Читать книгу History of the Early Settlement of the Juniata Valley - U. J. Jones - Страница 5

"At last they came where I was sitting, among the only sober chiefs in the party. The stench of the half-roasted dogs was awful. One of them came with his trencher to me, and offered me a piece—a choice piece, too, as I was an invited guest, being a piece of the most unclean part of the entrails. 'Thank'ee,' said I; 'never dine on dog.' But this did not satisfy them. One of the prophets, laboring under the effects of about a quart of my rum, insisted on me eating what was offered to me. I again declined, when one of the chiefs informed me that it was a very sacred feast, and unless I partook of my allotted portion I would highly insult the Indians, and some of those intoxicated might deprive me of my scalp. The thing was no longer a joke, and I seized the piece of dog entrail and put it in my mouth, in hopes of spitting it out; but they watched me so close that by one mighty effort I managed to swallow it. I did not wait to see the end of the feast; I had my portion, and thought I might as well retire. I started in the direction of Aughwick, and every half mile the nauseous dog served every purpose of a powerful emetic. I was a much sicker man next day than if I had drank a gallon of my own rum; and, in all my dealings with the red men, I took particular care never again to be present at any dog feast!"

Of the social and general character of the savages we have many contradictions. Heckwelder, the old Moravian Missionary, whose innate goodness found

"Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,

Sermons in stones, and God in every thing,"

intimated that some of their social habits, such as their tender solicitude for infants and the great deference and respect they paid to the aged, were noble traits in their character. Loskiel says that "in common life and conversation, the Indians observed great decency. They usually treated one another, and strangers, with kindness and civility, and without empty compliments. In the converse of both sexes, the greatest decency and propriety were observed. They were sociable and friendly. Difference of rank, with all its consequences, was not to be found among the Indians. They were equally noble and free. The only difference consisted in wealth, age, dexterity, courage, and office."

Their hospitality to strangers knew no bounds. In some instances it was carried to extremes. An Indian who would not hospitably entertain a stranger under his roof, and attend to all his wants as far as lay within his power, was held in supreme contempt by all his acquaintances. Indeed, the offence was deemed so grievous, that the offender was not only detested and abhorred by all, but liable to revenge from the person to whom the common and acknowledged rights of hospitality were denied.

Lying, cheating, and stealing, as well as adultery and fornication, were deemed scandalous offences, and were punished. They did not exist to any great extent until the parent of them—drunkenness—was introduced by the white man.

To these commendable traits in a savage people there were sad offsets. The savage was cruel and exceedingly bloodthirsty. He never forgave a premeditated injury; and if no opportunity offered to avenge himself, he enjoined upon his descendants, "even to the third and fourth generation," to revenge him. A hatred once formed against an enemy could only be quenched with his blood. He would treasure up a wrong for years, and it would rankle in his heart until he got his enemy into his power, when flaying, roasting, or killing by inches, was not too cruel a death to mete out to him. Nay, more than this—in their wars neither age, sex, nor condition, were taken into consideration; and the proud warrior who sang the great and heroic deeds of his ancestors for a thousand moons was not too proud to carry in his belt the scalp of an innocent babe! But then the savage was untutored, and it unquestionably was a part of his religion to put to death an enemy by the most cruel torture; neither did he expect any other treatment if he fell into the hands of a foe.

In ordinary life, there undoubtedly was some honor in the Indian, but in war no trait of it was perceptible in his composition. To slay an enemy while asleep, or destroy him by any stratagem, was a feat to boast of, and claimed quite as much glory as if it had been accomplished by the prowess of arms. To shoot an enemy from ambuscade, or lure him to destruction by treachery that would be branded as most infamous among civilized nations, were looked upon as exceedingly cunning by the Indians.

As a general thing, they professed to abhor war among themselves, and only declared it when aggravating circumstances absolutely demanded;—that the question was deliberately debated by the tribe, and if, after mature deliberation, a majority of the chiefs and captains favored a war, speedy preparation was made for it; a red hatchet or club was sent to the offending tribe, or one of them was caught, scalped, and a war-club, painted red, laid by his side. Hostilities were then commenced, and the war waged with the greatest fury until one or the other party succumbed.

SCENE EAST OF PATTERSON.

Now it happens that professions do not always accord with practice, and in this case we are quite sure they did not. The whole tenor and bearing of the savages must lead us to believe that there was no avenue open to the aspiring Indian to attain honor and distinction, except through feats of arms and daring; and it is only too true that he shared the common weakness of humanity in loving the "pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious warfare." The proof of this is that some of their most bloody conflicts were caused by the most trivial circumstances.

That they had many fierce and sanguinary struggles among themselves is well authenticated. A battle almost of extermination was once fought between two tribes at Juniata—now known as Duncan's Island—within the memory of many Indians who were living when the whites settled among them. This island must have been a famous battle-ground—a very Waterloo—in its day. When the canal was in progress of construction, hundreds of skeletons were exhumed; and to this day stone arrow-heads can be found upon almost any part of the island.

The Indian traditions also chronicle a fierce battle between two tribes near Millerstown; another in Tuscarora, and another at Standing Stone. The truth on which these traditions are based is made evident by the fact that at those places, for years, Indian war-relics have been found.

There existed for years the most intense and bitter feuds between the Six Nations and the Lenape Indians, commonly called the Delawares. How long the feud existed, or how many bloody conflicts they had to gain the ascendency, cannot now, either by tradition or record, be made reliable history. From the best information we can gather, it is highly probable that these confederations had buried the hatchet a short time previous to the landing of Penn. And we may also readily assume that the final declaration of peace was sued for by the Delawares; for the Iroquois always boasted that they had reduced them to the condition of women by their superior bravery and skill in war. This the Delawares denied, and declared that "by treaty and voluntary consent they had agreed to act as mediators and peacemakers among the other great nations; and to this end they had consented to lay aside entirely the implements of war, and to hold and to keep bright the chain of peace. This, among individual tribes, was the usual province of women. The Delawares, therefore, alleged that they were figuratively termed women on this account." This cunningly-devised story the Delawares palmed upon the missionary Heckwelder while he labored among them, and he was disposed to give them great credit. The Iroquois, having formed an early alliance with the Dutch on the Hudson, received fire-arms, and by the liberal use of them soon brought refractory tribes out of their confederation to terms, and reduced others to vassalage, and exacted from them an annual tribute or an acknowledgment of fealty, permitting them, on such conditions, to occupy certain hunting-grounds; and there must, therefore, have been at least some truth in the allegation of the Iroquois that the Delawares were "conquered by their arms, and were compelled to this humiliating concession as the only means of averting impending destruction." It is said, however, that the Delawares were finally enabled to throw off this galling yoke, through the influence of Zeedyusung, a powerful chief, who extorted from the Iroquois an acknowledgment of their independence at a treaty held at Tioga in 1756.

"The humiliation of tributary nations was, however, tempered with a paternal regard for their interests in all negotiations with the whites; and care was taken that no trespasses should be committed on their rights, and that they should be justly dealt with."

So says the record; and yet we find that the sachems of the Six Nations, who had evidently learned from the whites both the use and abuse of money, in July, 1754, at Albany, sold all the lands in the State, not previously purchased, "lying southwest of a line beginning one mile above the mouth of Penn's Creek, and running northwest-by-west to the western boundary of the State." This sold the land from under the feet of the Delawares, Shawnees, and Monseys, of the Juniata Valley, notwithstanding the Six Nations had guaranteed it to them forever as a sacred hunting-ground. This act of treachery on the part of the Iroquois, and the insatiate appetite of the proprietors to add broad acres to their extensive domain, caused many of these homeless tribes to go over to the French, and, as a writer truly adds, "the blood of Braddock's soldiers was added to the price of the land."

But to return to the original settlement of the valley. The Indians unquestionably received the white adventurers with open arms, and extended to them such a hearty welcome as must have banished all fears for the future. The savages looked upon the death-dealing rifle with superstitious awe; and the saw, the axe, the plane, and other implements of handicraft in the possession of the whites, made them a high order of beings, endowed with peculiar gifts by the Great Spirit, in the eyes of the Indians, and their persons were regarded as sacred. They shared with them their rude huts, and left nothing undone within their power to render them comfortable.

And for this noble and magnanimous conduct on the part of the Indian, what return did the white man make? Such a one only, we regret to say, as makes no bright page in their history. They were taught all the vices of civilization, but to teach them its virtues was deemed a work of supererogation. The ignorant Indian and his primitive habits were treated with disdain, and he was deemed a fit subject for robbery whenever opportunity offered—this more especially by the lawless, who considered themselves out of the reach of government and its officers. A gradual encroachment upon the Indian's sacred hunting-grounds, and the refusal of the white man to look upon him as any thing but a degraded being or to associate with him on an equality, soon taught the Indian that he had taken into fellowship the crafty white man only to enable him to suck out his existence by his superior skill and his subtle cunning. The keen penetration of the savage soon discovered the position he occupied by the side of his white brother. Smarting under the indignities offered, and foreseeing the degradation to which he would be subjected in time, the red man and the white man did not long dwell together in unity. While the latter commenced tilling the land and surrounding himself with the comforts of civilization, the former fled before him to the mountains and valleys where he was monarch of the land—where the council-fire could blaze, the green-corn dance and song be heard, and the calumet of peace be smoked without the presence of the white man.

Yet, with all the encroachments upon their rights by the settlers, the Indians exercised great forbearance. They knew the warlike appliances in the power of the proprietary government; hence they repeatedly declared their wish to "keep bright the chain of friendship;"—in less figurative language, they did not want to go to war. No depredations were committed upon the whites, of any consequence, before the French tampered with them and the Six Nations perfidiously sold the land they had given "their cousins" as a sacred hunting-ground. Nor even then, although the aggravation was great, did all the Indians leave the valley to join the French. Many who were friendly toward the proprietary government remained until war broke out between the colonies and Great Britain; and some few peaceably-disposed fragments of tribes even lingered in the valley until the close of the Revolutionary war.

During the French and Indian war, and at its close, many of the Indians returned, and lived for some years in the valley unmolested. But in 1761–62 the footprints of the white man were seen in their paths, and civilization began to crowd them. The white adventurers crowded so thick upon them, that, after the war of 1764, the greater portion of them left; nor did they return again until 1777, when they appeared as allies to the British crown, to massacre and scalp the unprotected frontier-men. To stimulate them to this inhuman warfare, the British not only impressed it upon them that they were redressing grievances, but they actually paid them a stipulated price for every scalp, of child as well as adult, brought to the Canadian frontier.

The Indians who figured in the predatory incursions from 1776 to 1781 were probably Delawares, Monseys, Nanticokes, Shawnees, and Tuscaroras; but they were then only known as Delawares, all other titles having been merged into that of the most powerful tribe. That these tribes were the ones who committed most of the depredations, we judge from the fact that the elder chiefs and captains emigrated to the Canadian frontier from the Juniata Valley, and consequently knew every foot of the valley, from the base of the Alleghany Mountains to the very mouth of the river.