Daily stories of Pennsylvania

by Frederic Antes Godcharles

The first white men who ventured into the unexplored forests among these mountains were not given to keeping journals of their travels for future historians. No one seems to have thought of immortalizing himself by bequeathing to us a good description giving minute details of the country and its tribes.

At first the natives brought their peltry hundreds of miles to the Delaware River; but, in course of time, these skins and furs became so valuable in Europe that many of the worst class of men were stimulated to penetrate the depths of the forest in order to hasten and monopolize the trade. In this way the entire Juniata and West Branch regions were traversed many years before there was a settlement established in those fertile valleys.

From the days of William Penn’s advent up to 1722 the Indian expenses to the Province were inconsiderable, being limited by law to £50 per annum. In that year the Assembly paid Governor Keith’s expenses for a trip to Albany, where an important council with the Six Nations was held, but in 1727 they refused to pay more than half the amount of an account of Conrad Weiser, who was sent on a similar mission. In 1728, under an alarm, they agreed to pay without limitation the expenses of an Indian conference. After this they sometimes paid half, and sometimes all.

The appetite for presents which the Indians acquired was not easily appeased. Constant disturbances, frequently caused by rum, called for expensive treaties, and the donations allured the Indians and made them more insolent and exacting. The expenses soon rose above £8,000, and the question whether these treaties were more for the benefit of the Proprietaries in buying lands than for the safety of the inhabitants gave rise to heated controversy. The result was that Indian affairs began to take a wider and more public range, and the records of those days begin to throw more light upon the uninhabited interior of the Province.

As early as 1722 we read that “William Wilkins was 150 miles up the Sasquehannah trading for his master.” His master was John Cartlidge, an Indian trader living at Conestoga, and 150 miles farther up the Susquehanna was a venturesome trip at that date. There are also records of several Frenchmen engaged in the trade living among the Indians east of the mountains, extending their travels up the Susquehanna and its branches.

A great council was held in Philadelphia, July 3, 1727, with the chiefs of the Six Nations, but most of those in attendance were Cayuga, Conestoga and Ganawese. Madame Montour, the celebrated interpreter, was present at this conference and exerted her great influence toward an amicable treaty.

In an address made by one of the chiefs to the Governor, he said: “They desire that there may be no settlements made up the Sasquhannah higher than Pextan (Harrisburg), and that none of the settlers thereabouts be suffered to sell or keep any rum there, for that being the road by which their people go out to war, they are apprehensive of mischief if they meet with liquor in these parts. They desire also, for the same reasons, that none of the traders be allowed to carry any rum to the remoter parts where James Le Tort trades,—that is, Allegany[Allegany] on the branch of Ohio. And this they desire may be taken notice of, as the mind of the chiefs of all the Five Nations, for it is all those nations that now speak by them to all our people.”

The following day the Governor made this reply: “We have not hitherto allowed any settlements to be made above Pextan, but, as the young people grow up, they will spread, of course, yet it will not be very speedily. The Governor, however, will give orders to them all to be civil to those of the Five Nations as they pass that way, though it would be better if they would pass the Susquehannah[Susquehannah] above the mountains. And the sale of rum shall be prohibited both there and at Alegany; but the woods are so thick and dark we cannot see what is done in them. The Indians may stave any rum they find in the Woods, but, as has been said, they must not drink or carry any away.”

The interesting fact ascertained from these two addresses is that James Le Tort, who had settled near Carlisle, as early as 1720, and was a well known trader, had already passed over the Allegheny Mountains and established his trading post on the Ohio River. As he was also known to have lived and traded as early as 1701 on the island at the Forks of the Susquehanna, long known as Packer’s Island, between Sunbury and Northumberland, it may be fairly inferred that Le Tort found his way to the West through the West Branch Valley and thence by the Indian path leading from Great Island through what is now Clearfield and Kittaning to the west.

This is interesting also because it was at this time that the Shawnee began to pass over the mountains, followed by some Delaware, especially those of Conestoga descent, and began to settle on the Ohio. The Shawnee had established a large village at the mouth of Chillisquaque Creek, where it empties into the West Branch, a mile below Lewisburg on the east side of the stream.