Daily stories of Pennsylvania

by Frederic Antes Godcharles

The Delaware Indians, especially those who lived west of the Susquehanna River, were exceedingly angry because of the sale of the lands along the Susquehanna and Juniata to the whites, and declared that those coveted hunting grounds had been given to them (the Delaware) by the Six Nations, and that therefore the latter had no right to sell them.

The Six Nations admitted that they had given the region to their cousins, the Delaware, as a hunting ground, yet they did not hesitate to make the sale to the English in 1754, and to confirm it in 1758.

The Delaware received none of the 400 pounds which had been paid to the Six Nations, and it is little wonder that they sought an opportunity and pretext for that revenge against the English which they dared not show against their ancient conquerors, the Six Nations.

Such an opportunity was presented by General Braddock’s disaster on the Monongahela, July 9, 1755, immediately after which they, with the Shawnee, became the active allies of the French.

Within three months their war parties had crossed the Alleghanies eastward, and had committed atrocities among the frontier settlements.

On October 16 occurred the massacre on Penn’s Creek, in what is now Snyder County, and on the 25th, John Harris’ party was ambushed at Mahanoy Creek.

On January 27, 1756, a party of Indians from Shamokin (now Sunbury) made a foray in the Juniata Valley, first attacking the house of Hugh Mitcheltree, who was absent at Carlisle, having left his house in the care of his wife and a young man named Edward Nicholas. Both of these were killed by the Indians, who then went up the river to the house of Edward Nicholas, Sr., whom they killed, also his wife, and took seven prisoners, namely, Joseph, Thomas and Catherine Nicholas, John Wilcox and the wife and two children of James Armstrong.

The scene of the first of these incursions was on the farm of James Mitcheltree, who was a warrantee in Delaware Township in 1755, and where he died in the early part of 1803. This farm then passed into the hands of John Thompson, and it is still in the hands of his descendants. Hugh Mitcheltree, who escaped death or capture in this foray, was carried off by the Indians two months later, March 29, 1756. The Mitcheltree family lived near the present Thompsontown, Juniata County.

While the Indians were committing the murders at the Mitcheltree and Nicholas homes, an Indian named James Cotties, who wished to be captain of the party, but could not be so chosen, took with him a young brave and went to Sherman’s Creek, where they killed William Sheridan and his family, thirteen in number. They then went down the creek to the home of two old men and an elderly woman, named French, whom they killed. Cotties often boasted afterward that he and the boy took more scalps than all the others of the party.