchased lands,' the supreme executive council should give official information thereof to the surveyor-general, who was then to appoint district surveyors to survey all such lands within the purchase as should ' be found fit for cultivation.' The tracts were to contain not more than five hundred nor less than two * See accompanying map, which shows the extent of the purchase. 61 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA hundred acres each, and were to be numbered on a general draft of each dis- trict. When a certain number of lots were surveyed, they were to be sold at public auction, the purchaser having the privilege of paying one moiety at the time of purchase and receiving a credit of two years for the other moiety. The mode of disposing of the lands thus indicated was soon changed by sub- sequent legislation. By an act passed December 21, 1784, to amend the act of April 1 , the provisions of the law for sales by public auction and the giving of credit were repealed. Section 6 of the act provided that the land-office should be open on the 1st day of May, 1785, to receive applications for lands at the rate of £30 * for every hundred acres of the same, and that the survey of an application should not contain more than one thousand acres, with the usual allowance of six per centum for highways. This act was intended to apply to all lands within the purchase, except the lands north and west of the Ohio and Allegheny Rivers and Conewango Creek (which, as already men- tioned, had been appropriated for the redemption of depreciation certificates and for the donations of land to the soldiers of the Pennsylvania Line) and the disputed territory between Lycoming and Pine Creeks. By Section 7, a warrant issued in pursuance of the act was not descriptive, and was not confined to any particular place, but could be located on any vacant land, not within the excepted districts, that the applicant might select. Sections 8, 9, and 10 of the act provide for the persons who occupied lands between Ly- coming and Pine Creek, in violation of the proprietary mandate. The situa- tion of these settlers was peculiar. When the disagreement in regard to the purchase lines of the purchase of 1768 occurred, the proprietaries, always extremely anxious to avoid giving offence to the Indians, decided to withhold the territory between the two streams from sale and settlement until the differences could be properly adjusted by mutual agreement. Though many applications for land west of Lycoming Creek were on file, surveys would not be accepted, and at the same time stringent orders were issued protesting against persons making settlement beyond that stream, and warning those already there to depart. In defiance of warnings, protests, and proclamations, however, many sturdy, self-reliant men persisted in occupying the forbidden ground, where they found themselves beyond the bounds of lawful authority, and could not expect to receive encouragement or protection from the pro- prietary government. But with the energy and courage common to pioneer settlers they at once began the work of subduing the wilderness and building homes for their families, and from accounts that have come down to us, the little community, if it did not live in luxury, was at least able to earn a sub- sistence that was not- meagre in quantity, whatever may have been its quality. Being without law or government, the members of the community were com- pelled by the necessities of their situation and surroundings to adopt a system * In Pennsylvania currency this was at the rate of eighty cents an acre. 62 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA of government of their own, the details of which are not fully known. All, however, were under solemn obligations to support and defend their agreement for mutual support and protection. They called themselves Fair-Play Men, and it is known that annually they elected three of their number to constitute a court, which held stated meetings to dispense justice. To this tribunal all disputes and controversies were referred for settlement, and from its decisions there was no appeal. A stranger coming among them was obliged to appear before the court and promise under oath to submit to the laws of the com- munity. If he did this, he could remain, take possession of unoccupied land, and receive assistance in building his cabin. If he would not take the obliga- tion, he was quickly notified to absent himself without delay, which he usually did, without awaiting the call of a committee, whose methods of expulsion might be none too gentle. Many of these brave frontiersmen served in the army during the Revolutionary War, and Section 8 of the act recited that by reason of their services as soldiers, they merited the ' pre-emption of their respective plantations.' Sections 9 and 10 of the same act allowed a pre- emption to all settlers and their legal representatives who had settled on the lands between the two streams prior to the year 1780, limiting each claim to three hundred acres, providing that the application should be made and the consideration paid on or before November 1, 1785. It will be remembered that the time fixed by the act of December 21, 1784, for the land-office to be opened to receive applications was May 1, 1785. Before that day arrived, however, the Legislature passed another act, which, in many respects, changed the policy previously pursued in disposing of unappropriated lands. This act became a law on the 8th day of April, 1785, and with it came the practice, as provided in the act, of numbering all warrants for land in the last purchase to the east of the Allegheny River and Conewango Creek, a change in practice that has always been regarded as a valuable improvement on the old system. The act is entitled ' An act to provide further regulations, whereby to secure fair and equal proceedings in the land-office, and the surveying of lands.' It was believed that when the office was opened on the day fixed by the law, numerous applications would be made at the same time, and that preference would necessarily be given to some persons to the disadvantage of others, and thereby cause dissatisfaction. In order to prevent any one from profiting by such preference, it was enacted in Section 2 of the act that the priority of all warrants to be granted on applications received during the first ten days after the opening of the office should be determined by a lottery to be drawn under the supervision of the Secretary of the Land-Office. Not more than one thousand acres were to be included in one application, and the warrants were to be numbered ' according to the decision of the lottery.' For conducting the lottery the section contains minute directions. All applications made after the expiration of ten days were to have priority according to the order in which thev came into the hands of the Secretarv, and were to be numbered accord- 63 ' HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA ingly. The other sections of the act relate mainly to the duties of the surveyor- general and the deputy-surveyors to be by him appointed, and the way in which surveys were to be made and returned. It also prescribes the fees to be received by the officers of the land office and the deputy-surveyors, and attaches the territory east of the Allegheny River and Conewango Creek to Northumberland County, a pan of which county it remained until Lycoming County was formed in 1795, when it became part of that county. The remain- ing portion of the purchase was attached to Westmoreland County, and so continued until Allegheny was formed in 1788. when it was included in the boundary of that county. The applications received during the first ten days from the opening of the office were listed and numbered, placed in the lottery- wheel, and drawn therefrom in the manner provided by the second section of the act. They numbered five hundred and sixty-four, and warrants for that number of tracts were issued, and received a number that corresponded with the number drawn from the wheel. These warrants were called ' North- umberland Count) 1 Ottery Warrants, 3 and under that designation are yet carried on the warrant registers of the office. They could be. and were, located in such localities within the purchase east of the Allegheny River as the owners might select, except on a reservation of one thousand acres at the forks of Sinnemahoning Creek, for which General James Totter held a pre-emption. " The surveyor-general had authority to appoint deputy-surveyors, and to fix the number, extent, and boundaries of the districts to which they were to be assigned. The territory was divided into eighteen districts, and a deputy- surveyor appointed for each. These districts were numbered consecutively. beginning with No. 1 on the Allegheny River, and running eastward to No. 18. which extended to the north branch of the Susquehanna in the northeast cottier of the purchase. This arrangement of the districts continued until after the year t~oo. when a change was made by the surveyor-general. The number of districts was then reduced to six. and were numbered westward ■•. district Xo. 1. beginning at the mouth of Lycoming Creek. In the new arrangement John Adlum was appointed deputy-surveyor for district Xo. 1. John Broadhead for Xo. 2, John Canan for Xo. 3, James Hunter for Xo. 4. William P. Rrady for Xo. 5. and Enion Williams for Xo. 6, on the Allegheny River. In t_~o^ John Adlum, whose surveys were principally along the north- ern line of the State, was succeeded by William Ellis, and Enion Williams by John Broadhead. After the drawing of the lottery warrants the business of the land-office does not appear to have been very pressing. It would seem that at the price fixed by the act of December, 1784 — £50 per hundred, or eighty cents an acre — purchasers were not numerous. The records show that from the time of the drawing and issuing of the lottery warrants in May. t"8;. down to the year 1 jga, not more than four hundred warrants were granted for these lands, and among these warrants were many to religious and educa- te HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA tional institutions issued under various acts of endowment. There were thirty-two to Dickinson College, — twenty-eight of three hundred acres each, and four of four hundred acres each, making in all seven thousand acres ; the Episcopal Academy had thirty-three warrants, — thirty-two of three hundred acres each, and one of four hundred acres, making ten thousand acres; the Lutheran congregation, of Philadelphia, ten warrants of five hundred acres each, making five thousand acres ; the Pittsburg Academy, ten warrants of five hundred acres each, making five thousand acres; the Washington Academy, ten warrants of five hundred acres each, making five thousand acres ; the Reading Academy, seven warrants, — three of one thousand acres each and four of five hundred acres each, making five thousand acres; and Franklin College thirty-three warrants of three hundred acres each, and one of one hundred acres, making ten thousand acres, — making in the aggregate one hundred and twelve warrants for fifty-two thousand acres of land. " It had now become apparent to the authorities that the price of land was too high to induce investments of money in them, and that the General Assembly must fix a lower rate to promote sales. Benjamin Franklin, the president of the Supreme Executive Council, under date of February 23, 1787, addressed a letter to that body in which he says, ' We are convinced that it will be of advantage to the State to lower the price of land within the late Indian purchase ; only eight warrants have been taken out for lands these six months passed.' * The Legislature accordingly passed an act, October 3, 1788, to reduce the price from the rate of £30 per hundred acres to £20. This rate was to be charged after March 1, 1789, and was a reduction from the old rate of eighty cents an acre to fifty-three and one-third cents an acre. This rate continued until April 3, 1792; but, contrary to expectations, did not have the effect of increasing sales, and, therefore, brought little or no change in the business of the office. By another act, passed April 3, 1792, the price was again reduced. The rate fixed by this act was £5, or $13.33/^, for each hun- dred acres, and at this rate sales almost astonishing in extent were made, and the years 1792-93-94 proved to be noted and important years for disposing of unappropriated lands. The low price at which lands could now be bought, and the alluring prospect of a large increase in their value, undoubtedly induced many large purchasers to enter their applications. The applications received at the land-office were for a large number of tracts, and in the course of the years named more than five thousand warrants of nine hundred and one thousand acres each, covering almost five million acres, were granted for lands north and west of the purchase line of 1768, and east of the Allegheny River. These were all numbered in consecutive order, as required by the act of April, 1785, and were sent to the deputy-surveyors of the six districts to be executed. They were issued in the names of a comparatively small number * Colonial Records, vol. xv. p. 167. 65 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA of persons, but the holdings, as a rule, were very large. While it would be tedious to give the names of all the holders of these warrants, generally called ' late purchase warrants,' it may not prove uninteresting to mention a few of those whose purchases were more than usually large, if only to show that a spirit of speculation may have existed in those days, even as it does at the present time. The first to be mentioned will be the warrants issued in the names of Wilhelm Willink, Nicholas Van Staphorst, Christian Van Eeghan, Pieter Stadnitski, Hendrick Vollenhoven, and Ruter Jan Schimmelpenninck. These gentlemen were merchants of the city of Amsterdam, Holland. In the land history of Pennsylvania they are known as the ' Holland Land Company,' and through agents they invested a large amount of money in land in the purchase of 1784. The warrant registers show that in the three years, 1792- 93-94, they paid for and received eleven hundred and five warrants of nine hundred acres each, aggregating nine hundred and ninety-five thousand four hundred acres of land lying east of the Allegheny River. These warrants were divided among the deputy-surveyors of the six districts. James Wilson was another large owner of warrants, the number held by him being five hun- dred and ten, of nine hundred acres each, making four hundred and fifty-one thousand acres. Herman Le Roy and Jan Lincklean, A. Z., also of Amster- dam, three hundred and three warrants of nine hundred acres each, making two hundred and seventy-two thousand seven hundred acres. John Nicholson, three hundred warrants of one thousand acres each, making three hundred thousand acres. Thomas M. Willing, three hundred and eleven warrants of one thousand acres each, making three hundred and eleven thousand acres. George Meade, three hundred and six warrants of one thousand acres each, making three hundred and six thousand acres. Robert Gilmore, two hundred warrants of one thousand acres each, making two hundred thousand acres. Samuel Wallis, one hundred warrants of one thousand acres each, making one hundred thousand acres. William Bingham, one hundred and twenty-five warrants of one thousand acres each, making one hundred and twenty-five thousand acres. Robert Morris, one hundred and eighty-five warrants, one hundred and forty-one of one thousand acres each, and forty-four of five hun- dred acres each, making one hundred and sixty-three thousand acres. The magnitude of the purchases made by a few individuals is here clearly indi- cated. There were, however, other large purchasers, such as Robert Black- well, John Olden, Charles Willing, Philip Nicklin and Robert Griffith, James Strawbridge, Jeremiah Parker, and others whose names we are obliged to omit. The surveys generally were carefully and correctly made, and, consid- ering the extent of territory covered by them, and the large interests involved, no great amount of litigation from conflicting locations afterwards grew out of defective or careless work by the surveyor, as was too often the case with surveys made in other sections of the State. In 1817 the price of the lands was again changed to twenty-six and two-thirds cents an acre, to correspond 66 O II I o 5S K;£ In 1 - •■■v.:. < .■ ■ !■ •;,, . ■ W "" inn j* N_ . . " I ■ ", It : - B * & 5"* MTV £ ^ I '■ I : fys " & !5?SBi !T§n it HI HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA with the price in the older purchases. At the same time warrants were made descriptive, and have since been carried in the warrant registers by counties. The surveys made on the numbered warrants did not appropriate all the land within the limits to which they were restricted, and since then many warrants have been granted in all the counties erected from the territory that in 1785 was made to form a part of the county of Northumberland. " LANDS NORTH AND EAST OF THE OHIO AND ALLEGHENY RIVERS AND CONE- WANGO CREEK " After the surveys of the tracts to be sold for the redemption of depre- ciation certificates and the donation lots to be given to the soldiers of the Pennsylvania Line had been made, there remained in this part of the purchase a large surplus of lands to be otherwise appropriated. The Legislature, on the 3d of April, 1792, passed an act for the sale of these lands, entitled 'An act for the sale of vacant lands within this Commonwealth.' This act differs from all previous laws for disposing of the public lands, by providing that they should only be offered for sale to such persons as would ' cultivate, improve, and settle the same, or cause the same to be cultivated, improved, and settled.' The price fixed was £7 iar. in Pennsylvania currency, for every hundred acres, or in other words, twenty cents an acre, and the warrants were limited to four hundred acres each. The surveyor-general was authorized to divide the territory offered for sale into proper and convenient districts and appoint deputy-surveyors, who were to give the customary bond for the faith- ful performance of their duties. They were to execute warrants according to their priority, but ' not to survey any tract actually settled and improved prior to the date of the entry of such warrant with the deputy, except to the owner of such settlement and improvement.' The territory was divided into eleven districts, and a deputy-surveyor appointed for each ; Thomas Reese for dis- trict No. 1, William Powers for No. 2, Benjamin Stokely for No. 3, Thomas Stokely for No. 4, John Moore for No. 5, Samuel Nicholson for No. 6, John McCool for No. 7, Stephen Gapen for No. 8, Jonathan and Daniel Leet for Nos. 9 and 10, John Hoge for No. 11. " By Section 8 of the act, on application being made to the deputy- surveyor of the proper district by any person who had made an actual settle- ment and improvement, that officer, on being paid the legal fees, was required to survey the lines of the tract, not exceeding four hundred acres, to which such person may have become entitled by virtue of his settlement. Many such surveys were returned to the land-office and constituted pre-emptions to per- sons for whom they were made. Some of the tracts thus returned still remain unpaid, as a glance at the land lien docket of the land-office will show. By Section 9, no warrant or survey made in pursuance of the act was to vest title to the lands unless the grantee had, ' prior to the date of such warrant made, or caused to be made, or should within the space of two vears next after 69 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA the date of the same, make, or cause to be made, an actual settlement thereon, by clearing, fencing, and cultivating at least two acres for every hundred acres contained in one survey, erecting thereon a messuage for the habitation of man, and residing or causing a family to reside thereon, for the space of five years next following his first settling of the same, if he or she shall so long live.' In default of such actual settlement and residence the right was forfeited, and new warrants, reciting the original warrants and the lack of compliance with the requirements of the act, could be granted to other actual settlers. It was provided, however, ' that if any actual settler or any grantee in any such original or succeeding warrant, shall by force of arms of the enemies of the United States, be prevented from making such actual settle- ment, or be driven therefrom and shall persist in his endeavors to make such actual settlement as aforesaid, then, in either case, he and his heirs shall be entitled to have and to hold the said lands in the same manner as if the actual settlement had been made and continued.' Under the provisions of this act many surveys, as already stated, were returned for actual settlers, and many warrants were taken out immediately after its passage. The warrants were for four hundred acres each, and immense numbers of them in fictitious names, in which great families of Inks, Pirns, etc., appear, were taken out by a few individuals. For instance, the Holland Land Company, previously mentioned, again appears in the territory west of the Allegheny. That company alone took out eleven hundred and sixty-two warrants representing four hundred and sixty-four thousand eight hundred acres of land, and making the entire purchases of the company from the State amount to more than one million five hundred thousand acres. John Nicholson was another purchaser who held a large number of these warrants. To the ' Pennsylvania Population Company' he assigned one hundred thousand acres lying principally in the present County of Erie, and proposed to assign two hundred and fifty thousand acres lying along Beaver Creek and the western line of the State to another of his land schemes called the ' North American Land Company.' The warrants all contained the actual settlement clause, but not any of the large owners of war- rants made the slightest pretence of complying with it. Owing to the disturbed condition of the western border at the time it was impossible to do so. A state of war existed with the western Indians. The United States forces had met with serious reverses in the defeat of Harmer and St. Clair in 1791, and it was not until after Wayne's treaty, in December, 1795, gave peace and safety to the borders that settlers with their families could enter upon those lands free from the fear and danger of Indian incursions. " But with the settling of the Indian disorders and the return of peace, there soon came other troubles, with expensive and vexatious litigation, to annoy and harass settlers and warrantees by the uncertainty that was cast upon their titles. This uncertainty grew out of differences of opinion in re- lation to the construction the two years' clause of the law requiring actual 70 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA settlement, after the termination of the Indian hostilities that had prevented such settlement from being made, should receive. The opposite views held by those interested in titles are clearly stated in Sergeant's ' Land Laws,' page 98 : ' On one side it was contended that the conditions of actual settlement and residence, required by the act, was dispensed with, on account of the prevention for two years after the date of the warrant * by Indian hostilities ; and that the warrant-holder was not bound to do anything further, but was entitled to a patent. On the other side it was insisted that the right under the warrant was forfeited, at the expiration of two years, without a settlement, and that actual settlers might then enter on such tracts and hold them by making a settlement. On this and other constructions, numbers of persons entered on the lands of warrantees and claimed to hold under the act, as settlers, after a forfeiture.' The authorities of the State at the time — 1796 to 1800 — held to the first opinion, and by the advice of Attorney-General Ingersoll, the Board of Property devised what was called a ' prevention certificate,' which set forth the fact of the inability of the warrantee or settler to make the required settlement. This certificate was to be signed by two justices, and on its presentation, properly signed, the land officers freely granted a patent for the land described. Under prevention certificates of this kind many patents were granted. The Holland Land Company received more than one thousand, and John Field, William Crammond, and James Gibson, in trust for the use of the Pennsylvania Population Company, more than eight hundred. These patents all contained a recital of the prevention certificate, as follows : 'And also in consideration of it having been made to appear to the Board of Property that the said (name of warrantee) was by force of arms of the enemies of the United States prevented from making settlement as is required by the ninth section (act of April 3, 1792), and the assignees of the said (warrantee) had persisted in their endeavors to make such settle- ment,' etc. With a change of administration in October, 1799, there followed a change of policy. The new authorities did not regard the policy and pro- ceedings of the former Board of Property binding, and the further issuing of patents on prevention certificates was refused. In the mean time, the contentions between the owners of warrants and settlers were carried into the courts, where a like difference of opinion in regard to the rights of the contending parties under the act of 1792 soon manifested itself, the judges disagreeing as widely in their construction of the ninth section as the parties in interest. It was only after years of exciting and troublesome litigation, and the enactment of a number of laws by the Legislature of the State to facilitate an adjustment of the contentions, that titles became settled and owners felt secure in their possessions. It may be said that while the judges of the courts often differed in their opinions on the points at issue, the litiga- * Nearly all of these warrants were granted in 1792-93. 7i HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA tion ended generally in favor of the holders of the warrants. The Holland Land Company, being composed of foreigners, could appeal to the courts of the United States. In one case carried to the Supreme Court, the company was actually absolved from making the settlement prescribed by the ninth section, Chief Justice Marshall holding that a warrant for a tract of land under the Act of 1792 ' to a person who, by force of arms of the enemies of the United States, was prevented from settling and improving the said land, and from residing thereon from the date of the warrant until the 1st of January, 1796, but who, during the said period, persisted in his endeavors to make such settlement and residence, vests in such grantee a fee-simple in said land.' * That the uncertainty in regard to land titles during these years did much to retard the growth and prosperity of this northwestern section of the State cannot be doubted ; but, under the influence of better conditions, brought about by the adjustment of land rights and the allaying of local strife, it after- wards made marvellous strides forward in the march of progress and im- provement. " The dispositions made of the unsold depreciation and the undrawn donation lots in this part of the purchase were fully treated of in former papers, and, therefore, need no further notice. It may not, however, be amiss to say a word in relation to the purchase of the Erie triangle, an acquisition that was of vast importance to Pennsylvania by reason of the outlet of Lake Erie. The triangle was claimed by the States of New York and Massachu- setts, but was ceded by both States, in the years 1781 and 1785, to the United States. The Pennsylvania authorities, anticipating its possession, had, through a treaty made at Fort Mcintosh by General St. Clair, Colonel Harmer, and others, secured a deed from the Indians by which their claim of title was extinguished. This deed, signed by the chiefs of the Six Nations, is dated January 9, 1789, and the consideration paid was two thousand dollars. It was then, by a deed dated March 3, 1792, ceded by the United States to Pennsylvania. This deed is signed by George Washington, President, and Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State. In 1790, Andrew Ellicott made a survey of the triangle and found it to contain two hundred and two thou- sand two hundred and eighty-seven acres, and the purchase-money paid to the United States, at the rate of seventy-five cents an acre, amounted to $151,640.25. This purchase having been completed before the passage of the act of April 3, 1792, the lands within it, except the reservations, were sold under the provisions of that act. Before the completion of the purchase, John Nicholson had made application for the entire tract, and probably held a larger number of warrants for lands within its boundaries than any other individual. * Smith's Laws, vol. ii. p. 228. 72 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " THE RESERVATIONS NORTH AND WEST OF THE OHIO AND ALLEGHENY RIVERS AND CONEWANGO CREEK " In the act of March 12, 1783, setting apart the depreciation lands, two reservations for the use of the State were made, — one of ' three thousand acres, in an oblong of not less than one mile in depth from the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers, and extending up and down the said rivers, from opposite Fort Pitt, so far as may be necessary to include the same ;' and the other ' three thousand acres on the Ohio, and on both sides of Beaver Creek, including Fort Mcintosh.' There was also reserved on Lake Erie for the use of the State the peninsula of Presque Isle, a tract extending eight miles along the shores of the lake and three miles in breadth, and another tract of two thousand acres on the lake at the mouth of Harbor Creek ; and also tracts at the mouth of French Creek, at Fort Le Bceuf, and at the mouth of Conewango Creek. For the purpose of raising an additional sum by the sale of town lots to be used in paying the debts of the State, the President of the Supreme Executive Council was authorized by an act passed the nth day of September, 1787, to cause a town to be laid out on the reservation opposite Fort Pitt. The tract, except three hundred and twelve acres within its boundaries, was accordingly sur- veyed into town and out lots and sold at public auction. The regular lots of the town, as laid down in the survey, were in dimensions sixty by two hundred and forty feet, while the out lots contained from five to ten acres. The part containing three hundred and twelve acres, not included in the plan of the town, was patented to James O'Hara on the 5th day of May, 1789. This town has grown into the large and flourishing city of Allegheny. By another act, passed September 28, 1791, the governor was given power to authorize the surveyor-general to cause a part of the reservation at the mouth of Beaver Creek to be laid out in town lots, ' on or near the ground where the old French town stood,' in such manner as commissioners, to be appointed by the governor, should direct. By this act two hundred acres were to be surveyed into town lots, and one thousand acres, adjoining on the upper side, into out lots to contain not less than five acres, nor more than ten acres. Daniel Leet, a deputy-surveyor, who had previously surveyed district No. 2, of the depre- ciation lands and one of the donation districts, was employed to lay out these town and out lots, and his survey of the town and out lots was confirmed by an act passed in March, 1793. The same act directed the governor to proceed to make sale of the lots and grant conveyances for them, in the manner pre- scribed by the act authorizing the laying out of the town. The town was called Beavertown, and when the county of Beaver was erected in 1800 was made the county seat. The act erecting the county appropriated five hundred acres of the reservation for the use of such school or academy as might there- after be established in the town. The town then called Beaver was incor- porated into a borough in 1802, and the boroughs of Rochester and Bridge- water, on opposite sides of the creek, also occupy parts of this reservation. 73 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " The towns of Erie, Franklin, Waterford, and Warren were established by an act passed on the iSth day of April, 1795. Of the large reservation on Lake Erie, at Presque Isle, the governor was authorized to appoint two com- missioners to survey sixteen hundred acres for town lots and three thousand four hundred, adjoining thereto, for out lots, with such streets, alleys, lanes, and reservations for public uses as the commissioners should direct. The town lots were to contain not more than one-third of an acre,* the out lots not more than five acres, the reservations for public uses not to exceed twenty acres, and the town was to be called Erie. After the survey of the town, made by General William Irvine and Andrew Ellicott, was filed in the office of the secretary of the Commonwealth, the governor was directed to sell at public auction one-third of the town lots and one-third of the out lots to the highest bidders, and grant patents to the purchasers upon the condition that within two years they respectively should ' build a house, at least sixteen feet square, and containing at least one brick or stone chimney,' on each lot purchased, the patent not to be issued until after the expiration of two years, and then only on proof that the condition of the sale had been complied with. In addition to the surveys of the town and out lots, the act provided that three lots — one of sixty acres on the southern side of the harbor, another of thirty on the peninsula, and a third of one hundred acres, also on the peninsula, — should be surveyed for the ' use of the United States in erecting and maintaining forts, magazines, and dock-yards thereon.' Of the tract at the mouth of French Creek, three hundred acres for town lots and seven hundred acres for out lots were to be surveyed for the town of Franklin; and of the tract at the mouth of Conewango Creek, three hundred acres for town lots and seven hundred acres for out lots were to be surveyed for the town of Warren. At the time the act providing for the laying out of these towns became a law a settlement had been made at Fort Le Bceuf. Andrew Ellicott had surveyed and laid out a town, and his draft of the town was accepted and confirmed by the Legislature. It was provided, however, that in addition to the town lots of Ellicott's survey, five hundred acres should be surveyed for out lots, and that the town should be called Waterford. The size of the town and out lots for Franklin and Warren, the out lots for Waterford, and the provisions for streets, lanes, alleys, and reservations for public use, — the reservations reduced to ten acres, — were the same as for the town of Erie, as were also the regula- tions for the sale of the lots. At Waterford a number of settlers who had built houses were given a right of pre-emption to the lots on which they settled. A subsequent act passed April ri, t^oo. provided that surveys should be made of the reserved tracts adjoining Erie. Franklin. Warren, and Water- ford, not laid out in town or out lots, into lots not to exceed one hundred and * The regular town lots of Erie as laid down in the map of the town are eig two feet six inches front and one hundred and sixty-five feet in depth. HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA fifty acres in each, to be sold by commissioners, one of whom was to reside in each town. The tracts were to be graded in quality, and no sale was to be made at less than four dollars an acre for land of the first quality, three dollars for the second quality, and two dollars for the third quality; and purchasers, before title could vest in them, were required within three years from the date of their purchases to make an actual settlement on the land ' by clearing, fencing, and cultivating at least two acres for every fifty contained in one survey, and erect on each lot or tract a messuage for the habitation of man and reside thereon for the space of five years following their first settlement of the same.' The same act required five hundred acres in each of the reserved tracts to be surveyed for the use of schools or academies, and provision was made for the appraisement of the residue of the town and out lots, and for their sale by the commissioner residing in the town. It was also provided in this act that the reserved lot in the town of Erie, at the mouth of Cascade Creek, was to be sold at public sale, on consideration of settlement and improvement, provided it brought fifty dollars an acre. By an act passed February 19, 1800, the clause of the act that required settlement and improve- ment of lots was repealed. The other reservation of two thousand acres in the Erie triangle, at the mouth of Harbor Creek, was donated by an act of the Legislature to General William Irvine to indemnify him for the loss of Montour's Island (now called Neville Island), in the Ohio River below the city of Pittsburg. General Irvine held the island under a Pennsylvania patent, but was divested of his title by a judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States in an ejectment suit brought against him by a party who claimed owner- ship under a Virginia right, which, under the agreement between Pennsylva- nia and Virginia for settling the southwestern boundary dispute, was held by the court to be good." INDIAN TREATIES AT FORTS STANWIX (ROME, N. Y. ) AND M'lNTOSH For a full history of the proceedings of the treaties held at Forts Stanwix and Mcintosh, between the commissioners of the Commonwealth of Penn- sylvania and the deputies of the Six Nations and the Wyandott and Delaware Indians, claiming the unpurchased territory within the acknowledged limits of the northwest of Pennsylvania, see McKnight's " Pioneer Historv of Jef- ferson County, Pennsylvania." ^-^ CHAPTER V TITLES AND SURVEYS PIONEER SURVEYS AND SURVEYORS DISTRICT LINES LAWS, REFERENCES, AND REPORTS STREAMS AND HIGHWAY'S DONATION LANDS " In 1670 Admiral Sir William Perm, an officer in the English navy, died. The government owed this officer sixteen hundred pounds, and William Penn, Jr., fell heir to this claim. King Charles II. liquidated this debt by granting to William Penn, Jr., ' a tract of land in America, lying north of Maryland and west of the Delaware River, extending as far west as plantable.' King Charles signed this deed March 4, 1671. William Penn, Jr., was then proprietor, with power to form a government. Penn named the grant Penn- sylvania, in honor of his father. In 1682 Penn published his form of govern- ment and laws. After making several treaties and visiting the Indians in the interior as far as Conestoga, Penn sailed for England, June 12, 1684, and remained away till December 1, 1699. On his return he labored to introduce reforms in the provincial government, but failed. He negotiated a new treaty of peace with the Susquehanna Indians and also with the Five Nations. In the spring of 1701 he made a second journey into the interior, going as far as the Susquehanna and Swatara. Business complications having arisen, Penn sailed for England in the fall, and arrived there the middle of December, 1701. Owing to straitened financial circumstances, he entered into an agreement with Queen Anne, in 171 2, to cede to her the province of Pennsylvania and the Lower Counties for the sum of twelve thousand pounds sterling; but before the legal papers were completed he was stricken with paralysis, and died July 30, 1718, aged seventy-four. While Penn accomplished much, he also suffered much. He was persecuted for his religion, imprisoned for debt, and tried for treason. After his death it was found that, owing to the com- plication of his affairs and the peculiar construction of his will, a suit in chancery to establish his legal heirship was necessary. Several years elapsed before the question was decided, when the Proprietarvship of the province descended to John, Richard, and Thomas Penn. John died in 1746 and Richard in 1771, when John, Richard's son, and Thomas became sole Pro- prietaries. But the Revolution and the Declaration of Independence soon caused a radical change in the provincial government. - ' — Meginnis. During the Revolution the Penn family were Tories, adherents of Eng- land, and on the 27th of November, 1779, the Legislature of Pennsylvania confiscated all their property except certain manors, etc.. of which surveys "6 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA and returns had been made prior to the 4th of July, 1776. The Penns were granted as a compensation for these confiscations one hundred and thirty thousand pounds sterling. This ended the rule of the Penns in America. The treaty of peace between England and what is now the United States was ratified by Congress in January, 1784. All foreign domination or rule in the colonies then ceased, but internal troubles with the savages still continued in this State in the north and northwest. " The Indians were jealous of their rights, and restive under any real or fancied encroachments that might be made upon them, and it required the exercise of great care, caution, and prudence on the part of the authorities to avert trouble on the northern and western boundaries of the State ; and this they did not always succeed in doing, as many adventurous spirits, pushing far out into the unsettled wilderness, discovered to their sorrow. Fortunately, however, by the treaty of October, 1784, with the Six Nations at Fort Stanwix, and that of January, 1785, with the Wyandots and Delawares at Fort Mcin- tosh, the Indian title was extinguished to all the remaining territory within the then acknowledged limits of the State which had been previously pur- chased. The boundaries of that great northwestern section of the State cov- ered by this purchase may be briefly described as follows: Beginning on the east branch of the Susquehanna River where it crosses the northern boundary of the State in Bradford County ; thence down the east branch to the mouth of Towanda Creek ; thence up Towanda Creek to its head-waters ; thence by a straight line west to the head-waters of Pine Creek ; thence down Pine Creek to the west branch of the Susquehanna ; thence up the west branch to Cherry Tree in Clearfield County ; thence by a straight line to Kittanning, on the Allegheny River, in Armstrong County ; thence down the Allegheny River to the Ohio River ; thence down the Ohio River to where it crosses the western boundary to Lake Erie; and thence east along the northern boundary of the State to the beginning. And within this territory at the present day we find the counties of Tioga, Potter, McKean, Warren, Crawford, Venango, Forest, Clarion, Elk, Jefferson, Cameron, Butler, Lawrence, and Mercer, and parts of the counties of Bradford, Clinton, Clearfield, Indiana, Armstrong, Alle- gheny, Beaver, and Erie." — Annual Report of Internal Affairs. The Indians received for this territory ten thousand dollars in cash. Our wilderness was then in Northumberland County. " All land within the late (1784) purchase from the Indians, not heretofore assigned to any other par- ticular county, shall be taken and deemed to be within the limits of Northum- berland County and Westmoreland County. And that from Kittanning up the Allegheny to the mouth of Conewango Creek, and from thence up said creek to the northern line of this State, shall be the line between Northum- berland County."— S>nith's Lazes, vol. ii. p. 325. "Under the Proprietary government which ended November 27, 1779. land was disposed to whom, on what terms, in such quantities, and such loca- 77 uisroKY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA lions .is the proprietor or his agents saw proper, Hie unoccupied lands were never put in the market, nor their sale regulated by law. Every effort made bj the Assembly to secure uniformity in the sale and price of land was resisted in the proprietor as an infringement upon his manorial rights. After the Commonwealth became vested with the proprietary interests, a law was passed April o, t-St. tor establishing the land-office, tor the purpose of enabling- those persons to whom grants had been made to perfect their titles. Jul) i. i~S.j. an act was passed opening the land office tor the sale of vacant lands in the purchase of 176S. The price was fixed at £lO per one hundred acres, or thirty- three and one third cents per acre, in addition to the warrant survey and patent tees, and the quantity in eaeh warrant limited to four hundred acres and the six per cent, allow anee. The purchase of 1784 having been com- pleted and confirmed by the treat) at Fort Mcintosh, January, 1785, the land- office was opened for the sale of lauds in the new purchase December 21, iJrSs, at which the price was fixed at £30 per one hundred acres, and warrants were allowed to contain one thousand acres, with ten per cent, overplus, besides the usual allowance." This is the reason why so many old warrants contained eleven hundred acres, with six per cent., or sixty acres more. " Nevertheless, the • .. the land was plaeed so high that but few speculators ventured to invest in the hilly and heavily timbered lauds of Northern Pennsylvania. Under the pressure of certain land-jobbers, who were holding- important offices ( ) in the Commonwealth, like John Nicholson, Robert Morris, and William Bingham, an act was passevl April 3, 179a, in which the priee of vacant lauds was reduced to fifty shillings per one hundred acres, or six and two thirds cents per acre. Speculation rati wild. Applications for warrants red into the office by tens of thousands. The law. while it appeared to favor persons of small means, and prevent the wealthy from acquiring large portions of the public domain, was so drawn that by means of fictitious - and poll deeds- — that is. mere assignments of the application without the formalities of acknowledgment — any party could possess himself of an unlimited quantity of the unappropriated lauds. Within a year or two nearly all the lands in the county (then Northumberland"* had been . or. \ chc son, Morris, Bingham, James P. 1 e Roy, Henry Drinker, John \ aughan, Pickering, and Hodgdon being the principal holders."- ( s His- 40, 41. " When, in the pursuance of this policy which had Kxnt adopted b> Wil- liam Penn, 1 es with and by purchases of the Indians, they finally became divested of their original title to all the lands in Pennsylvania : then. under what was called ' The 1 ate Purchase, 1 which covered all of this section country and included i: V \ land County, in the yew tySs certain warrants, called c Lotter\ Warrants,' were -ss-ed bj governmental authority to persons who would pa> twenty pounds per hundred acres, authorising th< to enter upon the la-.-. 5 j ce s< actions where the\ pleased. This was •> HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA done tn some extent, and on those warrants surveys were made; but, as there was iKi road by which emigrants could come into the country, no settlements could be made except where the sturdy pioneer could push his canoe, ig noring, or overcoming all the privations and difficulties incident to a pioneer life in such a wilderness." PIONEER SURVEYS \\ ith a desire to give a complete history of the pioneer surveys of the northwest, I addressed a letter to Hon, I. II. Brown, Deputy Secretary of Internal Affairs, asking for all the information possessed by the State. I herewith submit his reply, — viz.: " Department of Internal Affairs. " HARRISBURG, Pa., March 7, 1895. " Mr. W. J. McKnigiit, Brookville, Pa. " Dear Sik, — In answer to your letter of the 5th instant, we beg to say that prior to the opening of the land-office in May, 1785, for the sale of lands within the purchase of 1784, that part of the purchase lying east of the Alle- gheny River and Conewango Creek was divided into eighteen districts, and a deputy-surveyor appointed for each. These districts were numbered consecu- tively, beginning with No. 1, on the Allegheny River, and running eastward. The southern line of district No. 1 began on the old purchase line of 1768 at KiUanning, and following that line in successive order were districts Nos. 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, the latter terminating at the marked cherry-tree on the hank of the west branch of the Susquehanna River at Canoe Place. From that point the district line between the sixth and seventh districts, as then con- stituted, is supposed to he the line that divides the present counties of Indiana and Jefferson from the county of Clearfield as far north as Sandy Lick Creek. " An old draft and report, found among the records of this department, show that Robert Galbraith, one of the early surveyors of Bedford County, ran the purchase line of 1768 from the cherry-tree to Kittanning for the pur- pose of marking it and ascertaining also the extent of the several survey districts north of the line and between the two points. This draft and accom- panying report are without date, but the survey was presumably made during the summer of 1786. A reference to the appointment of Mr. Galbraith by the surveyor-general to perform this work, and the confirmation of the appoint- ment by the Supreme Executive Council on the 8th of April, 178(1, appear in the ' Colonial Records,' vol. xv. pp. 3 and 4. In the same volume, p. 85, is found the record of an order in favor of Galbraith for forty-five pounds, twelve shillings, to be in full for his services in running and marking the line and ' laying off the districts of the deputy-surveyors. He says in his report, ' I began at the marked cherry-tree and measured along the purchase line seven miles and forty perches for James Potter's district, thence fifty-four perches to the line run by James Johnston for the east line of his district; from the post marked for James Potter's district seven miles and forty perches 79 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA to a post marked for James Johnston's district, thence fifty-two perches to the line run by James Hamilton for the east line of his district ; from Johnston's post seven miles and forty perches to the post marked for James Hamilton's district, thence fifty-two perches to the line run by George Wood, Jr., for the east line of his district ; from the post marked for Hamilton's district six miles and one hundred and fifty-two perches to the line run by Thomas B. McClean for the east line of his district, thence two hundred and eight perches to the post marked for George Wood, Jr.'s, district, thence six miles and one hundred and fifty perches to the line run by John Buchanan for the east line of his district, thence two hundred and ten perches to the post marked for Thomas Brown McClean's district, thence two miles and one hundred and twcntv perches to the Allegheny River for John Buchanan's district.' " With the exception of the first, these districts each extended seven miles and forty perches along the purchase line, with the division lines between diem running north to the line of New York. Undoubtedly the fourth, fifth, and sixth districts, of which James Hamilton. James Johnston, and General James Potter were respectively the deputy-surveyors, must have embraced, if not all. at least much the larger part of the territory that subsequently became the county of Jefferson, while the earliest surveys were made within that territory during the summer of 1785 by the surveyors named. It is possible, however, that part of the third district, of which George Wood, Jr., was the deputy-surveyor, may have been within these limits, and if so, surveys were no doubt also made by him. These first surveys were principally made and returned on the first warrants granted within the purchase, commonly known as the lottery warrants, and many of them in the name of Timothy Pickering and Gompany were located on lands that are now within Jefferson County. " General James Potter died in the year 1789. and was succeeded by his son. James Potter, who was appointed in 1790. One of the reasons given for the appointment of James Potter, second, was that he had filled the position of an assistant to his father, and had done so much of the actual work in the field, and was therefore so thoroughly conversant with the lines of surveys already run, that he would avoid the interferences another person might fall into, thus preventing future trouble arising from conflicting locations. It does not appear, however, that the second James Potter ever did any work in the district, as the deputies' lists of surveys on file in the land-office show no returns from him. " Soon after the year 1700 a change was made by the surveyor-general in the arrangement of the districts within the purchase of 17S4. by which the number was reduced to six. counting west from the mouth of Lycoming Creek to the Allegheny River. In this arrangement the two western districts. Nos. ; and 6. were assigned respectively to William P. Brady and Enion Williams. Williams was succeeded in 1704 by John Broadhead. Brady's district is 80 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA described as ' beginning at a cherry-tree of late General Potter's district, and from thence extending by district No. 4 due north to the northern boundary of Pennsylvania, thence by the same west fourteen miles, thence south to the line of purchase of 1768, late the southern boundary of James Johnston's and General Potter's districts, and by the same to the place of beginning.' " The sixth district comprised all the territory west of Brady's district to the Allegheny River and Conewango Creek. All of the present county of Jefferson must have been within these districts. The surveys made and re- turned by Brady, Williams, and Broadhead, for the Holland Company, John Nicholson, Robert Morris, and other large purchasers of lands, are so numer- ous as to practically cover all the lands left unsurveyed by their predecessors within that particular section of the State. A small part of the county, in the vicinity of Brockwayville, was in Richard Shearer's district, No. 7, east of General Potter's line, and a number of lottery warrants was surveyed by Shearer in that locality in 1785. That part of the county subsequently fell within district No. 4, of which James Hunter was the surveyor, who also returned a few surveys. " In what manner these pioneer surveyors in the wilderness were equipped, and what the outfit for their arduous and difficult labors may have been, we do not know and have no means of ascertaining. Doubtless they had many severe trials and endured many hardships in preparing the way for future settlements and advancing civilization, for which they receive little credit or remembrance at this day. Possibly their only equipment was the ordinary surveyor's compass and the old link chain of those days, but they nevertheless accomplished much work that remains valuable down to the present time. For their labor they were paid by fees fixed by law. The law of that day also provided a per diem wage of three shillings for chain-carriers, to be paid by the purchaser of the land. " Very truly yours, " Isaac B. Brown, " Secretary." You will see from the above that in 1785, Richard Shearer, with his chain-carriers and his axe-men, traversed what is now Brockwayville and the forest east of it ; that James Potter, with his chain-carriers and axe-men, traversed the forests near Temples, now Warsaw ; that James Johnston, with his chain-carriers and axe-men, traversed the forest where Brookville now is, and that James Hamilton, with his chain-carriers and axe-men, traversed the forest near or where Corsica now is. Each of these lines ran directlv north to the New York line. Where these lines ran was then all in Northumberland County. In 1794, James Hunter, with his chain-carriers and axe-men, was in what is now Brockwayville region, William P. Brady, with his chain- carriers and axe-men, was in what is now the Temple region, and Enion 6 81 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA Williams and John Broadhead, with chain-carriers and axe-men, were between where Brookville now is and the Clarion region. "By an act of the Legislature, passed April I, 1794, the sale of these lands was authorized. The second section of this law provides that all lands west of the Allegheny Mountains shall not be more than three pounds ten shillings for every hundred acres. " Section four provides that the quantity of land granted to one person shall not exceed four hundred acres. Section six provides for the survey and laying out of these lands by the surveyor-general or his deputies into tracts of not more than five hundred acres and not less than two hundred acres, to be sold at public auction at such times as the ' Supreme Executive Council may direct.' " When all claims had been paid, ' in specie or money of the State,' for patenting, surveying, etc., a title was granted to the purchaser. In case he was not ready or able to make full payment at the time of purchase, by paying all the fees appertaining thereto, he was allowed two years to complete the payment by paying lawful interest, and when the last payment was made a completed title was given. " By the act of April 8, 1785, the lands were sold by lottery, in portions not to exceed one thousand acres to each applicant. Tickets, commencing with number one, were put in a wheel, and the warrants, which were called ' Lottery Warrants,' issued on the said applications, were severally numbered according to the decision of the said lottery, and bore date from the day on which the drawing was finished. " Section seven of this act allowed persons holding these warrants to locate them upon any piece or portion of unappropriated lands. The land upon each warrant to be embraced in one tract, if possible. " On the 3d of April, 1792, the Legislature passed an act for the sale of these lands, which, in some respects, differed from the laws of 1784 and 1785- It offers land only to such persons as shall settle on them, and designates the kind and duration of settlement. " By section two of this act all lands lying north and west of the Ohio and Allegheny Rivers and Conewango Creek, except such portions as had been or should be appropriated to public or charitable uses, were offered to such as would ' cultivate, improve, and settle upon them, or cause it to be done, for the price of seven pounds ten shillings for every hundred acres, with an allowance of six per centum for roads and highways, to be located, surveyed, and secured to such purchasers, in the manner hereinafter men- tioned.' " Section three provided for the surveying and granting of warrants by the surveyor-general for any quantity of land within the said limits, to not exceed four hundred acres, to any person who settled upon and improved said land. 82 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " The act provided for the surveying and division of these lands. The warrants were, if possible, to contain all in one entire tract, and the form of the tract was to be as near, as circumstances would admit, to an oblong, whose length should not be greater than twice the breadth thereof. Xo warrants were to be issued in pursuance of this act until the purchase-money should have been paid to the receiver-general of the land-office. " The surveyor-general was obliged to make clear and fair entries of all warrants in a book to be provided for the purpose, and any applicant should be furnished with a certified copy of any warrant upon the payment of one- quarter of a dollar. " In this law the rights of the citizen were so well fenced about and so equitably defined that risk and hazard came only at his own. But contro- versies having arisen concerning this law between the judges of the State courts and those of the United States, which the Legislature, for a long time, tried in vain to settle, impeded for a time the settlement of the district. These controversies were not settled until 1805, by a decision of Chief Justice Mar- shall, of the Supreme Court of the United States. "At the close of the Revolutionary War several wealthy Hollanders, — Wilhelm Willink, Jan Linklaen, and others, — to whom the United States was indebted for money loaned in carrying on the war, preferring to invest the money in this country, purchased of Robert Morris, the great financier of the country at that time, an immense tract of land in the State of New York, and at the same time took up by warrant (under the law above cited) large tracts in the State of Pennsylvania, east of the Allegheny River. Judge Yeates, on one occasion, said, ' The Holland Land Company has paid to the State the consideration money of eleven hundred and sixty-two warrants and the sur- veying fees on one thousand and forty-eight tracts of land (generally four hundred acres each), besides making very considerable expenditures by their exertions, honorable to themselves and useful to the community, in order to effect settlements. Computing the sums advanced, the lost tracts, by prior improvements and interferences, and the quantity of one hundred acres granted to each individual for making an actual settlement on their lands, it is said that, averaging the whole, between two hundred and thirty and two hundred and forty dollars have been expended by the company on each tract' "An act was passed by the Legislature, March 31, 1823, authorizing Wilhelm Willink, and others of Holland to ' sell and convey any lands belong- ing to them in the Commonwealth.' " THE DONATION LANDS OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA The soldiers of the Pennsylvania Line who served in the War of the Revolution were by act of legislation entitled to the wild lands of the State, and a large part of the northwestern portion of the State north of the depreciation lands and west of the Alleghenv River was set apart and sur- S3" HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA veyed to the officers and soldiers who had served in the Continental army, in the Pennsylvania Line. A description of these lands, reference to the legis- lation authorizing their survey, and the explorations made in reference to their value, will be of interest to all those who are making a study of the origin of titles in Pennsylvania. As early as the 7th day of March, 1780, while the war of the American Revolution was still in active progress, and being vigorously waged by the hostile armies in the field, the General Assembly of Pennsylvania by resolution made a promise of " certain donations and quantities of land" to the soldiers of the State, known as the " Pennsylvania Line," then serving in the Federal army. It was provided that these lands should be " surveyed and divided off" at the end of the war, and allotted to those entitled to receive them according to their several ranks. In order to comply with the letter and intention of the resolution of March, 1780, by the same act passed by the General Assem- bly March 12, 1783, in which it was provided that certain lands should be set apart and sold for the purpose of redeeming the certificates of depreciation given to the soldiers of the Pennsylvania Line, under the act of December 18, 1780, it was also provided that " a certain tract of country, beginning at the mouth of Mogulbughtiton Creek ; * thence up the Allegheny River to the mouth of Cagnawaga Creek ; f thence due north to the northern boundary of the State ; thence west by said boundary, to the northwest corner of the State ; thence south, by the western boundary of the State, to the northwest corner of lands appropriated by this act for discharging the certificates % herein mentioned; and thence by the same lands east to the place of beginning; which said tract of country shall be reserved and set apart for the only and sole use of fulfilling and carrying into execution the said resolve." Under Section VI., of the same act, all rights, titles, or claims to land within the described bounds, whether obtained from the Indians, the late Pro- prietaries, or any other person or persons, were declared to be null and void, thus reserving the entire tract from sale or settlement until after the allot- ments of the soldiers were duly made and their claims fully satisfied. By Section VII., officers and privates were to be allowed two years after the declaration of peace in which to make their applications, and in case of death occurring to any one before his application was made, an additional year was allowed to the heirs, executors, or administrators of such person, and there- after unlocated tracts were to be disposed of upon such terms as the Legis- lature might direct. It may be said in passing, however, that the period for making applications was a number of times extended by subsequent legisla- tion. By the last section of the act, Section VIII., non-commissioned officers * Now known as Mahoning Creek, in Armstrong County, f Conewago Creek, in Warren County. X The depreciation certificates. THOS. REES JR. DISTRICT , Cession to the i'.S. by A'ew York "in 1781, Ulitj Mns. Its in /;-.".; awl bit tin: C..S. (>, Pa. in 17$2; bu Act o/Congrcs& in l?ks ildjo Pa. by the Indian^ hi ISWb ' _„SJ N. Y. SMOWIWj LUUA I ION Uh I Mt /~> ff ' DONATION LANDS jPgXXSYL^yiA HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA and privates were prohibited from Selling their shares of the land appro- priated to their use until after the same had been " actually surveyed and laid off," the act declaring such sales or conveyances absolutely null and void. In this last section of the act a distinction was made between the commissioned officers and the non-commissioned officers and privates, probably under an impression that the former were able to take better care of their interests than the latter. It will be observed that the territory thus set apart under the act of December 12, 1783, for donation purposes, comprises parts of the present counties of Lawrence, Butler, Armstrong, Venango, Forest, and Warren, all of the counties of Mercer and Crawford, and that portion of Erie which lies south of the triangle. The territory was then a wild and unbroken wilderness, and we can at this day, after a century of progress and civilization, truly regard this section of our great Commonwealth, now filled as it is with a prosperous and industrious population that has wrought wonders of advance- ment and improvement, as a splendid, a princely domain, devoted in our early history to a noble purpose. As a further reward for the services of the soldiers of the Pennsylvania Line, the next act of the General Assembly was one that exempted from taxation during lifetime the land which fell to the lot of each, unless the same was transferred or assigned to another person, and then follows soon after the purchase of 1784, the acts of March 24, 1785, which directed the mode by which the allowances of lands were to be distributed to the troops, and pro- viding that legal titles, vesting in them the right of ownership, be granted to them. The details of the plan of distribution provided in this act are particular and comprehensive. The surveyor-general was directed forthwith to appoint deputy-surveyors for the purpose of surveying the lots, who were to give bonds in the sum of eight hundred dollars each for the faithful performance of their duties, and to follow such instructions as they might from time to time receive from the surveyor-general and the Supreme Executive Council of the State. Another section describes the persons who should be entitled to land ; and Section V., in order to comply with a previous resolution of the General Assembly, included the names of Baron Steuben, who was to receive a grant equal to that of a major-general of the Pennsylvania Line, and Lieutenant- Colonel Tilghman, a grant equal to that of a lieutenant-colonel of the same line ; while by Section VI. other troops, raised under resolutions of February and December, 1780, were also declared to be entitled to lands according to their rank and pay respectively. Section X. enacted that the lots should be of four descriptions : the first to contain five hundred acres each, the second three hundred acres each, the third two hundred and fifty acres each, and the fourth two hundred acres each, with the allowance of six per cent. ; and before proceeding to perform their duties under the act the deputies were required to subscribe an oath or affirmation that in making their surveys they 85 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA would not choose out the best lands for the purpose of favoring any one of the four classes to the prejudice or injury of the others, or of the State. This section also provides for the proper marking of the lines, the numbering of the lots, and the transmission of field notes, drafts, and returns to the sur- veyor-general's office. Complete lists of all persons entitled to land under the act, with their rank and the quantity of land to be allotted to each, were to be furnished by the comptroller-general to the Supreme Executive Council in order that proper instructions, through the surveyor-general, might be given to surveyors in the field as to the number of lots to be surveyed and the quantities in which they were to be laid off ; and when a sufficient number of lots were surveyed and returned, a draft of the whole was to be made and deposited in the rolls-office as a public record to serve in lieu of recording the patents. The wisdom of the last provision may be considered extremely doubtful, as has since been demonstrated in the fact that there are many patents for donation lands in existence of which the patent books of the land-office do not contain a line, and no little trouble in tracing title to certain of these tracts has been experienced in consequence of that defect in the act. The patent books should have contained the enrolment of all. Section VIII. provides minute directions for the distribution of the lots to claimants by lottery. Tickets representing the four classes, carefully numbered and tied " with silken thread," were to be placed in four wheels " like unto lottery wheels," from which the applicants were required to draw for their respective allotments. When not in use for drawing, the wheels were to be sealed and kept in the custody of a committee of the members of the Supreme Executive Council, the same committee having the right to judge and determine the right of every applicant to receive a grant, allowing in cases of doubt or difficulty an appeal to the council, whose decision was to be final. By this section of the act it was further provided that a major-general should draw four tickets from the wheel containing the numbers on the five hundred acre lots ; a brigadier-general, three tickets from the same wheel ; a colonel, two tickets from the same wheel; a lieutenant-colonel, one ticket from the same wheel and one from the wheel containing the numbers on the three hundred acre lots; a surgeon, chaplain, or major, two tickets from the wheel containing the numbers on the three hundred acre lots ; a captain, one ticket from the wheel containing the numbers on the five hundred acre lots ; a lieutenant, two tickets from the wheel containing the numbers on the two hundred acre lots ; an ensign or regimental surgeon's mate, one ticket from the wheel containing the numbers on the three hundred acre lots; a sergeant, sergeant-major, or quartermaster-sergeant, one ticket from the wheel containing the numbers on the two hundred and fifty acre lots, and a drum-major, fife-major, drummer, fifer, corporal, or private, one ticket from the wheel containing the numbers on the two hundred acre lots. It will be seen that the allotment according to rank was therefore as follows: To a major-general, two thousand acres; a 86 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA brigadier-general, fifteen hundred acres ; a colonel, one thousand acres ; a lieutenant-colonel, eight hundred acres; a surgeon, chaplain, or major, six hundred acres ; a captain, five hundred acres ; a lieutenant, four hundred acres; an ensign or regimental surgeon's mate, three hundred acres; a sergeant, sergeant-major, or quartermaster-sergeant, two hundred and fifty acres; and a drum-major, fife-major, drummer or fifer, or private, two hundred acres. Another section provides for the issuing of patents, to be signed, sealed, and delivered by the president or vice-president of the Supreme Executive Council and prescribing a form for the same, the con- sideration being " services rendered by , in the late army of the United States." The only expense to which applicants were to be subjected was the fee for " surveying, drafting, and returning," including the cost of chain- bearers, markers, etc. The sum fixed was three pounds for a lot of five hundred acres, two pounds for a lot of three hundred acres, and one pound ten shillings for lots of two hundred and fifty and two hundred acres, to be paid by each applicant before he could be permitted to draw for his lot. There were other provisions of the act for the purpose of fully carrying into effect the in- tentions of the General Assembly in making the grant, especially in Sections XX. and XXL, which provided for the employment of an agent for the pur- pose of exploration to ascertain and note the quality of the land and the topo- graphic features of the country. This agent was particularly to note such parts of land as he might deem unfit for cultivation. Three days before the act of March 25, 1785, became a law a committee chosen by the officers of the Pennsylvania Line, who were no doubt acquainted with the provisions of the proposed law, and concerned for their own interests, united in a letter to the Supreme Executive Council, recommending the appointment of General William Irvine, the commanding officer at Fort Pitt, as agent to explore the lands. After calling attention to the provisions in the proposed law for the employment of such agent, they say, " We therefore pray that Council will be pleased to appoint William Irvine, Esq., to that office, if the bill passes in its present state, as he is a gentleman well acquainted with the land appropriated for that purpose, and who is, we humbly conceive, worthy your confidence, as well as that of your most humble servants." (Pennsylvania Archives, vol. x. p. 425.) The Supreme Executive Council acted so promptly upon the recommendation of the committee of officers, that two days after the bill became a law, General Irvine was appointed agent, and having on the same day, March 26, 1785, subscribed his oath of office, an order for ninety pounds was issued in his favor as part of his pay. On the same day he received his instructions, which appear in Volume X., page 427, Pennsylvania Archives. They read as follows: In Council, March 26, 1785. " Sir : By virtue of the authority vested in us by the act of assembly for directing the Mode of distributing the Donation Lands, promised to the 87 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA troops of this Commonwealth. We have appointed you Agent to perform the duties of this office, it will be necessary that with all possible Dispatch & accuracy, you explore the country to be laid off agreeably to Directions of that Act, noting the quality of the land in the several parts thereof, the hills, mountains, waters, creeks, marshes, uplands, bottom lands, &c, and such other occurrences as may deserve notice with their situation, & distance, but particularly the parts of the land which you may deem unfit for cultivation, &c. ; and from time to time transmitting us your remarks, notes, and descrip- tion of the Country." This letter is signed by John Dickinson, and addressed to " The Honor- able General William Irvine." General Irvine appears to have entered upon his duties of exploration, under the instructions given him, with little delay, and to have exercised good judgment, assiduity, and perseverance in pur- suing them. A report of his notes and observations was transmitted to President Dickinson, in a letter dated at Carlisle, August 17, 1785. These papers are replete with interest and are here reproduced as they appear in Volume XL, pages 513 to 520, Pennsylvania Archives. " Carlisle, August 17, 1785. " To His Excellency, John Dickinson, Esq. "Sir: You have herewith transmitted my description of the donation tract of country, together with a sketch. These will, I hope, prove satisfac- tory to your Excellency and the honorable the council, and answer the public purposes for which they are designed. " I observed in a former letter that few of the deputy-surveyors attended on my first going into the country, these agreed to postpone the business till September. On my return to Fort Pitt, after my tour, so late as July I found three of the gentlemen preparing to set out to survey. I did not consider it my duty to attend so small a number of them, as it would be spending the public money and my own time to little purpose, besides the law gives me no other control over them than to report to the Surveyor-General should they neglect or delay performing their duty. And I find sundry of them conceive they have not only a right, but are in some measure obliged to survey the land, good or bad, as each of them are instructed to survey a certain number of lots, for instance, two hundred and sixty of different descriptions and sizes, with- out any regard to water, bottom, upland, or any of the usual modes observed in laying of land. ' Several of the districts has not twenty lots of good land in them, yet the deputies are each instructed to survey upwards of two hun- dred and sixty, when, others contain perhaps double the quantity directed.' " Unless the Surveyor-General alters his instruction materially, or coun- cil, or the Assembly, take order in the premises, the whole end designed will be defeated as no man of common understanding will accept of pay for survey- ing such land. 88 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " I am of opinion there is more than sufficient of good land on the tract appropriated to answer the purpose, provided the western boundary line of the State strikes the west branch of Beaver Creek as high as is generally supposed. Mr. McLane is of opinion it will cross at least sixteen miles higher than where his line does. In this case I propose this alteration for the consideration of council, that the deputies be instructed to begin at the west line of the State and survey all the land on the several branches of Beaver within the tract, before any other is laid off, if this should not prove sufficient, then proceed to the forks and upper branches of Tunck and Oil Creeks for the remainder. This mode will, I conceive, be better for the troops as their settlement, or vicinity to others will be more compact, consequently the land more valuable and it will certainly be more advantageous to the State, as whatever lands of value may be along the river and upper end of the tract will be reserved unculled, to dispose of as may be judged most expedient; and notwithstand- ing the spots of good land are detached, yet some of them are of such excellent quality, and so well situated on account of water carriage, easy communication with Lake Erie, and so well calculated for stock-farms, that the State may be much benefited by reserving them for future disposal. " This mode will occasion an alteration, perhaps, with respect to the number of deputies, as fewer than the present number appointed would execute this mode best, and four or five would doubtless perform the business, provided they are allowed to employ assistants ; these four or five might have constant communication with each other, and act as it were superintendents over the assistants, by which they could determine when the number of lots of each class required is done. I know it may be urged, in opposition to this, that sundry of these gentlemen have already gone to considerable expense in equipping themselves for the business and that it will be hard to dismiss them under these circumstances. To this I answer that the private advantage of two or three men ought not to be put in competition with that of as many thousands, particularly where the interest of the State at large is concerned also. I farther answer that these men may be employed by the principals, and will venture to assert that some of them are scarce fit even for this subordinate station, as perhaps the first chain or compass they ever saw was purchased for this occasion. The number, however, that I have proposed may be found among the gentlemen who understand both theory and practice extremely well, and are men of approved integrity, and I believe the State will find their account in this or some such mode, if they even pay the trifling expense the gentlemen have been at. " I have the honor to be, " With the greatest respect, " Sir, Your Excellency's most " Obedient humble servant, " Wm. Irvine." 89 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " Notes taken and observations made (by) the Agents appointed to ex- plore the tract of country presented by the State to the late troops of the Penn- sylvania Line, of the American Army. " In exploring the donation land, I began on the Line run by Mr. Mc- Lane, between that and the tracts appropriated for redeeming depreciation certificates which he ascertained by a due North Line to be near thirty miles from Fort Pitt, and by the Common computation along the path leading from Fort Pitt to Venango on the mouth of French Creek, which some affirm was actually measured by the French when they possessed that country. I found it forty miles ; East of this path along Mr. McLane's Line for five or six miles, the land is pretty level, well watered with small springs, and of tolerable quality, but from thence to the Allegheny River which is about Twenty-five miles due East, there is no land worth mentioning fit for cultivation ; as far as French Creek all between the Venango Path and the Allegheny there is very little land fit for cultivation, as it is a continued chain of high barren mountains except small breaches for Creeks and Rivulets to desembogue themselves into the River. These have very small bottoms. " As I proceeded along the path leading to French Creek about five miles to a Branch of Beaver or rather in this place called Canaghqunese I found the land of a mixed quality, some very strong and broken with large quantities of fallen Chestnut, interspersed with strips covered with Hickory, lofty oak, and for under wood or Brush, Dogwood, Hazel, &c. ; along the Creek very fine rich and extensive bottoms in general fit for meadows ; from hence to another branch of said Creek called Flat Rock Creek, about ten miles distant, the land is generally thin, stony and broken, loaded, however, with Chestnut Timber, the greatest part of which lies flat on the earth, which renders it difficult travelling — at the usual crossing place on the last named Creek, there is a beautiful fall over a Rock ten or twelve feet high at the fording imme- diately above the fall, the bottom is one entire Rock, except some small per- forations which is capacious enough to receive a horse's foot and leg — it is here about forty yards wide and runs extremely rapid. From Flat Rock to Sandy Creek by Hutchins & Scull called, Lycomie, is about Twenty-four miles ; on the first twelve there are a considerable quantity of tolerable level land tho much broken with large stony flats, on which grows heavy burthens of Oak, Beech, and Maple, particularly seven or eight miles from the Creek there is a plain or savannah three or four miles long, and at least two wide, without any thing to obstruct the prospect, except here and there a small grove of lofty Oaks, or Sugar Tree, on the skirts the ground rises gradually to a moderate heighth from which many fine springs descend, which water this fine Tract abundantly — along these Rivulets small but fine spots of meadow may be made, from hence the remaining twelve miles to Sandy Creek is a ridge or mountain, which divides the waters of the Allegheny, the Beaver, and Ohio, and is from East to West at least three times as long as it is broad go HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA — on the whole of this there is little fit for cultivation, yet some of it is well calculated for raising stock. But a person must be possessed of very large Tracts to enable him to do even this to purpose. " From Sandy to French Creek is about seven or eight miles from the mouth, but it soon Forks into many small runs, and is but a few miles from the mouth to the source — there are two or three small bottoms only on this Creek — to French Creek is one entire hill, no part of which is by any means fit for cultivation. " On the lower side, at the mouth of French Creek, where the Fort called Venango formerly stood, there is three or four hundred acres of what is commonly called upland or dry bottom, very good land. On the North East side, about one mile from the mouth, another good bottom begins of four or five hundred acres, and on the summits of the hills on the same side tho high, there is a few hundred acres of land fit for cultivation — this is all in this neighborhood nearer than the first fork of the Creek; which is about eight miles distant. On the Road leading from French to Oil Creek, within about three miles and a half of Venango, there is a bottom of fine land on the Bank of the Allegheny, containing four or five hundred acres, there is little beside to Oil Creek fit for cultivation. " French Creek is one hundred and fifty yards wide. " From French to Oil Creek is about eight miles — this is not laid down in any map, notwithstanding it is a large stream not less than eighty, or perhaps a hundred yards wide at the mouth, a considerable depth, both of which it retains to the first fork, which is at least twenty miles up, and I am certain is as capable of rafting timber or navigating large boats on as French Creek in the same seasons this high. On the North East or upper side of this creek, at the mouth, is four or five hundred acres of good bottom, and about a mile up there is another small bottom on the South West side, which is all the good land to the first fork. " Oil Creek has taken its name from an oil or bituminous matter being found floating on the surface. Many cures are attributed to this oil by the natives, and lately by some whites, particularly Rheumatic pains and old ulcers ; it has hitherto been taken for granted that the water of the Creek was impregnated with it, as it was found in so many places, but I have found this to be an error, as I examined it carefully and found it issuing out of two places only — these two are about four hundred yards distant from (each) other, and on opposite sides of the Creek. It rises in the bed of the Creek at very low water, in a dry season I am told it is found without any mixture of water, and is pure oil ; it rises, when the creek is high, from the bottom in small globules, when these reach the surface they break and expand to a surprizing extent, and the flake varies in color as it expands ; at first it appears yellow and purple only, but as the rays of the sun reach it in more directions, the colors appear to multiply into a greater number than can at once be comprehended. 9i HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " From Oil Creek to Cuskakushing, an old Indian Town, is about seven- teen miles — the whole of this way is barren, high mountains, not fit for culti- vation ; the mountain presses so close on the River that it is almost impassable, and by no means practicable when the River is high, then travellers either on foot or horseback are obliged to ascend the mountain and proceed along the summit. '* At Cuskushing there is a narrow bottom about two miles long, good land and a very fine Island fifty or sixty acres, where the Indians formerly planted corn. From Cuskushing to another old Indian Town, also on the Bank of the River, is about six miles ; this place is called Canenacai or Hick- ory Bottom ; here is a few hundred acres of good land and some small Islands, from hence to a place named by the natives the Burying Ground, from a tradition they have that some extraordinarv man was burried there many hun- dred years ago, is about thirteen miles ; most of this way is also a barren and very high mountain, and you have to travel greatest part of the way in the Bed of the River. To Brokenstraw Creek, or Bockaloons, from the last named place is about fourteen miles, here the hills are not so high or barren, and there are sundry good bottoms along the River. About half way there is a hill called by the Indians Paint Hill, where they find very good red oker. Brokenstraw is thirty yards wide, there is a fine situation and good bottom near the mouth on both sides, but a little way up the creek large hills covered with pine make their appearance. From Brokenstraw to Canewago is eight or nine miles — here is a narrow bottom, interspersed with good dry land, and meadow ground all the way, and there is a remarkable fine tract at the mouth of Conewago, of a thousand or perhaps more acres, from the whole of which you command a view up and down the main branch of Allegheny, and also up Conewago a considerable distance. Conew r ago is one hundred and fifty yards wide, and is navigable for large boats up to the head of Jadaque Lake, which is upwards of fifty mile from its junction with the east branch of the River. The head of Jadaque Lake is said to be only twelve miles from Lake Erie, where it is also said the French formerly had a Fort, and a good Waggon Road from it to the Lake. Conewago forks about thirty miles from the mouth of the East Branch, is lost in a morass where the Indians frequently carried their canoes across into a large creek called the Cateraque, which empties into the Lake forty or fifty miles above Niagara. " This account of the branches of Conewago I hade from my guide, an Indian Chief of the Senecas, a native of the place, and an intelligent white man, who traversed all this country repeatedly. I have every reason to believe the facts are so — tho I do not know them actually to be so as I went only a small distance up this creek, being informed there is no land fit for cultivation to the first fork or to the lower end of Jadaque Lake, which begins seven miles up the West Branch, except what has already been mentioned at the mouth of the creek, the appearance of the country, in a view taken from the 92 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA summit of one of the high hills, fully justified this report, as nothing can be seen but one large chain of mountains towering above another — here, perhaps, it may not be amiss to insert the supposed distances in a collected view — and first from Fort Pitt to McLane's 40 To fourth branch of Canaghqunese 5 Rocky, or Flat Rock Creek 10 Sandy Creek 24 French Creek 8 Oil Creek 6 Cuskacushing 17 Cananacai 6 The Burying Ground 13 Brokenstraw 14 Conewagoo 9 152 Deduct from Fort Pitt to Mc'Lenes line between the depre- ciation and donation tracts 40 Leaves the donation land to be 112 Miles long. " For the same reason that I did not proceed far up Conawago, I re- turned the most direct Road to the burying ground — here three old Indian paths take off, one to Cayahaga, on Lake Erie, one to Cuskusky, on the West branch of Beaver Creek, and the third to a Salt Spring, higher up the same branch of Beaver — from hence I crossed the chain of mountains, which runs along the River, and in traveling what I computed to be about twenty five miles, reached the first fork on Oil Creek, on the most easterly Branches there are vast quantities of White Pine, fit for masts, Boards, &c. In this fork is a large Body of tolerable good land, tho high, and along the West Branch very rich and extensive Bottoms fit for meadow, of the first quality — this continues about fifteen miles along the creek, which is a beautiful stream, from thirty to forty yards wide, and pretty deep. From the West Branch of Oil Creek I proceeded on a Westerly course, about ten miles along a ridge which is difficult to ascend, being high and steep, but when you get up it is flat on the summit, four or five miles broad, very level, and fine springs issue from the declivity on both sides, the land heavily loaded with Hickory, large Oak, Maple, and very large Chestnut. From the West end of this ridge several large springs rise, which form the most easterly branch of French Creek — there are five branches of this creek, which is called Sugar Creek, by Mr. Hutchins, all of which have fine Bottoms, excellent for meadow and pasturage, but the upland or ridges between are stony, cold, moist and broken, chiefly covered with Beech, Pine and scrubby Chestnut. 93 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " At the fork or junction of Sugar Creek with the main or West Branch of French Creek (which is only eight miles up from Venango), there is some fine plains or savannahs, and a large quantity of meadow ground — there are but few bottoms, and little or no upland besides what is above mentioned, for twenty miles up this branch, where there is a considerable quantity of excellent meadow ground, beside which there is not much good land until you reach Le Berroff (Boeuf's). " From Venango, I returned along the path leading to Pittsburg to within about seven miles of Flat Rock Creek, here I took a West course along a large dividing ridge already noticed, about ten miles, where I struck a branch of Canaghquenese or Beaver, about thirty yards wide, and which joins Flat Rock before it empties into the main branch of Canaghquenese — on this creek is very fine and larger bottoms, and in some places some good upland, tho' much broken with high, barren hills and some deep morasses. This creek is not laid down in any map that I have seen. After having explored this creek and lands adjacent, I proceeded on a South course till I struck Mr. McLene's line within eight miles of the great Beaver Creek, which I followed to the Creek ; all this distance is very hilly, there are some small bottoms, but the major part of those eight miles is not fit for cultivation. " From where Mr. McLane's line strikes the great or West Branch of the Beaver, I continued exploring the country up the several western branches of tlie Beaver, Viz, the most Westerly, and two branches denominated the She- nango. The distance from the above named line to an old Moravian Town is three or four miles, from thence to Shenango, two and a half or three miles ; thence to a fork or second branch, two miles; from the mouth of Shenango to Cuskuskey, on the West branch, is six or seven miles, but it was formerly all called Cuszuskey by the natives along this branch as high as the Salt spring, which is twenty-five miles from the mouth of Shenango. There is such a similarity in almost all the lands on all the branches of Beaver Creek, that a particular description of each would be mere (repetition). I shall therefore only briefly observe that the bottoms generally are the most excellent that can be well imagined, and are very extensive — the upland is hilly, and some bad, but most of the hills are fertile and very rich soil — from the falls of the Great Beaver up to the head of the West Branch, and twenty miles up the Shenango branch, is to a considerable distance on either side those creeks there is little land but may be cultivated, and I believe no country is better watered. " I herewith transmit a sketch of that part of the country only which my duty as agent obliged me to explore. This, together with the remarks herein contained will, I flatter myself give a juster idea of the tract than any map yet published. Tho' I do not pretend to say it is correct, as the distances are all supposed, and there are probably several omissions in this sketch, yet more creeks, hills, &c. are noticed than have been before and their real courses and near connections & division by Hills & Ridges ascertained. 94 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " No Creek is laid down or branch which is not upwards of Twenty yards wide — smaller runs are not noticed — on the whole I have endeavored as well in the remarks as in the sketch,* so far as I have gone, to answer the end for which 1 was appointed Agent, as well as in my power. " Wsi. Irvine, " Agent. " N. B. The dotted lines show the several courses taken in exploring the country on the sketch — besides the several offsets were made to gain summits of hills for the benefit of prospects. All the Branches of Canaghquenese, which are six or seven in number, join and form one large Creek before it enters the Beaver, the junction is about eleven miles above the mouth of Beaver from above the falls and four below McLene's line. I have been unavoidably obliged to leave the North and West lines open in the sketch, as I could not do otherw-ise till these boundary lines are run ; this also prevented my compleating the business, not being able to determine perhaps within several miles, where the line may run. I am persuaded the State of Penn- sylvania might reap great advantages by paying early attention to the very easy several communications with Lake Erie from the western parts of their country, particularly Conewago ; French Creek and the West Branch of Beaver, from a place called Mahoning to where it is navigable for small craft is but thirty miles to Cayahuga River, which empties into the lake. A good waggon road may be made from Fort Pitt to the mouth of French Creek, & all the way from the mouth of Beaver to Cayuhuga, which is not more than 80 miles. The breadth of the tract cannot be ascertained till the Western Boundary is run. Mr. McLene suspends for this reason extending his line further West than the Great Beaver, which he has found to be 47 miles from the mouth, Mogwolbughtitum, from this part of Beaver Creek it is conjected the West line of the State will run 10 or 12 miles." In the mean time the authorities of the State were busy in perfecting the machinery necessary for carrying into effect the scheme for the allotment and distribution of the lands to those persons entitled to receive them. On the 3d of May, 1785, John Lukens, the surveyor-general, is informed that by the report of the comptroller-general the number of lots to be surveyed and the quantity of land that each should contain would be " one hundred and seventy-seven lots of the first description, each containing five hundred acres ; eighty-eight of the second description, each containing three hundred acres ; one hundred and eighty-six of the third description, each containing two hundred and fifty acres, and two thousand one hundred and nineteen of the fourth description, each containing two hundred acres," making two thousand five hundred and seventy lots of the various descriptions, and containing in the * This sketch has not been found. 95 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA aggregate five hundred and eighty-five thousand two hundred acres of land. On the second of the same month the surveyor-general informed Council that he had nominated the following persons to Council " for their approbation, to be appointed deputy-surveyors of the donation lands west of the Allegheny River, — viz.: Major William Alexander, Benjamin Lodge, Captain James Christie, Ephraim Douglass, Griffith Evans, James Dickinson, John Hender- son, William Power, Junior, Peter Light, Andrew Henderson, James Dickin- son, James Hoge, David Watt, of Sherman's Valley, Alexander McDowell." The territory in which the donation surveys were to be made was divided into ten districts by the surveyor-general, after consultation with General Irvine, soon after the latter gentleman had received the appointment of agent. The districts were numbered in regular order to the north from the north line of the depreciation lands, — District No. i, adjoining that line, and Dis- trict No. 10, covering parts of the present counties of Erie and Warren. From a letter of the surveyor-general to Secretary Armstrong, dated May 14, 1785, in relation to the districts, there seems to have been some slight friction between the authorities in naming the deputy-surveyors. According to Mr. Lukens, the surveyors were named by him and General Irvine, " four of whom were officers of the Pennsylvania Line, and were recommended by their superior officers and were Practical Surveyors in the back counties, to which we added six more as per List sent to Council ye 5th inst." He then says, " At which Mr. Watts coming in, desired me to enter his son's name, which I did, and have also sent in the names of James Hoge & Peter Light, since for fear some of the first ten should disappoint us ; four of the first ten are Commissioned & the others sent for — now why the eleventh should be pushed before we hear some thing from the others, I should be glad to be informed, unless Council have some objection to some of the first." The trouble, whatever it may have been, soon disappeared, and the ten surveyors appointed were William Alexander, for the first district; John Henderson, for the second district ; Griffith Evans, for the third district ; Andrew Hen- derson, for the fourth district; Benjamin Lodge, for the fifth district; James Christy, for the sixth district ; William Power, for the seventh district ; Alexander McDowell, for the eighth district; James Dickinson, for the ninth district ; and David Watts, for the tenth district. With a single exception the persons named must have entered upon the performance of their duties very promptly and pursued them with commendable energy. Considering the character of the country in which their work was to be done, its wild and unsettled condition, and the difficulties to be encountered and overcome, the task before them was by no means an easy one. Except a few white traders along the Allegheny River, they would meet only Indians, and with their presence in those days there would always be an apprehension of lurking danger. The surveys of nine districts were, however, made with little or no difficulty so far as the records show, and were returned to the land-office early 96 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA in the year 1786, one district really on the 28th of December, 1785. There was an equal allotment of the number of tracts of each description to be sur- veyed to the ten districts, — twenty tracts of five hundred acres each, ten of three hundred each, twenty-one of two hundred and fifty acres each, and two hundred and seventeen of two hundred acres each to each district. The first district, William Alexander, surveyor, was returned in February, 1786; the second, John Henderson, surveyor, February 6, 1786; the third, Griffth Evans, surveyor, December 28, 1785 ; the fourth, Andrew Henderson, sur- veyor, January 12, 1786; the fifth, Benjamin Lodge, surveyor, February 7, 1786; the sixth, James Christy, surveyor, March 18, 1786; the seventh, William Power, surveyor, March 13, 1786; the eighth, Alexander McDowell, surveyor, February 15, 1786, and the tenth, David Watts, surveyor, February 12, 1786. The ninth district is omitted from the above statement. The sur- veyor of that district, James Dickinson, does not appear to have reached the locality assigned to him until after the others had completed their work. He started some time in the fall of 1785 to make his surveys, and reached Ve- nango, at which point it seems he was deterred from proceeding any further by fear of trouble with the Indians. After a consultation with several Indian chiefs, he determined to return home without making any surveys in the district. His explanation of this default on his part is found in a letter to the surveyor-general, dated " Pits Burg, 24th January, 1786," ( ?) in which he gives a statement of his interview with the Indians, his address to them, and the answer of the Chief Whole Face. The letter of explanation and inter- view appear in Volume X., pages 740 and 741, Pennsylvania Archives, and reads as follows : " James Dickinson, to John Lukens : " Dear Sir, — Agreeably to Commission and Instructions for Surveying Donation Lands No. 9, District I proceeded on my Errand as far as Venango ; but not without hearing on my way a very great uneasiness among the Indians at the procedure of the State in the Purchase of those lands, whereupon I thought it necessary to stop there a few Days & consult some Indians Chief on the subject before I proceeded further where after w f ith the advice of the Pittsburg Traders There, I sent for by a Runner Whole Face, The Corn Planter, & Long Hair, three Senica Chiefs who were then out a hunting, two Days March from Venango. Whole Face & Long Hair came in & the Corn Planter refused, — At their coming in by an interpreter Elijah Matthews I in- formed them my Errand, they returned for answer, they could not then give me an answer to my Proposal but would in a few Days ; I waited on them 4 & then they gave me a Hearing, which was as follows Verbatim. — At Mr. Thomas Wilkey's store at Venango, Present Mr. Thomas Wilkey, Captain Jacob Springer & Elijah Matthews. — Indians, The Chiefs Whole Face & Long Hair, with seven others. — 7 97 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " My Friend Mr. Whole Face, " I was sent here by the great Council of the State of Pennsylvania held at Philadelphia, to Measure some Lands a little to the Northward of this Place, which Land I am told the great Council had bought of our Brothers the Indians, whose sole Property they understood it to be — But on my way Here I was told the Indians were not well Pleased we should measure those Lands. I thought it therefore best to stop with you a few Days in Order to know what your uneasiness was if in my Power to remove any obsticle in the Way; being fully assured the Great Council of the State would do every Thing on their side to keep alive Friendship, To maintain Peace, To Increase Friendship. To support a Union & to make Trade Flourish between their Brothers the Indians and themselves, as long as Time shall measure the rolling year, & uttermostly endeavorer the Happiness of both Nations — Now my Brother and Brothers if there is any thing in the way of all these Things I have mentioned, I do wish & intreat you, to inform me frankly and if it can be in my power to serve to removing any such Thing as may obstruct our mutual Happiness, I shall always think myself happy of having it in my power so to do ; or if you think some other Person more suitable to represent this Matter should be glad it was soon done & your objections to my Errand sent to the great Council at Philada." To which Mr. Whole Face after consulting with the others gave the following answer : " Brother of the Big Knife, " Several Surveyors have been up here to Measure Lands the Last Sum- mer and have gone Home. We knew not what was their meaning, as none of them told us, but went on without so much as informing their Intent. When they came to our hunting Fires, we used them well without any Question & when they wanted any of our assistance we gave it freely. Many of our young Warriors are dissatisfied with (their) Conduct, who are in the English Interest and also with the Reward we received for the Lands Thinking it inadequate for so large a Body ; it not being one pair of Mokosons a piece ; they there- fore would advise me not to proceed on my Business and to inform the thir- teen Fires it was their opinion I was not safe to proceed, though thev present would pledge their Faith for my safety against all Indians at Venango & the Hunters to the Southward of that place ; yet would not answer for it to the Northward, not even one Mile. That in the Spring as early as possible the six Nations would-hold a great Council at Fort Pitt where & when they & all their Brethren hoped to make an endless Peace with their Brothers of the thirteen Fires & hoped till then I would put by every Thought of proceeding on my Errand as being very Dangerous ; & then they hoped everv obstruction would be removed & we should walk the Woods together as Brothers aught 9S HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA to do, in Love & Pleasure. And now my Brother tell your great Council of the thirteen Fires tis our Fault you do not go on and not yours. His " Segonkquas X mark His " Tests, " Conhonew X " Thos. Wilkins. mark " Jacob Springer. " Traders. " Elijah X. Matthews, Interpreter. " A true copy from the Original. " This Dear Sir, with much more was pronounced in words and gestures of much warmth & earnest which made me conclude to proceed no further & return — My feet being much bit with Frost detains my not coming at pres- ent, but will come down as soon as they are recovered a Little. In the mean time remain yours to serve with the utmost affection ? " James Dickinson. " P. S. I have not wrote you the private conversation Directed. " To John Lukens, Esqr., Surveyor-General, Philadelphia." The explanation of Mr. Dickinson was not satisfactory, as will be seen by a reference-to the proceedings of the Supreme Executive Council at meet- ings held in Philadelphia, March 9 and 10, 1786, to be found in Volume XIV., pages 653 and 654, Colonial Records. Among the proceedings of the 9th the following appears : " On consideration of the delinquency of James Dick- inson, a deputy-surveyor of donation lands, stated in a letter from Mr. Lukens, it was ordered, That he be removed from office, and that the surveyor-general proceed to nominate a successor thereto;" and on the following day we find that " Griffith Evans, Esquire, was appointed a deputy-surveyor of donation lands, in the room of James Dickinson, removed by an order of yesterday." This accounts for the omission of surveys from the ninth district in the first returns made to the land-office, nor were any surveys for donation purposes subsequently made in the district. The reason for this may be found in a minute of the Supreme Executive Council, May 5, 1786, Volume XV., page 16, Colonial Records. The following appears among the proceedings of that day : " A memorial from sundry officers of the late Pennsylvania Line, stating that large bodies of excellent land remain yet unsurveyed on the waters of Beaver River, in the donation land, very far superior in value, quality, and situation, to the lands in district number nine, and praying that the number of lots de- signed for the ninth district may be surveyed on the aforesaid waters, bv the surveyor appointed to said district, was read and referred to the surveyor- 99 L01 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA general, who is directed to comply with the prayer of the said petition." Ac- cordingly Griffith Evans, the successor of James Dickinson, immediately proceeded to locate the lots assigned to the ninth district in the unsurveyed parts of districts numbers one, two, and three, and on the 24th of July, 1786, made his returns to the land-office. The return of the surveys made by Mr. Evans, in districts one, two, and three, in place of those originally intended for the ninth district, completed the survey of all the districts and the con- nected drafts of each district, in a good state of preservation, are now remain- ing in the Department of Internal Affairs. The number of lots returned was slightly in excess of the number the surveyor-general was directed to have surveyed. There were two hundred lots of five hundred acres, one hundred of three hundred acres, two hundred of two hundred and fifty acres, and two thousand one hundred and seventy of two hundred acres, making two thousand six hundred and eighty lots comprising six hundred and sixteen thousand five hundred acres of land. Preparations were now begun for the distribution of the lots. The surveyor-general made his return to Council, and on the 31st day of August, 1786, the following order was placed upon the minutes: " Ordered, That the drawing of the lottery for, and the patenting of the said (donation) lots, shall commence on the first day of October next, to be continued one year from the 29th instant." The committee of members of the Supreme Executive Council selected to superintend the drawing of the lottery consisted of John Boyd, Jonathan Hoge, Stephen Ballitt, and William Brown, to which was shortly afterwards added Peter Muhlenberg and Samuel Dean. The records do not show definitely how many applicants availed them- selves of the privilege of drawing during the period first fixed for the lottery to remain open ; but evidently Lieutenant Joseph Collier was early on hand. He drew two lots of two hundred acres each, No. 97 in the first district and No. 1462 in the seventh district. A patent was issued to him on the 2d day of October, one day after the drawing began, and it was probably the first one granted. That a large number of claimants made their drawings during the first period is evident, however, from the number of patents that were granted after the opening in October, 1786, and during the year 1787, though it was found necessary as the closing day approached to grant an extension of time to enable other claimants to appear who had failed to do so. A minute of Council, of August 29, 1787, Volume XV., page 263, Colonial Records, reads as follows : " Whereas, It is represented to this Board that there are many of the line of the State intitled to land that have not yet appeared by themselves or sent orders to draw for their lots ; and by resolve of the board of the 31st of August. 1786. they will be precluded unless the time be prolonged so as to include one vear from the commencement of drawing : therefore. Resolved, That the lottery continue open for applicants until the first day of October next, and this resolution be published, so that all con- cerned may have notice thereof." 100 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA The time was again extended for a period of one year by an act passed on the 13th of September, 1788, and by subsequent legislative enactments there were numerous extensions, some of the acts making them also providing for the proper authentication of claims, and for other purposes affecting the rights of claimants. The extensions of time in which to present applications really continued under the various laws until April 1, 1810, which was the last limit of time fixed, and from that day the offices were closed against any further applications. Owing to the uncertainty which existed in regard to the northern boun- dary of the State when the tenth district was surveyed, a serious mistake occurred in the location of a large number of lots in that district. It was dis- covered after the boundary line between Pennsylvania and New York had been located in 1787, that many of the lots fell within the State of New York. This mistake involved * one hundred and twenty lots that were wholly or in part within that State, thirty-one of them lying within the Erie triangle, which did not become a part of Erie County, Pennsylvania, until 1792. Nearly the entire number of these lots had been drawn from the lottery wheels by persons whose claims had been established, and patents had been granted to them before the error in the surveys became known. In order that such persons should not suffer by an unfortunate and mistaken location of the land they had drawn, and thus be deprived of the reward promised to them, the General Assembly on the 30th day of September, 1791, passed a law for their relief. The first section of the act provided that the surveyor-general should ascertain and report to the governor the number of patents that had fallen within the State of New York, together with the number of acres contained in each patent and the names of the persons to whom such patents were issued, which report was to be printed in three newspapers in Philadelphia, with notice to all persons concerned to apply before the first day of December following to the surveyor-general, who was authorized to ascertain by lot the order of priority by which such persons should choose other lots. The second section provided that applicants should in their order of priority choose other lots out of any of the surveyed tracts not otherwise disposed of within any of the donation districts. The third section, that after such persons had made their choice, patents should be granted to them without fees, on the surrender for cancellation of the patents previously granted to them. They were also * The estimate of the authorities at the time was that one hundred and forty lots fell wholly within the State of New York and twenty-three partly so, making one hundred and sixty-three in all. This was an overestimate. An actual count of the lots as laid down in the map of the district, if the line drawn thereon is correct, shows the number affected by the mistake to have been as above stated. It was also afterwards discovered that a number of lots that had been drawn and released as lying in New York were found to be wholly in Pennsylvania, a fact shown in the preamble of an act passed April 2, 1802. 101 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA required to give quit claims to the Commonwealth for compensation on account of any losses they may have suffered. This act was followed by another on the ioth of April, 1792, extending the limit of time fixed for receiving appli- cations from December 1, 1 791, to July 1, 1792, and directing the report of the surveyor-general to be printed in newspapers of Philadelphia, Lancaster, York, Chambersburg, Harrisburg, Carlisle, and Pittsburg, with notice that applica- tion must be made within the time designated. Other legislation for the pur- pose of fully indemnifying the persons who held patents to these lots, and to secure to them all the benefits to which they were entitled under the acts of March 12, 1783, and March 24, 1785, followed the acts above mentioned. The acts of April 5, 1793, and February 23, 1801, were of that character. In the last act the comptroller-general was directed to furnish to the secretary of the land-office a list of the names of such persons whose lots fell outside of the State as had received no equivalent. It also provided that applica- tions under the act should be made within three years by the applicant per- sonally, his widow or children, or by his, her, or their attorney. When made by an attorney he was " to declare under oath or affirmation that he had no interest in the claim otherwise than to serve the applicant." The Board of Property was given power to act in all cases of dispute between applicants, and when lots were drawn the secretary of the land-office was directed to grant patents under the inspection of the Board of Property in the same manner as was formerly done by the Supreme Executive Council. There was no further legislation with special reference to the lots that were surveyed within the State of New York. Under the provisions of the laws recited the claims of all applicants who drew such lots were received when made within the limit of time prescribed, and properly adjusted. Another difficulty arose in relation to a large number of the lots surveyed in the second district because of the alleged inferior quality of the land laid off by the surveyor, John Henderson. In his notes and observations General Irvine says, in reference to the character of the country which became part of that district, that " East of this path * along Mr. McLane's line for five or six miles, the land is pretty level, well watered with small springs, and of tolerable quality, but from thence to the Allegheny River which is about twenty-five miles due east, there is no land worth mentioning fit for culti- vation." As it was the expressed intention of the General Assembly when the donation was made that only the best lands within the territory set apart by law should be surveyed for the purpose of the donation, it was thought wrong that so laudable a design on the part of the law-makers should be defeated by giving lands that could not be cultivated. The attention of the surveyor- general had early been called to the poor quality of the land in this district by General Irvine. In a letter to General Armstrong, dated at Carlisle, July * The path leading from Fort Pitt to Venango. 102 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA 1 8, 1786, he recommended that all the surveys made by John Henderson be rejected by Council, and that Major Alexander be appointed to lay off an equal number of lots in other parts of the reserved tracts without being con- fined to any particular district. He further says in the same letter, " If the surveyor-general has not found my letter in which I complained of John Hen- derson's surveys as improper to be accepted — he has had sufficient verbal testimony as well from me as sundry other persons to justify his informing Council that the land is not such as the Assembly intended the troops should get, or they could possibly think of receiving, particularly as he surveyed all bad and left a large quantity of good land within his district." The views of General Irvine were not fully adopted, though his representations did to a certain extent influence the action of Council. In the preparations for the drawing of the lottery, one hundred and thirty-four tracts of two hundred acres each, lying in the eastern part of the district, nearest to the Allegheny River, and now part of Butler County, were stricken from the scheme, and the numbers representing the tracts not placed in the wheels. By this action of Council the district became known as the " Struck District" and was ever after so called. The struck numbers remained out of the wheel until after the act of April 2, 1802, the title of which was " An Act to complete the benevolent intention of the Legislature of this Commonwealth, by distributing the donation lands to all who are entitled thereto," became a law. The pre- amble to this act set forth that some of the officers and soldiers of the Penn- sylvania Line had not received their donation land, and that it was represented that among the lots in the tenth district, for which the owners had received patents and which they had released as being in the State of New York, and received other lots in lieu thereof, many were still in Pennsylvania, and also that there were a number of other lots within the bounds of the donated sur- veys not numbered, returned, or otherwise appropriated. Under this act it was made the duty of the land officers to ascertain the number of such lots of each description that remained undrawn and not otherwise appropriated, or which, having been drawn, had not been applied for within the time prescribed by law, and to cause numbers corresponding to each lot to be made and placed in the wheels from which they were to draw on application being made to them by persons entitled to the donation. Acting under this law the Board of Property, which by this section of the same act was given the same powers relative to donation lands that it exercised over other lands within the Com- monwealth, decided to include the lots of the " Struck District," and put corresponding numbers in the wheels. These numbers remained in the wheels until the act of March 25, 1805, directing them to be withdrawn and not again put in. During the years 1803-4-5, many of the lots had been drawn, and patents for them granted, in some instances causing trouble and litigation. Presuming the lands in the eastern part of the district to be vacant and open to settlement and improvement under the act of April 3, 1792, many settlers 103 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA had gone into the locality and made valuable improvements that interfered with the surveys of the donation lots, thus, of course, involving patentees of donation land and actual settlers in disputes and expensive law-suits. To pre- vent such undesirable and unfortunate results the act of 1805 was passed. The tickets were taken out of the wheels as directed by the law, and the un- drawn lots of the " Struck District" thereafter remained a part of the unappro- priated lands north and west of the Ohio and Allegheny Rivers and Cone- wango Creek open to sale and settlement. In order to enable the land officers and the Board of Property to execute the duties enjoined upon them by the act of 1802, the Secretary of the Com- monwealth was directed to transfer all records relating to the donation lands to the surveyor-general's office, and by the same act the Board of Property was authorized to direct patents to be issued to the widow, heir, or heirs of any deceased officer or soldier on satisfactory proof of their right being made. The act of March 24, 1785, seemed to require the beneficiaries under its provisions to participate in the drawing in person. To do so was no doubt a serious inconvenience to many, while others, who could not afford the expense of a journey to Philadelphia, would be entirely deprived of the benefits of the act. Be this as it may, it was soon discovered that many persons had not received their land, and in consequence of this condition of the distribution, the Legislature, by an act passed April 6, 1792, directed the land officers, on the 2d day of July following, to draw lots for every person entitled to donation land who had not received the same, agreeably to the list submitted by the comptroller to the Supreme Executive Council, the same as if the person thus entitled to land was present; and the patents were to be granted to such persons or their legal representatives as in other cases. It was also ascertained that there were other persons who had served in the Pennsylvania Line enti- tled to the donation, but whose names, from some unexplained cause, did not appear in the list prepared by the comptroller-general in 1786. To remedy this defect and enable these persons to receive their quota of land, the Legis- lature passed an important act relating to them on the 17th of April, 1795. This act directed the comptroller-general to prepare a complete list of such persons entitled to lands whose names were not included in the first list, together with their rank and the quantity of land each should receive. This list was to be transmitted to the surveyor-general, the receiver-general, and the secretary of the land-office, and it was made their duty then to employ a suitable person to prepare tickets and place them in wheels in the same manner as had been done for the first drawing. No greater number of tickets were to be placed in the wheel than would give to each his quantity of land. After these preparations were complete the claimants could attend the drawing in person to draw their lots, or authorize an agent to draw for them, and for such persons as did not attend in person, or by agent, the surveyor-general, receiver-general, and secretary of the land-office were authorized to draw. 104 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA When the drawing was finished a report was to be made to the governor, who was directed to prepare and deliver the patents at the expense of the State. The legal representatives of deceased persons entitled to the benefits of the act were permitted to draw lots, or have lots drawn for them, the same as such deceased persons might have done if living. The time allowed for making application under the act was one year from its passage, with a proviso that persons " beyond sea, or out of the United States," shall have two years, and persons serving in the army of the United States at the time of its passage should have three years, of which the surveyor-general was to give notice for six weeks in one of the newspapers of Philadelphia, and in one in each county of the State in which newspapers were published. This was followed by an act passed April II, 1799, providing among other things for the authentica- tion of claims by the comptroller-general, register-general, and State treasurer, who were to inquire into their lawfulness, ascertain whether they remained unsatisfied, and in each case to transmit to the secretary of the land-office a certificate stating whether the claim should be allowed or rejected, the cer- tificate to be conclusive. After 1805, aside from a number of acts granting donations of land to certain individuals for special reasons, there was no further legislation in reference to these lands of any importance. A question of succession had arisen in the case of an officer who had been killed in the service. He was unmarried, and the land that fell to his share was claimed by a brother as heir-at-law. The Supreme Court decided the claim to be good. The Legislature then, on the nth of March, 1809, passed an act that no patent was thereafter to issue for donation lands except to the widow or children of any deceased officer or soldier who died or was killed in service. There had been extensions of the time for filing applications, year by year, until the final limitation as fixed in the previous year, expired on the 1st day of April, 1810. No further applications were received after that date, though patents for lots that had previously been drawn continued to be freely granted for some years longer. After the drawing had been closed, there still remained in the wheels a number of undrawn tickets, and by the act of March 26, 1813, the Legislature made provision for the sale and settlement of such of them as should remain undrawn on the 1st day of October following. It was provided that a person who had made an improvement and settlement, resided with his family on the lot three years previous to the passing of the act, and cleared, fenced, and cultivated at least ten acres of ground ; or a person who should after the 1st day of October make an improvement and actual settlement by erecting a dwelling-house, reside with a family on the lot three years from the date of that settlement, and clear, fence, and cultivate at least ten acres of ground, could receive a patent for such donation lot, by paying into the State treasury at the rate of one dollar and fifty cents an acre with interest from three years after the settlement was made, and the usual office fees. The settlement first made and continued, or thereafter made and 105 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA continued, gave an inception of title to the person making it. These tonus are somewhat similar in character to those provided in act of April 3, 1792, for the sale of the unappropriated parts of the lands lying within the donation districts, except that the price fixed for such lands was only twenty cents an acre. Phis difference in price must he accounted for in the supposition that the lauds surveyed for the soldiers were tar superior in quality to the other unappropriated parts of the territory originally set apart for donation pur- poses. The price for the undrawn lots continued to he one dollar and fifty cents an acre until February 35, 1810. when it was reduced to fifty cents an acre. The rate of fifty cents was continued until March 31, 1845. ;U which time the terms were made in all respects the same as for other vacant lands in the same districts. This concludes the sketch of the Donation Lands of Pennsylvania and the mode in which they were allotted and conveyed to the persons who came within the provisions of the grant ; and we trust it may prove of some interest to the readers of this report. The benefaction was a most worthy and patriotic one to a line of gallant soldiers who served their country well, and endured much in aiding to achieve liberty for the American colonies, from which has since grown our mighty and beneficent American republic. The Pennsyl- vania 1 1110 was an important factor in producing grand results, and rewards to such soldiers were well bestowed, '" I egally, there never was any such thing as the Holland Land Com- pany, or the Holland Company, as they were usually called. " The company consisted of Wilhelm Willink and eleven associates, mer- chants and capitalists of the city of Amsterdam, who placed tmids in the hands of friends who were citizens of America to purchase a million acres oi land in Pennsylvania, which, being aliens, the Hollanders could not hold in their names at that time: and in pursuance of the trust created, there were purchased, both in New York and Pennsylvania, immense tracts of land, all managed by the same general agent at Philadelphia. '" The names of the several persons interested in these purchases, and who composed the Holland Land Company, so called, were as follows: Wil- helm Willink. Nicholas Van Staphorst, Lieter Van Eeghen, Hendrick Yollen- hoven, and Ruter Jan Schiminelpenninck. Two years later the five proprietors transferred a tract of about one million acres, so that the title vested in the original five, and also in Wilhelm Willink. Jr.. Jan Willink. Jr.. Jan Gabriel Van Staphorst. Roelif Van Staphorst. Jr.. Cornelius Yollenhoven. and Hen- drick Seve." K» *o^ <»rw <»rw *o* *o* *q* *o* *o* &o* V£f «^ •\2T«^ •V^f •* •MT«' v »\2f •' *»V^v V\L^#' »\2/V V£/V eJrate eAK^a ^0«> ^Cj^ ^0«> ^O^ ^Cj^ ^O^ «»0^ CHAPTER VI PIONEER ANIMALS — BEAVERS, BUFFALOES, ELKS, PANTHERS, YVOI.VKS, WILD- CATS, BEARS, AND OTHER ANIMALS — HABITS, ETC. — PENS AND TRAPS — BIRDS — WILD BEES " Nature is a story-book That u liois City, LITTLE CHANGE AMONG HEAVERS Those who have made them a study assert that, with the exception of man, no other animal now upon the earth has undergone so little change in size and structure as the beaver. Fossil deposits show that in its present form it is at least contemporaneous with and probably antedates the mammoth and the other monsters that once roamed the great forests of the earth. The skeletons of beavers found in this country are the same as those of the same species found in the fossil beds of Europe. .Man is the only other mammal of which this is true. How the beaver came to traverse the ocean has never been explained. " Coarse-fibred, cautious in its habits, warmly protected by nature against climatic influences, simple and hearty in its diet, wise beyond all other forms of lower animal life, prolific and heedful of its young, the beaver has seen changes in the whole function of the world and the total disappearance of countless species of animal and vegetable life. " The beaver mates but once, and then for a lifetime. There arc no divorces, and, so far as has been observed, no matings of beavers who have 107 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA lost their mates by death. Young beavers are given a place in the family lodge until they are two years old, and are then turned out to find mates and homes for themselves. The age of the beaver is from twelve to sixteen years. " No other animal has excited so much interest by his home-making and home-guarding as this. ' Wisest of Wild Folk' is the English equivalent for his name in the tongue of the Ojibways. " Originally a mere burrower in the earth, like his cousins the hedge-hog and the porcupine, he has so improved upon natural conditions that only man is able to reach him in his abiding-places. Indeed, he approaches man in the artificial surroundings that he has adopted for self-preservation. " The principal engineering and structural works of the beaver are the dam, the canal, the meadow, the lodge, the burrow, and the slide. These are not always found together and some of them are rare." THEY FORM AN INTERESTING STORY " Beaver-dams have been found which have been kept in repair by beavers for centuries. It is not unusual to find them more than fifty feet long and so Beaver solid that they will support horses and wagons. Fallen trees that have been cut down by the sharp teeth of the beavers are sometimes the foundation. More often branches and a great heap of small stones make the beginning. " The side toward the water is of mud and pebbles smoothly set by the use of the broad, paddle-like tail of the animal. Interlaced branches and poles make a substantial backing for the earth. A growth of underbrush caps the whole. " The dam is built for two reasons — to afford a retreat where the home- loving beaver may rest safe from his enemies of the forest, particularly the wolverines, and to give a depth of water that will not freeze to the bottom. A total freeze would effectually lock him in his home and be the cause of death by starvation. 10S HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA "The dam, in a temperate climate, is usually about four feet deep. It curves up-stream when of great length. Upon the highest part of the sub- merged area the beaver builds his lodge. This is practically an island capped bv a wigwam made of sticks and earth. The outer roof of hardened mud is repaired at the beginning of every winter, and the ceiling of scaling wood and dry earth is removed and taken out of the lodge every spring. Indeed, the beaver is the neatest of housekeepers, only the household nests of dry leaves and sap-bearing wood enough for each meal being allowed within his home. " Two passages lead from the floor of the lodge into the water. One of these is wide and straight. Through it the members of the family bring the twigs and roots for their meals. The second passage is narrow and winding, and through it the beavers disappear at the first sign of danger. " The burrows are made in the banks of the artificial lake created by the dam. The entrances to them are beneath the surface of the water. They slope upward with the bank, and, like the lodge, end in snug, dry homes above the water level. The celibate beavers live entirely in burrows ; the families in both lodges and burrows. " To guard against the flooding of their homes the beavers provide out- lets for the surplus water. Sometimes the upper part of the dam is purposely left thin and the water trickles through in a steady stream. Where the bank is thick and impervious an overflow gully is cut in its summit, and through this the surplus passes. " Beaver meadows are made by the rotting and cutting away of timbers within the area of partial flooding. With the passing of the larger vegetation comes a smaller growth of water grasses, upon which the beavers thrive. " The wonderful beaver canals are streams several feet in width leading from the artificial lake made by the dam into the forest. Upon these the wise little animals float heavy saplings and branches that they would otherwise be unable to transport to the face of the dam. " The slides are skidways made by beavers down the sides of high, steep banks. Trees and stones are rolled down these for use in home-making. " In carrying earth, stones, and sticks on land the beaver uses his fore- feet as we do our hands, holding what he carries tightly against his throat. In swimming the use of the front feet is unnecessary. He is enabled to hold a heavy branch in front of his breast and to swim swiftly with his tail and his powerful hind feet. " Most affectionate and intelligent as a pet is the beaver when taken young. When annoyed it gives a querulous cry, like that of an infant. Its beautiful thick coat of reddish brown fur makes it the prey of the trapper. " Beavers, when caught in traps by the forelegs, almost invariably wrench themselves free, leaving the member in the trap. Many of the pelts brought into the market have one leg and occasionallv two leers missing:. HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA "' Although their sense of sight is deficient, those of scent and hearing are abnormally developed. The work of construction and repair upon the dams is always done at night, the workers occasionally stopping to listen tor sus- picions sounds. The one who hears anything to excite his alarm dives in- stantly, and as he disappears gives warning to his comrades by striking his broad, flat tail upon the stir face of the water. The sound rivals a pistol-shot in its alarming loudness." — Philadelphia North .-Inter... " The beaver is really a sort of portable pulp-mill, grinding np most any kind of wood that comes in his way. 1 once measured a white birch-tree, twenty-two inches through, cut down by a beaver. A single beaver generally, if not always, fells the tree, and when it comes down the whole family fall to and have a regular frolic with the bark and branches. A big beaver will bring- down a fair-sized sapling, say three inches through, in about two minutes, and a large tree in about an hour. " One of the queerest facts about the beaver is the rapidity with which his long, chisel-like teeth will recover from an injury/' W illiam Dixon killed a beaver in 1840, near what is now called Sabttla. or Summit Tunnel, Clearfield County. This was perhaps the last one killed in ■:'.•. State A beaver was reported killed in 1884 on Pine Creek, in Clinton County. It was said to have been chased there from Potter County. Beavers have four young at a litter, and they are born with eyes open. THE AMERICAN BISON, OR BUFFALO v .'.utries ago herds of wild buffaloes fed in our valleys and on our hills. Yes. more, the "buffalo, or American bis ■■■. roamed in great droves over the sadowsand 1 plan - n the Susquehanna to Lake Erie." but none north of Lake Erie. The peculiar distinction of our buffalo was a hump over his shouli . 3 His eye was black, his hoi is aek and thick near the head, tapering rapidly to a point. His face looked ferocious, yet he was not so dangerous as an elk The sexual seas* of the bison was from July to Se - he after this month the cows ranged in herds by themselves, calved in April, and the . - allowed the motheJ - a three years. The males fought terrible g . selves. The Atlantic seaboards were exceptional'.-, free. esh ( - cow was delicious food, and the hump espec was c sidere< § . . . . . eacy. At what time they were driven from north- ern Pennsylv; - . three hundred years ago the north w.s; was alive with them. " Twe: :-. . ears ago these animals, whose flesh was an im- . and much prise ; . .- . 1 food, the ta es lee al and whose pe is were — great demand for robes, buffalo overshoes, and garments to pre:.;: both the civilize.' . . . . ees n the piercing wi- :. 3 .s:s. were HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA found on our western prairies in countless thousands. To day, owing t" the cruel, wasteful, and greedy skin and meal hunters, there are not, ii is assei ted, any buffaloes in a wild state in the United Stales. According to .1 recenl published report, between tin- years [860 and [882 inure than fifteen million buffaloes were killed within the limits of the United Stales." Buffaloes and elks used the same trails and feeding grounds. The American elk was widely distributed in this section in t794' ' '"' habitat id' this noble game was the forest extending across the northern pari id' the Stale. These animals were quite numerous in the thirties. " When I stalled, in lXj<>, to amuse and profit myself liy following the chase in Northern Pennsylvania," said Colonel Parker, of Gardeau, McKean County, Pennsylvania, "elks were running in those woods in herds. I have - - • jji ■■■». Buffalo killed elks a plenty in the Rocky Mountain country and other regions since, hut I never ran across any that were as hi^ as those old-lime Pennsylvania elks. I have killed elks on the Sinnemahoning and Pine Creek waters, and down on the Clarion River and West Branch, that were as big as horses. A one-thousand-pound elk was nothing uncommon in thai country, and I killed one once that weighed twelve hundred pounds. These were bucks. The does would weigh anywhere from six hundred lo eight hundred pounds. "These elks had very short and thick- necks, with a short and upright mane. Their ears were of enormous size, so large, in fact, that once Sterling Devins, a good hunter, too, saw a doe elk in the woods on Pine Mill, near < He 1 1 1 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA Bull's castle, in the times when elks had begun to grow scarce, and passed without shooting at it, thinking it was a mule. When the elk bounded away, though, and disappeared among the thick timber, Sterling knew what it was, and felt like kicking himself harder than the elk could have kicked him, even if it had been a mule. " The Pennsylvania elk's eyes were small, but sparkled like jewels. I have often seen a score or more pairs of these bright eyes shining in the dark recesses of the pine-forest, when the shadows might have otherwise obscured the presence there of the owners of those telltale orbs. An infuriated buck elk's eye was about as fearful a thing to look at as anything well imaginable, but so quickly changeable was the nature of these huge beasts that two hours after having captured with ropes one that had, from the vantage ground of his rock, gored and trampled the life out of a half-dozen of dogs, and well-nigh overcome the attacking hunters, it submitted to being harnessed to an improvised sled and unresistingly hauled a load of venison upon it six miles through the woods to my cabin, and took its place among the cattle with as docile an air as if it had been born and brought up among them. " This same elk that Sterling Devins had mistaken for a mule, he and Ezra Prichard followed all the next day, but lost its trail. Some Pine Creek hunters got on its trail, drove it to its rock, and roped it. When Devins and Prichard got back at night they found the Pine Creek hunters there and the elk in the barn eating hay and entirely at home. That elk had quite an inter- esting subsequent history. Ezra Prichard had, previous to the capture of this one, secured a pair of elks, broke them, and for a long time drove them in farm work like a yoke of oxen. Sterling Devins was eager for a yoke of elk, and he offered the Pine Creek hunters one hundred dollars for the one they had captured. They refused the offer, but afterwards got into a dispute about its ownership, and it was sold to Bill Stowell and John Sloanmaker, of Jersey Shore. These men took the elk about the country, exhibiting it, and made quite a sum of money. Next fall, although the elk was a doe, it became very ugly and attacked its keeper, nearly killing him before he could get away. No one could go near her, and her owners ordered her shot. The carcass was bought by a man who had a fine pair of elk horns. He was a skilful taxider- mist, and he managed to fasten the horns to the head of the doe elk in such a manner that no one was ever able to tell that they hadn't grown there. This made of the head an apparently magnificent head of a buck elk, and it was purchased for one hundred dollars, under that belief, by a future governor of Pennsylvania." LAST ELK IN THE PINE CREEK REGION " That doe elk was one of the last family of elks in the Pine Creek country. She and the buck and a fawn had been discovered some time before Sterling Devins ran across the doe, by Leroy Lyman, on Tomer's run, near the Ole Bull settlement. Lyman got a shot at the buck, but the whole three escaped. 112 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA The same party of hunters that captured the doe killed the buck afterwards in the woods on Kettle Creek. The fawn the dogs ran into Stowell's mill- pond, and there it was killed. " Another peculiarity of the elks that used to frequent the Pennsylvania woods was the great size of their nostrils, and the keenness of their scent was something beyond belief. A set of elk antlers of five feet spread, and weighing from forty to fifty pounds, was not an infrequent trophy. George Rae, who was one of the great hunters of Northern Pennsylvania in his day, — and he is one of the greatest in the Rocky Mountains even to this day, in spite of his eighty-five years, — lived along the Allegheny at Portville. He had in his house, and in his barn, the walls almost covered with the antlers of elks he had killed, on the peak of his roof, at one end, being one that measured nearly six feet between the extremities. When George moved West forty years ago he left the horns on the buildings, and only a few years ago many of them were still there, as reminders of what game once roamed our woods. " It required more skill to hunt the elk than it did to trail the deer, as they were much more cautious and alert. For all that, an elk, when startled from his bed, did not instantly dash away, like the deer, but invariably looked to see what had aroused him. Then, if he thought the cause boded him no good, away he went, not leaping over the brush, like the deer, but, with his head thrown back, and his great horns almost covering his body, plunging through the thickets, his big hoofs clattering together like castanets as he went. The elk did not go at a galloping gait, but travelled at a swinging trot that carried him along at amazing speed. He never stopped until he had crossed water, when his instinct seemed to tell him that the scent of his trail was broken before the pursuing dogs. " At the rutting season the elk, both male and female, was fearless and fierce, and it behooved the hunter to be watchful. An elk surprised at this season did not wait for any overt act on the part of an enemy, but was in- stantly aggressive. One blow from an elk's foot would kill a wolf or a dog, and I have more than once been forced to elude an elk by running around trees, jumping from one to another before the bulky beast, unable to make the turns quick enough, could recover himself and follow me too closelv to prevent it, thus making my way by degrees to a safe refuge. I was once treed by a buck elk not half a mile from home, and kept there from noon until night began to fall. I haven't the least doubt that he would have kept me there all night if another buck hadn't bugled a challenge from a neighboring hill, and my buck hurried away in answer to it. I didn't wait to see it, but there was a great fight between those two bucks that night. " I visited the spot the next day. The ground was torn up and the sap- lings broken down for rods around, and one old buck lay in the brush dead, his body covered with bloody rips and tears. I didn't know whether this was the elk that treed me or not, but I have always been fond of believing it was. 8 113 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " The whistle of the buck elk, as the hunters used to call it, wasn't a whistle, although there were changes in it that gave it something of a flute-like sound. The sound was more like the notes of a bugle. In making it the buck threw back his head, swelled his throat and neck to an enormous size, and with that as a bellows he blew from his open mouth the sound that made at once his challenge or call for a mate. The sound was far-reaching, and, heard at a distance, was weird and uncanny, yet not unmusical. Near by it was rasping and harsh, with the whistling notes prominent. "4 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " The Pennsylvania elks were never much scattered. When I first came to the Sinnemahoning country, nearly seventy years ago, the salt marsh that lay in the wilderness where my residence now is was trampled over by herds of elks and deer that came there to lick the salt from the ground as if a drove of cattle had been there. I have seen seventy-five elks huddled at that marsh. That was ' the great elk lick' of legend, which the reservation Indians have often talked to me about when I lived in Allegheny County, New York, as a boy, and it was to find that lick that my father and I, following the rather indefinite directions of one Johnnyhocks, an old Shongo Indian, entered the Pennsylvania wilderness in 1826." A TOUGH OLD BUCK " To follow an elk forty miles before running it down was considered nothing remarkable. I have done it many a time. Leroy Lyman, Jack Lyman, and A. H. Goodsell once started on an elk-hunt from Roulette, Potter County, struck the trail at the head of West Creek, in McKean County, thirty miles from Roulette, followed it through Elk, Clarion, and Clearfield Counties, and finally drove it to its rock eighty or ninety miles from where the trail was first struck. They had followed the elk many days, and finally the quarry was found, — an enormous buck, — with a spread of horns like a young maple-tree. The hunters ran out of rations the second day, and were nearly starved when they ran the elk to its rock. All three of them put a bullet in the defiant elk and ended his career. Visions of elk-meat for supper had haunted the fam- ished hunters, and when the buck fell they shouted for joy. Without delay they started in to carve expected juicy morsels from the carcass to cook for supper, but there was not a knife or a hunting-axe in that party that could make an impression on the old fellow's flesh. He was a patriarch of the woods, and long past use as food. All the starving hunters could manage to make edible of the elk was his tongue, which, roasted, was a grateful offering to hungry men, but would have been impossible of mastication otherwise. The horns were the only trophy that the hunters got from the long and tedious chase, and that trophy was well worth it. It was the largest and next to the finest pair of antlers ever carried by an elk in the Pennsylvania forest, so far as there is any record." THE ELK VS. WOLVES " There are scattered through the woods, generally high on the hills, from the Allegheny River down to the West Branch and Clarion River, huge rocks, some detached boulders, and other projections of ledges. These are known as elk rocks, and every one of them has been, in its day, the last resort of some elks brought to bay after a long and hard chase. It was the habit of the hunted elk, when it had in vain sought to throw the hunter and hound from the trail, to make its stand at one of these rocks. Mounting it, and facing "5 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA its foes, it fiercely fought off the assaults of the dogs by blows of his forefeet or tremendous kicks from its hind foot, until the hunter came up and ended the tight with his ritlo. It would be strange if one or more of the dogs were not stretched dead at the foot of the rook by the time the hunter arrived on the scene. I have more than once found dead wolves lying about one of these oik rooks, tolling mutely, but eloquently, the tragic story of the pursuit of the elk by the wolves, his coming to bay on the rook, the battle, and the oik's victory. The oik was not always victor, though, in such battles with wolves, and I have frequently found the stripped skeleton of one lying among the skeletons of wolves he had killed before being himself vanquished by their savage and hungry follows. " In the winter time the oiks would gather in largo herds and their range would be exceedingly limited. Sometimes they would migrate to other regions, and would not be soon for months in their haunts, but suddenly they would return and bo as plentiful as ever. They had their regular paths or runways through the woods, and those invariably led to salt lioks. of which there were many natural ones in Northern Pennsylvania. One of the most frequented of those elk paths started in a dense forest, whore the town of Ridgway. the county seat of Elk County, now stands, led to the great lick on the Sinnemahoning portage, and thence through the forest to another big lick, which to-day is covered by Washington Park, in the city of Bradford. I have followed that elk path its whole length, when the only sign of civilization was now and then a hunter's cabin, from the head-waters of the Clarion River to the Allegheny, in Mckean County. Hundreds of elks wore killed annually at the licks or while travelling to and from them, along their well-marked runways." UfN HNG ELKS AT NIGHT " Hunting elks by night was an exciting sport. You have heard of per- sons being scared by their own shadows. If you had ever hunted a Pennsyl- vania elk at night you would have had an opportunity of seeing something soared by its own shadow, and scared badly. A blaring pine-knot tiro would be lighted in the bow of a flat-bottomed boat, and while one man sat near that end with his rifle, another paddled it through the water. Elks were always sure to be standing in the water early in the evening, after darkness had fully set in. When the light of the tiro fell on an elk you would not only see his eyes shining like coals, but the whole big spectral spread of his antlers would stand out against the darkness — not only the bonis of one. but of perhaps half a dozen. When the hunter tired at one elk all the others would make a break for shore, but the instant they lauded, their groat black shadows would fall before them from the light of the blazing tires, and back they would rush in terror to the water. Then a hunter might kill every elk in the herd, or several of them, before their fright at the gun overcame the terror of the shadow and the survivors fled to the impenetrable darkness of the woods. no HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " The biggest set of elk antlers ever captured in the Pennsylvania woods was secured in the Kettle Creek country by Major Isaac Lyman, I'hilip Tome, George Ayres, L. D. Spoffanl, and William Wattles. Philip Tome was a great hunter, and die famous interpreter for Cornplanter and Blacksnake, the greal Indian chiefs, lie came over from Warren County to help Major Lyman capture an elk alive, and the party started in on the first snow, with plenty of ropes and things, They camped, but the elks were in such big herds that they couldn't get a chance at a single buck for more than a week. Then they got the biggest one they ever saw and gave chase to him. They started him from his bed on Yocum hill. The dogs took him down Little Kettle Creek to Big Kettle, and up that two or three miles. There the elk came to hay on a rock, lie kept the dogs at a distance until the hunters came up. when lie left the ruck and started away again. Tome, knowing the nature of elk. said that all they had to do was to wait and the elk would return to the rock. They dropped poles and fitted up nooses. They waited nearly half a day, and then they heard the huck coming crashing through the woods, down the mountain-sides, the dogs in full cry. lie mounted his rock again. The hunters he did not seem to mind, hut the dogs he fought fiercely. While he was doing that the hunters got the nooses over his immense horns and anchored him to surrounding trees. They got the elk alive to the Allegheny River, and floated him on a raft to Olean Point. From there they travelled with him through New York State to Albany, exhibiting him with much profit, and at Albany he was sold for five hundred dollars. That elk stood sixteen hands high and had antlers six feet long, and eleven points on each side, the usual number of points being nine on a side." The last elk killed in this State was in 1864, by Jim Jacobs, an Indian. This elk had been pursued for several days, and in despair sought his " rock" near the Clarion River, and was there shot. He was too old and tough to be used for food. The buffalo, elk, panther, wolf, and beaver are now extinct. The last buffalo killed in the State of which there is a record was about 1799. There were originally in this State over fifty species of wild, four-footed ani- mals. We had three hundred and twenty-five species and sub-species of birds, and our waters, including Lake Erie, had one hundred and fifty species of fish. It may not be amiss to state here that all our wild animals were pos- sessed of intelligence, courage, fear, hate, and affection. They reasoned, had memory, and a desire for revenge. A wolf could be tamed and trained to hunt like a dog. It is recorded in history that a pet snake has been known to travel one hundred miles home. It is undeniable that they could compute time, courses, and distances. Elks, bears, and deer had their own paths. Bears blazed theirs by biting a hemlock tree occasionally Elks are polygamous. The chief is a tyrant, and rules the herd like a czar. The does all fear him. Does breed at the age of two years, having hut one fawn, hut when older often two or three at a time, and these young follow "7 HISTORY. OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA their mother all summer, or from the date of birth in Max or June to fall The oik's whistle varies much and has different meanings; they seem to have a language like all other animals, big or little. \ full-grown elk never forgets an injury, The\ can soon he taught to work like oxen, but it takes from six months to two years to he able to stand in front of an elk and command him. In 1S34, Mike, William, ami John Long and Andrew Yastbinder captured a full grown live elk. Their dogs chased the animal on his high rock, and while there the hunters lassoed him. The elk only lived three weeks in cap- tivity. The last elk in the State was killed in our forests. A noted hunter thus describes a battle between wolves and a drove of elks : " I heard a rush of V'.msvhauis •. the opposite direction, and the next moment a band of elks swept sight Magnificent fellows they were, eight bucks and three does, with a cot s. They had evidently been stampeded by something, and swept past me without seeing me. hut stopped short on catching sight of the wolves The does turned back and start* gs away in the direct from which they* came, but one of the bucks gave a c and they st ■. short huddled together with the fawns between them, while the bucks sur- rounded the.- Each buck lowered his horns and awaited the attack. The wolves, seeing th« c stling s< sconcerte* a moment then the - § gave a howl and threw himself upon the lowered - - He was Rung ful . ..: w ith a broken back, but his lers "•. ■ threv themselves upon the elks mh to he HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA pierced b) the prongs. It was nol until full) twent) had in this way been maimed and killed that the) seemed to realize the hopelessness of the tiling." The largest carnivorous beast was the panther. After the advent of white men into this wilderness panthers were not common. In the early days, however, there were enough of them in the forests to keep the settler or the hunter ever on his guard. The) haunted the wildest glens and made their presence known b) occasional raids on the flocks and herds. It is probable that here in our northwestern counties there are still a few oi these savage beasts. The puma, popularly called by our pioneers panther, was and is a large animal with a cat head. The average length of a panther from nose to tip of tail is about six to twelve feet, the tail being over two feel, long, and the tip of which is black. The color of the puma is tawny, dun, or reddish along the hack and side, and sometimes grayish-white underneath or over the abdo- men and chest, with a little black patch behind each ear. The panther is a powerful animal, as well as dangerous, hut when captured as a cub can be easily domesticated and will he good until he is about two years old. The pioneers shot them and captured many in panther- and bear-traps. The pelts sold for from one to twelve dollars. The catamount, or bey lynx, was a species of the cat, had tufts on the ears, a cat head, lout; bodied, three or four feet Ion;;, short-legged, big-footed, and mottled in color. The fur was valu- able. The lynx is sometimes mistaken for the panther. The Longs, Vastbinders, and other noted hunters in Jefferson County killed many a panther. A law was enacted in 1X00 giving a bounty of eight dollars for the " head" of each "rinvii wolf or panther killed, and the "pelts," bringing a good price for fur. stimulated these hunters greatly to do their best in trapping, hunting, and watching the dens of these dangerous animals. The bounty on the head of a wolf pup was three dollars. The bounty on the head of a panther whelp was four dollars. The county commissioners would cut the ears off these heads and give an order on the county treasurer for the bounty money. A panther's pelt sold for about four dollars. On one occasion a son of Bill Lous;', Jackson by name, boldly entered a panther's den and shot the animal by the light of bis glowing eyes. In [833, Jacob and Peter \ astbinder found a panther's den on lioonc's Mountain, now Klk County, They killed one, the dogs killed two, and these hunters caught a cub, which they kept a year and then sold it to a showman. In 1819 the I egislature enacted a law giving twelve dollars for a full-grown panther's head and live dollars for the head of a cub. " Nothing among the wild beasts strikes such terror to the heart of the settler as the cry of the wolf at a lonely spot at night. The pioneers km w very well that on a lonely forest trail at any hour of the day or night the other animals could be frightened by a slight bluff. No other animals go in packs. The wolf would not attack were he alone. It is when reinforced that he is a 1 m HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA terror, and then the howl of the wolf is the most blood-curdling of all the noises of the night in the woods. Where he is bent upon attacking a traveller he announces it by a howl from one quarter. The signal is answered from another direction. Another piercing howl comes from somewhere else. The cry of the wolf echoes and rolls from hill to hill in marvellous multiplication of sounds. A small pack of half a dozen wolves will make the mountain seem alive for miles. The cry is anything but reassuring to the timid soul who is shut in safely by the fire of his forest cabin. It is enough to chill the marrow of the man who for the first time hears it when he is in the unprotected open. The wolf is vicious and savage. Hunger gives him any courage that he possesses, and that sort of courage drives him to desperation, That is why the wolf is such a ferocious enemy when once he is aroused to attack man. Death by starvation is no more alluring to him than death by the hand of his possible prey." The pioneer hunter would sometimes raise a wolf pup. This pup would be a dog in every sense of the word until about three years old, and then he would be a wolf in all his acts. " One hundred years ago wolves were common in Northern and Western Pennsylvania. In the middle of the last century large packs of them roamed over a great portion of the State. To the farmer they were an unmitigated nuisance, preying on his sheep, and even waylaying belated travellers in the forest. After the State was pretty well settled these beasts disappeared very suddenly. Many people have wondered as to the cause of their quick extinc- tion. Rev. Joseph Doddridge in his ' Notes' ascribes it to hydrophobia, and he relates several instances where settlers who were bitten by wolves perished miserably from that terrible disease." I have listened in my bed to the dismal howl of the wolf, and for the benefit of those who never heard a wolf's musical soiree I will state here that one wolf leads off in a long tenor, and then the whole pack joins in the chorus. Wolves were so numerous that, in the memory of persons still living in Brookville (1898), it was unsafe or dangerous to permit a girl of ten or twelve years to go a mile in the country unaccompanied. In those days the Longs have shot as many as five and six without moving in their tracks, and with a single-barrelled, muzzle-loading rifle, too. The sure aim and steady and courageous hearts of noted hunters made it barely possible for the early settlers to live in these woods, and even then they had to exercise " eternal vigilance." In 1835, Bill Long, John and Jack Kahle captured eight wolves in a " den" near the present town of Sigel. Wolf-pelts sold for three dollars. Wild-cats were numerous ; occasionally a cat is killed in the county yet, even within the borough limits. One of the modes of Mike Long and other pioneer hunters on the Clarion River was to ride a horse with a cow-bell on through the woods over the deer- paths. The deer were used to cow-bells and would allow the horse to come 120 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA in full view. When the deer were looking at the horse, the hunter usually shot one or two. Every pioneer had one or more cow-bells ; they were made of copper and Pennsylvania hear iron. They were not cast, but were cut, hammered, and riveted into shape, and were of different sizes. The black bear was always common in Pennsylvania, and especially was this so in our wild portion of the State. He was a great road-maker and king of the beasts. The earlv settlers in the northwest killed everv vear in the HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA aggregate hundreds of these bears. Bear-skins wore worth from three to five dollars apiece. Reuben lliekox. of Perry Township, Jefferson County, as late as 1822, killed over titty hears in three months. Captain Hunt, a Muney Indian, living in what is now Brookville, killed sixty-eight in one winter. In 1S31, Mrs. McGhee, living in what is now Washington Township, heard her pigs squealing, and exclaimed, "The hears are at the hogs!" A hired man, Philip McCafferty, and herself each picked up an axe and drove the hears away. One pig had been killed. Every fall and winter hears are still killed in our forests. Peter Yasthinder when a boy shot a big bear through the window of his father's house, and this, too, by moonlight. This bear had a scap of bees in his arms, and was walking- away with them. The flesh of the bear was prized by the pioneer. He was fond of bear meal. Bears weighing- four or rive hundred pounds rendered a large amount of oil. which the pioneer housewife used in cooking. Trapping and pens were resorted to by the pioneer hunters to catch the panther, the bear, the wolf, and other game. The bear-pen was built in a triangular shape of heavy logs. It was in shape and build to work just like a wooden box rabbit-trap. The bear steel- trap weighed about twenty-five pounds. It had double springs and spikes sharpened in the jaws. A chain was also attached. This was used as a panther-trap, too. " The hear was always hard to trap. The cautious brute would never put his paw into visible danger, even when allured by the most tempting bait If the animal was caught, it had to be accomplished by means of the most cunning stratagem. One successful method of catching this cautious beast was to conceal a strong trap in the ground covered with leaves or earth, and suspend a quarter of a sheep or deer from a tree above the hidden steel. The bait being just beyond the reach of the bear, would cause the animal to stand on his hind feet and try to get the meat. While thus rampant, the unsuspecting brute would sometimes step into the trap and throw the spring. The trap was not fastened to a stake or tree, but attached to a long chain, furnished with two or three grab-hooks, which would catch to brush and logs, and thus prevent the game from getting away." An old settler informs me that in the fall of the year bears became very fat from the daily feasts they had on beechnuts and chestnuts, and the occa- sional raids they made on the old straw beehives and ripe cornfields. In pioneer times the bear committed considerable destruction to the com. He would seat himself on his haunches in a corner of the field next to the woods. and then, collecting- a sheaf of the cornstalks at a time, would there and then enjoy a sumptuous repast. NA olves usually hunt in the night, so they, too. were trapped and penned. The wolf-pen was built of small round logs about eight or ten feet high and narrowed at the top. Into this pen the hunter threw his bait, and the wolf HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA could easily jump in, but he was unable to jump out. The wolf-trap was on the principle of the rat-trap, only larger, the jaws being a foot or two long. Wolves would welcome a domestic dog in their pack, but a dog that clung to man, their enemy, they would tear to pieces. Glutton or sloth wolverines were very rare in the northwest. They were to be found in the most northern tier. The only county reported to have these animals in the northwest was Potter County. Joseph Nelson is reported to have caught one in a trap in 1858, and one is reported to have been killed by J. P. Nelson in 1863. Wolverines were found in Mercer County in 1846. Trappers rated the fox the hardest animal to trap, the wolf next, and the otter third. To catch a fox they often made a bed of chaff and got him to lie in it or fool around it, the trap being set under the chaff. Or a trap was set at a place where several foxes seemed to stop for a certain purpose. Or a fox could be caught sometimes by putting a bait a little way out in the water, and then putting a pad of moss between the bait and the shore, with the trap hid under the moss. The fox, not liking to wet his feet, would step on the moss and be caught. I HE AMERICAN ELK — DEER AND DEER COMBATS HUNTERS, PROFESSIONAL AND NON-PROFESSIONAL STALKING AND BELLING DEER OTHER ANIMALS, ETC. The American elk is the largest of all the deer kind. Bill Long and other noted hunters killed elks in these woods seven feet high. The early hunters found their range to be from Elk Licks on Spring Creek, that empties into the Clarion River at what is now called " Hallton," up to and around Beech Bottom. In winter these heavy-footed animals always "yarded" themselves on the " Beech Bottom" for protection from their enemies, — the light-footed wolves. The elk's trot was heavy, clumsy, and swinging, and would break through an ordinary crust on the snow; but in the summer-time he would throw his great antlers back on his shoulders and trot through the thickets at a Nancy Planks gait, even over fallen timber five feet high. One of his reasons for locating on the Clarion River was that he was personally a great bather and enjoyed spending his summers on the banks and the sultry days in bathing in that river. Bill Long presented a pair of enormous elk-horns, in 1838, to John Smith, of Brookville, who used them as a sign for the Jefferson Inn. In looking over old copies of the Elk County Advocate I find advertise- ments something like this: "Hunters. — Several young fawns arc wanted, for which a liberal price will be given. Enquire at this office." In some of the old papers Caleb Dill, of Ridgway, advertised for elks: " For a living male elk one year old I will give $50; two years old. $75; 123 HlsiVKY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA three years old, $ioo; and for a fawn three months old. $35." Elks were easily tamed, " The common Virginia white-tailed door, once exceedingly numerous in the northwest is still to be found in limited numbers. This deer when loping or running elevates its tail, showing' the long- white hair of the lower surface. It the animal is struck by a bullet the tail is almost invariably tucked elose to the ham, concealing the white. AH deer kind who have branch horns, with one exception, shod their antlers annually every February or March, and have them completely restored by August of the same year. " rite American deer, common door, or just deer, is peculiar to Penn- s\ vania. It diners from the three well-known European species, — the red deer, the fallow deer, and the pretty little roe. Of these threw the red deer is the only one which can stand comparison with the American. " The bucks have antlers peculiar in many cases, double sharp, erect - v,s or tines rhe doe lacks those antlers. The antlers on the bucks are shed and renewed annually. Soon after the old antlers fall, swellings, like tumors covered with plush, appear; these increase in size and assume the shape of the antlers with astonishing rapidity, until the new antlers have .".ted their full sire, when they present the appearance of an ordinary pair . itlers covered with fine velvet. The covering, or 'velvet." is tilled with . --. s, which supply material for the new growth. The furrows in the co nplete antler show the course of the circulation during its formation, and no sonnet > the building process completed than the * velvet" begins to wither op, Now the buck realizes that he is fully armed and equipped for the fierce joustings which must ... the possession of the does of his fa> gt \ busies ' self in testing his new weapons and in putting a oUsht 1 even inch of them. He bangs and rattles his horn dag g< - stc . . ees and thrusts and swings them into dense, strong shrubs, served di g s honing-up process he frequently seems a dis- reput '-'. to b >g beast, with h g - samersofbk - tained ' velvet' hang g shtxl antlers with points as sharp as knives. When the last nib has been g - . ■• . ry beam and tine is furbished thor- g . . - . ■. w Doing with the K\st of them. He trails the c te covers an< along .. runways unceasingly; h. 5 - g asks w airer chance than to me. i . as himself. H« neets . ong . trygn tuck s on the warpath, and when the pair fall foul of each other ther. > g ... x .... conxbat, in which one gladiator must be . g ... •. . . . . . . ight savag* ccas . two g 3 .... - managing to get their an: . - sect . .. . s. . .'.- must perish. Twv ... acks thus xke< head have he* ng as : . .1 in an open glade, where the HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA scarred surface of the ground and the crushed and riven shrubs about told an eloquent tale of a wild tourney long sustained, and of miserable failing efforts of the wearied conqueror to free himself of his dead foe." — Outing. The Yastbinders, Longs, and all the early hunters found just such skulls in these woods. Artificial deer-licks were numerous, and made in this way : A hunter would take a coffee-sack and put in it about half a bushel of common salt, and then suspend the sack high on the branch of a tree. When the rain descended the salt water would drip from the sack to the ground, making the earth saline and damp, and to this spot the deer would come, paw and lick the earth. The hunter usually made his blind in this way : A piece of board had two auger- holes bored in each end, and with ropes through these holes was fastened to a limb on a tree. On this board the hunter seated himself to await his game. Deer usually visit licks from about 2 a.m. until daylight. As a rule, deer feed in the morning and evening and ramble around all night seeking a thicket for rest and seclusion in the daytime. " For ways that were dark and for tricks that were vain" the old pioneer was always in it. When real hungry for a venison steak he would often use a tame deer as a decoy, in this way : Fawns were captured when small, tamed, reared, and permitted to run at large with the cattle. A life insurance was " written" on this tame deer by means of a bell or a piece of red flannel fastened around the neck. Tame deer could be trained to follow masters, and when taken to the woods usually fed around and attracted to their society wild deer, which could then be shot by the secreted hunter. At the discharge of a gun the tame deer invariably ran up to her master. Some of these does were kept for five or six years. Deer generally have two fawns at a time, in May, and sometimes three. Love of home is highly developed in the deer. You cannot chase him away from it. He will circle round and round, and every evening come to where he was born. He lives in about eight or ten miles square of his birthplace. In the wilds of swamps and mountains and laurel-brakes he has his " roads," beaten paths, and " crossings," like the civilized and cross roads of man. When hounded by dogs he invariably strikes for a creek or river, and it is his practice to take one of these " travelled paths," which he never leaves nor forgets, no matter how circuitous the path may be. Certain crossings on these paths where the deer will pass are called in sporting parlance " stands." These " stands" never change, unless through the clearing of timber or by settlement the old landmarks are destroyed. " The deer loves for a habitation to wander over hills, through thick swamps or open woods, and all around is silence save what noise is made by the chirping birds and wild creatures like himself. He loves to feed a little on the lowlands and then browse on the high ground. It takes him a long time to make a meal, and no matter how much of good food there may be in 125 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA any particular place, he will not remain there to thoroughly satisfy his appe- tite. He must roam about and eat over a great deal of territory. When he has browsed and fed till he is content, he loves to pose behind a clump of bushes and watch and listen. At such times he stands with head up as stanch as a setter on point, and if one watches him closely not a movement of his muscles will be detected. He sweeps the country before him with his keen eyes, and his sharp ears will be disturbed by the breaking of a twig anywhere within gunshot. Deer and fawn ill Mahoning Creek " Sparkling and bright, in its liquid light, was the water.' 1 " When the day is still the deer is confident he can outwit the enemy who tries to creep up on him with shot-gun or rifle. But when the wind blows, he fears to trust himself in those places where he may easily be approached by man, so he hides in the thickets and remains very quiet until night. To kill a deer on a still day, when he is not difficult to find, the hunter must match the deer in cunning and must possess a marked degree of patience. The deer, conscious of his own craftiness, wanders slowly through the woods ; but he does not go far before he stops, and like a statue he stands, and can only be made out by the hunter with a knowledge of his ways and a trained eye. 126 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " The deer listens for a footfall. Should the hunter be anywhere within the range of his ear and step on a twig, the deer is off with a bound. He does not stop until he has reached what he regards as a safe locality in which to look and listen again. A man moving cautiously behind a clump of bushes anywhere within the sweep of his vision will start him off on the run, for he is seldom willing to take even a small chance against man. Should the coast be clear, the deer will break his pose, browse and wander about again, and finally make his bed under the top of a fallen tree or in some little thicket. " To capture the deer by the still-hunting method, the hunter must know his ways and outwit him at his own game. First of all, the still-hunter wears soft shoes, and when he puts his foot on the ground he is careful not to set it on a twig which will snap and frighten any deer that may be in the vicinity. The still-hunter proceeds at once to put into practice the very system which the deer has taught him. Pie strikes a pose. He listens and looks. A deer standing like a statue two hundred yards away is not likely to be detected by an inexperienced hunter, but the expert is not deceived. He has learned to look closely into the detail of the picture before him, and he will note the dif- ference between a set of antlers and a bush. " The brown sides of a deer are very indistinct when they have for a background a clump of brown bushes. But the expert still-hunter sits quietly on a log and peers into the distance steadily, examining all details before him. Occasionally his fancy will help him to make a deer's haunch out of a hump on a tree, or he will fancy he sees an antler mixed with the small branches of a bush, but his trained eye finally removes all doubt. But he is in no hurry. He is like the deer, patient, keen of sight, and quick of hearing. He knows that if there are any deer on their feet in his vicinity he will get his eyes on them if he takes the time, or if he waits long enough he is likely to see them on the move. At all events, he must see the deer first. Then he must get near enough to him to bring him down with his rifle." — Outing. Deer will not run in a straight line. They keep their road, and it is this habit they have of crossing hills, paths, woods, and streams, almost invariably within a few yards of the same spot, that causes their destruction by the hounding and belling methods of farmers, lumbermen, and other non-profes- sionals. Deer-licks were numerous all over this county. A " deer-lick" is a place where salt exists near the surface of the earth. The deer find these spots and work them during the night, generally in the early morning. One of the methods of our early settlers was to sit all night on or near a tree, " within easy range of a spring or a ' salt-lick,' and potting the unsuspecting deer which may happen to come to the lick in search of salt or water. This requires no more skill than an ability to tell from which quarter the breeze is blowing and to post one's self accordingly, and the power to hit a deer when the gun is fired from a dead rest." "' Belling deer" was somewhat common. I have tried my hand at it. 127 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA The mode was this : Three men were located at proper distances apart along a trail or runway near a crossing. The poorest marksman was placed so as to have the first shot, and the two good ones held in reserve for any accidental attack of " buck fever" to the persons on the first and second stands. An experienced woodsman was then sent into a laurel thicket, carrying with him a cow-bell ; and when this woodsman found and started a deer, he followed it, ringing the bell. The sound of this bell was notice to those on the " stand" of the approach of a deer. When the animal came on the jump within shooting distance of the first stand, the hunter there posted would bleat like a sheep ; the deer would then come to a stand-still, when the hunter could take good aim at it; the others had to shoot at the animal running. The buck or doe rarely escaped this gauntlet. " The deer was always a coveted prize among hunters. No finer dish than venison ever graced the table of king or peasant. No more beautiful trophy has ever adorned the halls of the royal sportsman or the humble cabin of the lowly hunter on the wild frontier than the antlers of the fallen buck. The sight of this noble animal in his native state thrills with admiration alike the heart of the proudest aristocrat and the rudest backwoodsman. In the days when guns were rare and ammunition very costly, hunters set stakes for deer, where the animal had been in the habit of jumping into or out of fields. A piece of hard timber, two or three inches thick and about four feet long, was sharpened into a spear shape, and then driven firmly into the ground at the place where the deer were accustomed to leap over the log fence. The stake was slanted toward the fence, so as to strike the animal in the breast as it leaped into or out of the fields. Several of these deadly wooden spears were often set at the same crossing, so as to increase the peril of the game. If the deer were seen in the field, a scare would cause them to jump over the fence with less caution, and thus often a buck would impale himself on one of the fatal stakes, when but for the sight of the hunter the animal might have escaped unhurt. Thousands of deer were killed or crippled in this way gen- erations ago." — Outing. A deer-skin sold in those days for seventy-five to ninety cents. Of the original wild animals still remaining in Northwestern Pennsylvania, there are the fox, raccoon, porcupine, musk-rat, martin, otter, mink, skunk, opossum, woodchuck, rabbit, squirrel, mole, and mouse. Fifty years ago the woods were full of porcupines. On the defensive is the only way he ever fights. When the enemy approaches he rolls up into a little wad, sharp quills out, and he is not worried about how many are in the besieging party. One prick of his quills will satisfy any assailant. When he sings his blood-curdling song, it is interpreted as a sign of rain. " In fact, when a porcupine curls himself up into the shape of a ball he is safe from the attack of almost any animal, for his quills are long enough to prevent his enemy from getting near enough to bite him. 128 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " Their food is almost entirely vegetable, consisting of the inner bark of trees, tender roots, and twigs. They are fond, however, of the insects and worms found in the bark of pines and hemlocks. " Provided with powerful jaws and long, sharp teeth, the porcupine gnaws with great speed, stripping the bark from an old tree as though he were provided with weapons of steel. Often he seems to tear in a spirit of sheer destructiveness, without pausing to eat the bark or to search for insects. This is more especially true with the old males. " The porcupine is not a wily beast. He establishes paths or runways through the forest, and from these he never deviates if he can help it. What is more, he is exceedingly greedy, and stops to investigate every morsel in his way. " A trap set in the middle of a runway and baited with a turnip rarely fails to catch him." The hunters liked them cooked. Porcupine The wholesale prices of furs in 1804 were: Otter, one dollar and a half to four dollars ; bear, one to three dollars and a half ; beaver, one to two dollars and a half ; martin, fifty cents to one dollar and a half ; red fox, one dollar to one dollar and ten cents ; mink, twenty to forty cents ; muskrat, twenty-five to thirty cents ; raccoon, twenty to fifty cents ; deer-pelts, seventy- five cents to one dollar. The pioneer hunter carried his furs and pelts to the Pittsburg market in canoes, where he sold them to what were called Indian traders from the East. In later years traders visited the cabins of our hunters in the northwest, and bartered for and bought the furs and pelts from the hunters or from our merchants. Old William Yastbinder, a noted hunter and trapper in this wilderness, and pioneer in Jefferson County, was quite successful in trapping wolves one season on Hunt's Run, about the year 1819 or 1820; but for some un- known reason his success suddenly stopped, and he could not catch a single 9 i^9 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA wolf. He then suspected the Indians of robbing his traps. So one morning bright and early he visited his traps and found no wolf, but did find an Indian track. He followed the Indian trail and lost it. On looking around he heard a voice from above, and looking up he saw an Indian sitting in the fork of a tree, and the Indian said, " Now, you old rascal, you go home, Ol 1 Bill, or Indian shoot." With the Indian's flint-lock pointed at him, Vastbinder immediately became quite hungry and started home for an early breakfast. Bill Long often sold to pedlers fifty deer-pelts at a single sale. He had hunting shanties in all sections and quarters of this wilderness. In 1850 the late John Du Bois, founder of Du Bois City, desired to locate some lands near Boone's Mountain. So he took Bill Long with him, and the two took up a residence in a shanty of Long's near the head-waters of Rattle- snake Run, in what is now Snyder Township. After four or five days' rusti- cating, the provisions gave out, and Du Bois got hungry. Long told him there was nothing to eat here and for him to leave for Bundy's. On his way from the shanty to Bundy's Mr. Du Bois killed five deer. George Smith, a Washington Township early hunter, who is still (1898) living in the wilds of Elk County, has killed in this wilderness fourteen pan- thers, five hundred bears, thirty elks, three thousand deer, five hundred cata- mounts, five hundred wolves, and six hundred wild-cats. He has killed seven deer in a day and as many as five bears in a clay. Mr. Smith has followed hunting as a profession for sixty years. CATAMOUNT 1SEY LYNX The catamount is larger than the wild-cat. They have been killed in this forest six and seven feet long from tip of nose to end of tail. They have tufts on their ear-tips, and are often mistaken for panthers. MINK " The mink is an expert at swimming and diving, and able to remain long under water, where it pursues and catches fish, which it frequently destroys in large numbers. " The mink does much damage to poultry, especially chickens and ducks. Various kinds of wild birds, particularly ground-nesting species, crayfish, frogs, and reptiles are included in the dietary of the mink ; and it is also learned from the testimony of different writers and observers that the eggs of domestic fowls are often taken by these nocturnal plunderers. " The average weight of an adult mink is about two pounds, and for an animal so small it is astonishing to observe its great strength." WILD-CAT — BOB-CAT " The wild-cat inhabits forests, rock}' ledges, and briery thickets, but its favorite place is in old slashings and bark peelings, where in the impenetrable 130 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA and tangled recesses it is comparatively safe from pursuit, and is also able to prey upon many varieties of animals which have a permanent or temporary residence in such unfrequented wilds. " The wild-cat subsists entirely on a flesh diet, and the damage this species does in destroying poultry, lambs, and young pigs of farmers who reside in the sparsely settled mountainous regions is not in any degree compensated by the destruction of other small wild animals which molest the farmer's crops or his poultry." Wild-cats hunt both by day and by night. A whole family of them will hunt and run down a deer, especially on crusted snow. " The wild-cat usually makes its domicile or nest in a hollow tree or log. The nest is well lined with leaves, moss, and lichens, called commonlv ' hair Wild-cat moss.' The nest is also sometimes found in rocky ledges and caves. From two to four constitute a litter. It is stated that the young are brought forth in the middle of May. Wild-cats may be caught in traps baited with rabbits, chicken, grouse, or fresh meat." THE RIVER OTTER Our otter was about four feet long, as I recollect him, very heavy and strong; usually weighed about twenty-three pounds, was web-footed, a fisher by occupation, and could whip or kill any dog. On land he had his beaten paths. Big fish eat little fish, little fish eat shrimps, and shrimps eat mud. 131 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA Otters ate all kinds of fish, but preferred the speckled trout. Like other animals, otters had their plays and playgrounds. They were fond of strength contests, two or more pulling at the end of a stick something like our " square pull." They made slides, and frolicked greatly in winter time, sliding down hill. They made their slides in this wise : By plunging into the water, then running up a hill and letting the water drip from them to freeze on the slide. They lived in excavations on the creek or river bank close to the water. They were hunted and trapped by men for their pelts. John Long, a noted hunter, told me that the most terrific contest he ever had with a wild animal was with an otter near Brookville. THE FOX In pioneer times we had in this wilderness the gray, the cross, and the red fox. The gray is now extinct in the northwest, as he can only live in solitude or in a forest. The red fox still lingers in our civilization. Six varieties of foxes are said to be found in the United States, and it is claimed they are all cousins of the wolf. But notwithstanding this relationship, the wolf used to hunt and eat all the foxes he could catch. The wolf's persistence in hunting, and endurance in the race, enabled him at times to overcome the rleetness of the fox. The gray and red fox were about three and one-half feet long. The red fox is the most daring, cunning-, and intellectual of all the varieties. You cannot tame him. The term " foxy" originated in connection with him. The red fox has from four to eight puppies in April, and these, like little dogs, are born blind. The red fox has the astounding faculty of creating deep-laid schemes to deceive and thwart his enemies. He is the only animal that will match his intelligence against man. and the onlv way man HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA can best him is by poison. It was not unusual for the red fox to back-track in such a way while racing for his life as to follow the hunter, and turn the tables from being hunted to being the hunter. He would even feign death — allow himself to be kicked or handled, only waiting and watching for an opportunity to escape. His tricks to outwit man were many and would fill a Red fox volume. The fox was very fond of ground-hog eating. Like the bear he would dig them out. His presence in a ground-hog neighborhood created great consternation. All animals have a cry of alarm, — danger, — and if ob- served by any ground-hog he always gave this cry for his neighbors. WEASEL Both sexes have the power to emit a fluid nearlv as offensive as that of the polecat. " A glance at the physiognomy of the weasels would suffice to betray their character ; the teeth are almost of the highest known raptorial character ; the jaws are worked by enormous masses of muscles covering all the sides of the skull ; the forehead is low and the nose is sharp ; the eyes are small, pene- trating, cunning, and glitter with an angry green light. There is something peculiar, moreover, in the way that this fierce face surmounts a body extraor- dinarily wiry, lithe, and muscular. It ends a remarkably long and slender neck in such a way that it may be held at right angle with the axis of the latter. When the animal is glancing around with the neck stretched up and 133 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA the flat triangular head bent forward and swaying from one side to the other, we catch the likeness in a moment — it is the image of a serpent. " His coat changes with the seasons, and while in winter we find it white tinted with sulphur yellow, in summer it is on upper parts of a dark brown not unlike the coloring of a mink ; on its under parts it is ' white almost in- variably tinged with sulphury yellow' (Coues). The tail partakes of the color- of the upper parts, except the bushy end, which, in summer and winter alike, is black. Its legs are short, with slender feet, and are covered all over with fur in winter, but in summer the pads are generally visible. " Their homes are frequently to be found in a decayed tree-stump and under rocks." He can climb trees with ease. " The poultry-yard is frequently visited and his apparently insatiable desire for rapine is most clearly shown while on these visits. One chicken will satisfy his appetite, but after that is gratified he does not leave; he kills and slays without mercy all the remainder of the poor frightened chickens, until there are none left and not until then does he leave the scene of carnage. " He sucks the eggs also, leaving in some instances the unlucky farmer who has unwillingly and unwittingly been his host completely routed as regards his efforts in the poultry line." He also feeds on rats and mice. THE OPOSSUM The opossum is an American animal, about the size of a very large cat, eight or ten pounds in weight, twenty inches long, with a prehensile tail, in addition, of fifteen inches. There are said to be three varieties, — viz., the Mex- ican, Florida, and the Virginia. The last variety is the one found in North- western Pennsylvania. They are very prolific, having three litters a year, — viz., in March, May, and July, of twelve to sixteen at a time. At birth they are naked, blind, and about a half inch long, the mother depositing each one with her hands in a pouch or pocket in her abdomen, and there the little creature sucks the mother and sleeps for about eight weeks. When full- grown they are good tree climbers, making great use of their tail in swinging from tree to tree and for other purposes. He is a dull creature, easily domes- ticated, and the only intelligence he exhibits is when, like the spider and potato-bug, he feigns death. At this he is truly an adept, suffering great abuse waiting for a chance to bite or run. All carnivorous animals eat smaller ones, so the opossum's enemies are numerous, and he in turn is omnivorous and carnivorous, eating everything he can catch that is smaller than himself. SQUIRRELS The intelligence of some animals is amazing. Many of them seem to study us as we study them. The squirrel knew that man was his most dan- gerous enemy, and that man killed him and his race for food. In pioneer times we had several varieties : the principal ones were the black, twenty- 1.34 OPOSSU M HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA two inches long; the gray, eighteen inches long; and the little red, or Hudson Bay, about eight inches long. The red was a bold little beast, liked to be close to man, full of vice and few virtues. He was industrious in season and out. The black and gray were lazy. Whenever a squirrel wanted to cross a creek or river, and didn't want to swim, he sailed over on a piece of bark or wood, using his brushy tail as a sail and to steer by. The skunk did likewise. A single pair of squirrels would inhabit the same tree for years. They had three or four young at a litter. The red or Hudson Bay squirrel was the king of all the squirrels in this forest; although not more than eight inches long, he was the complete master of all the squirrels. The black and gray were as afraid of him as death. With an intellect surprising, he would Squirrel chase and capture the black and gray and castrate them, then, in exultation, scold or chickaree to his heart's content. In pioneer times, every seven or eight years, at irregular intervals in summer, a great army of black and gray squirrels invaded this wilderness from the northwest ; a host that no man could number. They were travelling east in search of food. Hundreds of them were killed daily by other animals and by man. In these pioneer times crows and squirrels were such a menace to the crops of the farmer in Western Pennsylvania that an act was passed by the Legislature to encourage the killing of squirrels in certain parts of this Commonwealth. The pioneer act was passed March 4. 1807, giving a bounty 135 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA of three cents for each crow scalp and one com and a halt for each squirrel scalp; these scalps to be received in lieu of money for taxes, if delivered to the county treasurer before the tst day of November of each year. The first act covered Bedford, Washington, Westmoreland. Armstrong'. Indiana. Fayette, and Green Counties. This law was extended in tSii, on the 1,5th of February, to Butler, Franklin, Mercer, Venango, Somerset. Lycoming. Crav tord. and Erie Counties, One of tlie cntest things that the red squirrel did was to tap sugar-trees for the sap. He would chisel with his teeth a trough on the top of a limb. and as fast as the trough would till with the water he would return and drink it. In the fall of the year a squirrel would hide acorns and nuts outside of his nest, where others of his kind could not easily find the fruit, then in mid- winter, whet) he became hungry, he would leave his eosey nest and go a long- distance through the snow to the identical spot where he had buried his fruit. dig it up, and enjoy his meal. XAVVK.W LIFE OF SOME OF OCR WILD ANO DOMESTIC AMY. \ - 1 . - Vo&tS 50 Hog so . *er jo Wolf 15 Panther as Cat 15 amount 13 \ 15 \\!o v )og to Co\s 20 Sheep .0 l lorse jo Squirrel f Bear v \ - l\x-r v V.1S1V5 " It a bird's nest chance to be before thee in the way in any tree, 01 the ground, whether they be young ones, oi eggs, and the dam sitting- upon the young, or upon the eggs, thou shah not take the dam with the young: - anywise let the dam g. and rake the young to thee; that it be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days." — Dent. \xii. With th« ,\.. the wild turkey and raven, which are now about . \. . we have almost the .-..-. . irds here that lived and sang in this wilderness when the Barnel s setth i Creek. Some of these ginal birds are m- sea ... We have one new bird. — viae, the English . . ■ . ig birds it might be propel give a few sketches 3 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA THE RAVEN \ very handsome bird, numerous here in pioneer times, now extinct in [efferson County, but siill to be Eound in about twenty northern counties of the Stale. lie built his nest on the tallest pine : trees. lie belonged to the crow family, lie luul a wonderful intellect, lie could learn to talk cor- rectly, ami was a very apt scholar; he was easily tamed, and would follow like a dog. lie lived to an extreme old age, probably one hundred years, lie was blue-black, like the common crow, lie made his home in the solitude of the forest, preferring the wildest and most hilly sections. In such regions, owing to his intellect and strength, his supremacy was never questioned, unless by the eaffle. lie understood fire-arms and could count five. In the fall of the year he would feast on the saddles of venison the hunters would hang on a tree, and the Longs adopted this method to save their meat : Take a small piece of muslin, wet it, and rub it all over with gunpowder; sharpen a stick and pin this cloth to the venison. The raven and crow would smell this powder and keep away from the venison. He was a mischievous bird of rare intelligence. He looked inquiringly at you, as if he understood you. When full grown he measured twenty-two or twenty-six inches from tip of nose to end of tail. In Greenland white ones have been seen. The eggs were from two to seven, colored, and about two inches long. Till-: " BALD EAGLE, OUR NATIONAL EMBLEM The name " Bald" which is given to this species is not applied because the head is bare, hut because the feathers of the neck and head of adults are HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA pure white. In Northwestern Pennsylvania, as well as throughout the United States, we had but two species of eagles, the bald and the golden. The " Black," " Gray," and " Washington" eagles are but the young of the bald eagle. Three years, it is stated, are required before this species assumes the adult plumage. The bald eagle is still found in Pennsylvania at all seasons ^K '■*, Bald eagle of the year. I have seen some that measured eight feet from tip to tip of wing. " The nest, a bulky affair, built usually on a large tree, mostly near the water, is about four or five feet in diameter. It is made up chiefly of large sticks, lined inside with grass, leaves, etc. The eggs, commonly two, rarely three, are white, and they measure about three by two and a half inches. A favorite article of food with this bird is fish, which he obtains mainly by strategy and rapine. Occasionally, however, according to different observers, the bald eagle will do his own fishing. Geese and brant form their favorite food, and the address displayed in their capture is very remarkable. The poor victim has apparently not the slightest chance for escape. The eagle's 138 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA flight, ordinarily slow and somewhat heavy, becomes, in the excitement of pursuit, exceedingly swift and graceful, and the fugitive is quickly over- taken. When close upon its quarry the eagle suddenly sweeps beneath it, and turning back downward, thrusts its powerful talons up into its breast. A brant or duck is carried off bodily to the nearest marsh or sand-bar. But a Canada goose is too heavy to be thus easily disposed of; the two great birds fall together to the water beneath, while the eagle literally tows his prize along the surface until the shore is reached. In this way one has been known to drag a large goose for nearly half a mile. " The bald eagle occasionally devours young pigs, lambs, and fawns. Domestic fowls, wild turkeys, hares, etc., are also destroyed by this species. Wild turkey I have knowledge of at least two of these birds which have killed poultry (tame ducks and turkeys) along the Susquehanna River. Sometimes, like the golden eagle, this species will attack raccoons and skunks. I once found two or three spines of a porcupine in the body of an immature bald eagle. The golden eagle occurs in this State as a winter visitor. The only species with which it is sometimes compared is the bald eagle in immature dress. The two birds, however, can be distinguished at a glance, if you remember that the golden eagle has the tarsus (shin) densely feathered to the toes, while, on the other hand, the bald eagle has a bare shin. The golden eagle breeds in high mountainous regions and the Arctic countries. 139 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " Golden eagles are rather rare in this region, hence their depreciations to poultry, game, and live-stock occasion comparatively little loss. Domestic fowls, clucks, and turkeys especially, are often devoured ; different species of water-birds, grouse, and wild turkeys suffer chiefly among the game birds. Fawns are sometimes attacked and killed ; occasionally it destroys young pigs, and frequently many lambs are carried off by this powerful bird. Rabbits are preyed upon to a considerable extent." Of our birds, the eagle is the largest, swiftest in flight, and keenest-eyed, the humming-bird the smallest, the coot the slowest, and the owl the dullest. The spring birds, such as the bluebird, the robin, the sparrow, and the martin, were early to come and late to leave. " Migrating birds fly over distances so great that they must needs have great strength as well as great speed in flight. Bobolinks often rear their young on the shores of Lake Winnipeg, and, like true aristocrats, go to Cuba and Porto Rico to spend the winter. To do this their flight must twice cover a distance of more than two thousand eight hundred miles, or more than a fifth of the circumference of the earth, each year. " The little redstart travels three thousand miles twice a year, and the tiny humming-bird two thousand. What wonderful mechanism it is that in a stomach no larger than a pea will manufacture its own fuel from two or three slim caterpillars, a fly, a moth, or a spider, and use it with such economy as to be able to propel itself through the air during the whole night at a rate of about fifty miles per hour, and at the same time keep its own temperature at about one hundred and four degrees." I reproduce from Olive Thorne Miller's Lectures the following, — viz. : " There are matrimonial quarrels also among birds. As a rule, the female is queen of the nest, but once I saw a male sparrow assert his power. He was awfully angry, and tried to oust his spouse from a hole in a maple-tree in which they had made their home. He did drive her out at last, and absolutely divorced her, for he was back before long with a bride whom, with some trouble and a good many antics, he coaxed to accept the nest. " The female bird is the queen of the home, and usually selects the place for the nest, the male bird sometimes lending a beak in building it, but most of the time singing his sweet song to encourage his mate. " That the female is queen is shown by a little story related of a sparrow. She was hatching her eggs, and was relieved now and then by her mate while she went off for exercise and food. One day the male bird was late and the female called loudly for him. He came at last, and she gave him an unmer- ciful drubbing, which he took without a murmur. Thoroughly ashamed of himself, he sat down meekly on the eggs. " The robin is the most familiar of our birds. Running over the lawns, with head down, it suddenly grabs a worm, which it shakes as a cat does a mouse. Having swallowed it, the robin looks up with infinite pride. They 140 BLUE JAY HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA are great insect-destroyers, though they insist on having the* frliest spring peas and the first mulberries, raspberries, and grapes. The robin is the great cue my of the bird observer, giving warning of his approach to every bird in the neighboring thickets. They are brave, and will help any bird in distress. A sparrow-hawk had seized an English sparrow, one of the robin's worst enemies, but the robin attacked the hawk so viciously that it released the sparrow. In another instance a cat had captured a young robin, but was so fearlessly attacked by an older bird that she parted with her tender meal and sought shelter under the barn. " The robins make charming but most mischievous pets. I heard of a case where a child helped bring up a brood of these birds. When they were fledged they would follow her about the yard like a flock of chickens. The woodpecker, robin, and many other ', ' have very acute hearing. Did you ever see one of these birds cock his head and listen for the sounds of a worm ? " The wood-thrush or wood-robin is of a shy and retiring nature, fre- quenting thick woods and tangled undergrowth, and at daybreak and sundown this bird carols forth its thankfulness for a day begun and a day ended. The nest is made in some low tree, with little or no mud in its composition, and contains from four to six eggs. The veery, or tawny thrush, is a wonderful songster, but a most retiring bird. " The American cuckoo, unlike her English cousin, builds her own nest, and is a most devoted parent. These birds, with white breast, arc numerous here in the summer, and the male bird's courting is most grotesque. After each note he makes a profound bow to the mate, and then opens his mouth as wide as possible, as if about to emit a loud cry, but only the feeblest of ' coos' can be heard. " The blue-jay, though one of our best-known birds, is greatly misunder- stood. It is said he is always quarrelling and fighting, whereas really he is only full of frolic and mischief and is a most affectionate bird, and instead of tyrannizing over other birds is most kind to them. These birds have shared a room with a dozen others much smaller than themselves and were never known to molest them. They will defend their young against all comers, and James Russell Lowell tells a story of discovering three young birds who were held to their nest by a string, in which they had got entangled. He deter- mined to cut them loose. The old birds flew at him at first, but on learning what his object was, sat quietly within reach of him, watching the operation, and when the birds were released noisily thanked him. " A story is told of the frolicsomeness of this bird. One was seated on a fence-rail, and two kittens, having espied him, essayed to stalk him. They got up near him ; then he began playing leap-frog over those two kittens until they returned full of offended dignity to the house. The bird tried to coax them out to a game several times afterwards, but the kittens had had enough of it. 141 •/ HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA '£/ , . " The IcT bird is said to fight and drive away every bird that comes near it, but this is a libel. He attends to his own business almost wholly, and though not particularly social, is no more belligerent in the bird world than most birds are when they have nests to protect. He is a character, and interesting to watch. " The shrike, or butcher-bird, has imputed to him the worst character of any of our birds. He' is not only accused of killing birds, but of impaling them afterwards on thorns. That he does kill birds is undoubted, but only when other food is scarce, for he much prefers field-mice, grasshoppers, and other noxious insects. That he impales his prey is certain, and the reason for this is, I think, that he has such small, delicate feet that they are not strong enough to hold down a mouse or insect while he tears it to pieces. " Blackbirds are gregarious, forming blackbird cities in the tops of trees. He and the fishhawk have a strange friendship for one another, often three or four pairs building their nests in the straggling outskirts of the hawk's large nest, and they unite in protecting one another. " The red-winged blackbirds are the most independent of birds, as far as the two sexes are concerned. The dull brown-streaked females come up in flocks some time after the males have arrived, and as soon as the breeding season is over they separate again, the males keeping to the marshes, while the females seek shelter in the uplands, but always near water. They nest in marshy places, and insist on plenty of water. " The cowbird is undoubtedly the most unpopular of this class of birds, simply from the fact that no nest is built, the egg always being placed in the nest of some vireo, warbler, or sparrow, and the rearing of one of these birds means the loss of at least two song-birds, for they always smother the rightful owners. The popular idea that the foster-parents are unaware of this strange egg is doubtful. I believe it to be another instance of the great good nature of the birds to the young of any sort. The cowbirds nearly kill with overwork whatever birds they have been foisted on. " The bobolink, who later in the year becomes the reed- or rice-bird, is a handsome bird in his plumage of black and white and buff. The female is a quieter-colored bird. While breeding they are voracious insect-eaters, but when they get down to the rice marshes it is almost impossible to drive them away. A hawk seems to be the only thing they are afraid of. " The Baltimore oriole is one of the most beautiful and best-known birds. Its long, pendant, woven nest is known to every one, and it is wonderful how the bird, with only its beak, can build such a splendid structure. They have been known to use-wire in the structure of their nests. " The meadow-lark, one. of the largest of this family, is a wonderful singer, sitting on a fence-rail, carolling forth its quivering silvery song. All these birds, except the oriole, walk while hunting for food, and do not hop as most other birds do. 1-12 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " The crow does not belong to the blackbird family, but owing to his uniform I will speak about him. Much has been said against him, but the truth is that he is a most useful bird in killing mice, si t^es, lizards, and frogs, and is a splendid scavenger. He has been persecuted for so many generations that perhaps he is the most knowing and wary of birds. He will always flee from a man with a gun, though paying little attention to the ordinary pedes- trian. These birds are gregarious in their habits, and make their large, untidy nests at the tops of trees. " They have regular roosting-places, and, curious to say, it is not first come first served. As each flock reaches the sleeping-grove they sit around on the ground, and it is only when the last wanderer returns that they all rise simultaneously and scramble for nests. Crows as pets are intensely funny." A crow can be taught to talk. It is said by bird students that crows have a language distinctly their own, and, further, that some of their language can be translated into ours. I have often noticed that while a flock of crows are feeding on the ground, two sentinels are posted to give an alarm of any danger. It is said that if these sentinels fail to perform their duty, the flock will execute one or both of them. A friend of mine living about three miles from Brookville is very fond of raising crows as pets. I visited him several years ago when he had an interesting fellow. This crow used to carry tid- bits to the woods to the other crows. When the crows were getting ready to migrate in the fall they called this pet one down to the edge of the woods. After a talk thev flew on the pet and tore him to pieces. I asked Mr. McAdoo why they did that. Mr. McAdoo said he thought it was because the " pet" refused to migrate with them. Crows mate for life. A crow knows when Sunday comes. 143 ills rom 01? NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA " In July, when nesting is over, there are nq more frolicsome birds than the hiahholes, 01 wo«" Suckers riu-\ are like boVs out of school, and actually is * seem to pla\ games * s»eaeh other, one that looks very much like ' tag" being ,i favoi ite ' rhe young of those birds never cease in their clamor for food, and even when tho\ have left their hole nest the\ are fed h\ the parent birds, ' rhe feeeeker is particularly fond of apple-trees, and though v - ■ - -, i enemy of th< orchard, is in reality one of its greates ends, Thev tunnel for the worms, and it has been conclusively that trees with their holes have long outlived in usefulness the trees unvisited by these birds, 'The clown . , ; is the red-headed woodpecker, which, as well - the others shown, is a IVnnsylvanum, and nost original and quaint char- »44 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA actor. He lias been studied for many years in Ohio and many of his tricks described by Mr. Keyser, of that State. He lays up food for the winter, and in places where he lias been accustomed to depend mi the sweet beechnut foi provisions he refuses in sta) when the mil crop fails, hni .ii once betaki himself to a more inviting region. a. " The sapsucker, or yellow-breasted \ idpecker, was shown with his mate and a young one, and his characteristics defended against the charge of sap sucking, which has been made against him, Sufficient evidence from several scientific ornithologists was produced to show that the bird is insec tivorous in a great degree, and the small amount oi sap he may drink is well paid for by the insects he consumes. "The jtmco, or snowbird, is often found in flocks, except in the nesting season, Their favorite resting-place is in the roots of trees thai have been blown over. That birds are considerate of one another is certain. I know of a case where a family had fed a dock of (uncos during a long spell of cold weather. They got so tame that they would come up to the sloop In he fed; hut it was noticed thai one bird always remained on the fence and the other ones fed it. < )n examination, it was found thai the bird had an injured wing, and in case of sudden danger would not have been able to leave with the Hock ill the rush, so it was left in a place of safety ami fed. " The snow bunting is to he scon in our pari of the world only in blizzard times, or when there are snow-scurries around." Miller. oh' HAWKS The red-shouldered hawk, called by farmers and hunters the hen-hawk, nests in trees in April or May. The eggs are two to four, while and blotched, with shades of brown. The nest is built id" sticks, hark, etc. The goshawk was a regular breeder in our woods and mountains. Me is a fierce and powerful bird. The hawk feeds upon wild turkeys, pheasants, ducks, chickens, robins, rabbits, and squirrels. The cooper-hawk, known as the long-tailed chicken-hawk, is an audacious poultry thief, capturing full- grown chickens. This hawk also feeds upon pigeons, pheasants, turkeys, and squirrels. This bird nests about May in thick woods, the nest containing four or live eggs. In about twelve weeks the young are able to care for themselves. The sharp-shinned hawk bears a close resemblance to the cooper, hut feeds by choice upon young chickens and pullets, young turkeys, young rabbits, and squirrels. If a pair of these birds should nest near a cabin where chickens were being raised, in a very few days they would steal every one, When 1 was a boy large nestings of wild (passenger) pigeons in wdiat was then Jenks, Tionesta, and Ridgway Townships occurred every spring. These big roosts were occupied annually early in April each year. Millions of pigeons occupied these roosts, and they were usually four or five miles long and from one to three miles wide. No other bird was ever known to io 145 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA migrate in such numbers. They fed on beechnuts, etc. In this territory every tree would be occupied, some with fifty nests. These pigeons swept over Brookville on their migration to these roosts, and would be three or four days in passing, making the day dark at times. The croakings of the pigeons in these roosts could be heanS -• miles. 'Vili Red-sliouldered hawk The coopers and the bloody goshawk, the great-horned and barred owls, like other night wanderers, such as the wild bear, panther, wolf, wild-cat, lynx, fox, the mink, and agile weasel, all haunted these roosts and feasted upon these. pigeons. The weasel would climb the tree for the pigeons' eggs and the young, or to capture the old birds when at rest. The fox. lynx, mink, etc., depended on catching the squabs that fell from the nests. Like the buffaloes of this region, the wild pigeon is doomed. These once common birds are only to be seen occasionally. Isolated and scattered pairs still find a breeding-place in our wilds, but the immense breeding colonies that once visited Northwestern Pennsylvania will never be seen again. The extermination of the passenger pigeon has gone on so rapidly that in another 146 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA decade the birds may become a rarity. The only thing that will save the birds from this fate is the fact that they no longer resort to the more thickly populated States as breeding-places, but fly far into the woods along our northern border. Thirty years ago wild pigeons were found in- New York State, and in Elk, Warren, McKean, Pike, and Cameron Counties, Pennsyl- American goshawk vania, but now they only figure as migrants, with a few pairs breeding in the beech-woods. To give an idea of the immensity of these pigeon-roosts, I quote from the Elk Advocate as late as May, 185 1 : " The American Express Company carried in one day, over the New York and Erie Railroad, over seven tons of pigeons to the New York market, and all of these were from the west of Corning. This company alone have carried over this road from the counties of Chemung, Steuben, and Allegheny fifty-six tons of pigeons." As late as March, 1854, they came in such clouds for days that I was tired of looking at them and of the noise of the shooters. The wild pigeon lays usually one or two eggs, and both birds do their 147 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA share of the incubating". The Females occupy the nest from two p.m. until the next morning) and the males from nine or ten a.m. until two P.M. The males usually food twice each day, while the females food only during - the forenoon. The old pigeons never feed near the nesting-places, always allowing the beechmast, buds, etc., there for use in feeding their young when they come forth. The birds go many miles to feed — -often a hundred or more. s : - nned hawk Pigeons do not drink like any other bird. They drink like the ox or cow, and they nourish the young pigeon for the first week of his life from " pigeon milk." a curd-like substance secreted in the crop of both parents profusely during the incubating season. We had but two varieties. — the '* wild." and turtle-doves. Our birds ungrate every fall to Tennessee, the Carolinas, and as far south as Florida. Want of winter food is and was the cause of that migration, for those that remained surely picked up a poor living. Migrating birds return year after year to the same locality. In migrating northward in the spring, the males usually precede the females several days, but on leaving their summer scenes of love and joy for the south, the sexes act in unison. 148 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA Oi the other pioneer birds, there was the orchard-oriole, pine-grosbeak, rose-breasted grosbeak, swallow, barn-swallow, ruff-winged swallow, bank swallow, black and white warbler, chestnut-sided warbler, barn-owl, American long-eared owl, short-eared owl, screech-owl, great-horned owl, yellow-billed cuckoo, black-billed cuckoo, kingbird, crested flycatcher, phcebe-bird, wood- pewee. least flycatcher, ruffed grouse (pheasant, or partridge), quail, also Wild pigeon known as the bob-white, marsh-hawk, sparrow-hawk, pigeon-hawk, fish-hawk, red-tailed hawk. American ruff-legged hawk, horned grebe, loon, hooded merganser, wood-duck, buff-headed duck, red-headed duck, American bittern, least bittern, blue heron, green heron, black-crowned night-heron. Virginia Grouse or Pheasant rail. Carolina rail, American coot. American woodcock. Wilson's snipe, least sandpiper, killdeer plover, belted kingfisher, turtle-dove, turkey-buzzard, whip- poorwill. nighthawk, ruby-throated humming-bird, blue-jay. bobolink, or reed- or rice-bird, purple grackle, cowbird (cow-bunting), red-winged blackbird, American grosbeak, red-poll. American goldfinch, or yellow-bird, towhee- 149 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA bunting', cardinal or redbird, indigo bunting, scarlet tanager, cedar- or cherry- bird, butcher bird, or great northern scarlet tanager, red-eyed vireo, American redstart, cootbird, brown thrush, bluebird, house-wren, wood-wren, white- breasted nuthatch, chickadee, golden-crowned knight \( J&§> \ vtcral u - - ^ '.sr>s 5 . MS . - K.;\o;\ QQ ~. - 15 so K» ' .;.- .5 Otov , too : 10 ■ t>se 5.' Comv - Sp . - 3 tin to ^4 Thrush K> - . v fcj \\ v 5 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA WILD BEES — BEE-HUNTING, BEE-TREES, BEE-FOOD, ETC. " 1 [o\v doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour, And gather honey all the day From every opening flower." In pioneer times these woods were alive with bee-trees, and even yet that condition prevails in the forest part of this region, as the following article on bees, from the pen of E. C. Niver, clearly describes: '* Although the natural range of bee-pasturage in this section is practi- cally unlimited, singular to relate, apiculture is not pursued to any meat extent. With all the apparently favorable conditions, the occupation is too uncertain and precarious to hazard much capital or time on it. At the best, apiculture is an arduous occupation, and in the most thickly populated farming communities it requires constant vigilance to keep track of runaway swarms. 1 tul in this rugged mountain country, with its thousands of acres of hemlock slashings and hard-wood ridges, it is virtually impossible to keep an extensive apiary within bounds. The rich pasturage of the forests and mountain barrens affords too great a temptation, and although the honey-bee has been the pur- veyor of sweets for the ancients as far back as history reaches, she has never yet become thoroughly domesticated. At swarming time the nomadic instinct asserts itself. Nature lures and beckons, and the first opportunity is embraced to regain her fastness and subsist upon her bounty. Never a season goes by hut what some swarms escape to the woods. These take up their habitation in hollow trees or some other favorable retreat, and in time throw off other swarms. Thus it is that our mountains and forests contain an untold wealth of sweetness, but little of which is ever utilized by man. " Here is the opportunity of the bee-hunter. In the backwoods counties of Western Pennsylvania bee-hunting is as popular a sport with some as deer- hunting or trout-fishing. It does not have nearly so many devotees, perhaps, as these latter sports, for the reason that a greater degree of woodcraft, skill, and patience is required to become a proficient bee-hunter. Any backwoods- 151 HISTORY OF NORTHWESTERN PENNSYLVANIA inan can earch oul and stand guard al a