On June 6, 1766, a brilliant marriage occurred in Philadelphia. John Penn, Lieutenant Governor, aged thirty-seven years, married Anne, the daughter of William Allen, Chief Justice; a strange fate had united the relative of Peter Allen of “Tulliallan” to the husband of Maria Cox, pronounced legally dead after an absence of eleven years in parts unknown. Commenting on this alliance, Nevin Moyer, the gifted Historian, remarks: “The marriage was an unpleasant one, on his (Penn’s) account, for he was found very seldom at home.” It was during the wedding that a fierce electrical storm occurred, unroofing houses and shattering many old trees.
It was not long after this marriage when a feeling of restlessness impelled him to start another of his many trips to the interior. This time it was given out that he wished to visit Penn’s Valley, the “empire” discovered in the central part of the province by Captains Potter and Thompson, and named in his honor, and Penn’s Cave, the source of the Karoondinha, a beautiful, navigable stream, rechristened “John Penn’s Creek.” He managed to stop over night, as everyone of any consequence did, at “Tulliallan,” and slept in the room with the Scotch thistles carved on the woodwork, and saw Peter Allen for the first time in twelve years.
A foul crime had recently been committed in the neighborhood. Indian Joshua, who used to live at the running spring, had gone to Canada the year of Braddock’s defeat (the year of Mary’s disappearance, Penn always reckoned it) and had lately returned to his old abode. He had been shot, as a trail of blood from his cabin down the mountain had been followed clear to Clark’s Creek, where it was lost. In fact, pitiful wailing had been heard one night all the way across the valley, but it was supposed to be a traveling panther. Arvas, or Silver Heels, had also come back for a time, but, after Joshua’s disappearance, had gone away.
“Maybe he killed his friend,” whispered Allen, looking down guiltily, as he spoke what he knew to be untruthful words.
“It is all clear to me now, Allen,” said Penn. “I should have believed Captain Jack, when in ’55 he told me that my late wife was carried off to Canada by Indians; the kidnappers came back, and for fear that they would levy hush money on those who had caused my Mary to be stolen, murdered Joshua as a warning.”
Allen did not answer, but Penn said: “You have kept a public house so long that you have forgotten to be a gentleman, and I do not expect you to tell the truth.”
In 1840 seekers after nestlings of the vultures climbed to the top of the King’s Stool, the dizzy pinnacle of the Third Mountain. There they found the skeleton of an Indian. It was all that was left of Joshua, who had climbed there in his agony and died far above the scenes which he loved so dearly. The hunters put the bones in their hunting pouches and climbed down the “needle,” and buried them decently at the foot of the rocks.
The King’s Stool is named for a similar high point near Lough Foyle, Ireland, and there are also King’s Stools in Juniata and Perry Counties. The North of Ireland pioneers were glad to recognize scenes similar to the natural wonders of the Green Isle!
A great light had come to John Penn, but he accepted his fate philosophically, just as he had the abuse heaped upon him for his vacillating policy towards the Indians. He followed up his vigorous attempt to punish the Paxtang perpetrators of the massacres of the Conestoga Indians at Christmas time, 1763, by promulgating the infamous scalp bounty of July, 1764, which bounty, to again quote Professor Moyer, paid “$134 for an Indian’s scalp, and $150 for a live Indian, and $50 for an Indian female or child’s scalp.”
There are not enough Indians to make hunting for bounties in Pennsylvania a paying occupation today, so instead there is a bounty on Wildcats and foxes, wiping out desirable wild life to satisfy the politicians’ filthy greed.