In 1730, Logan wrote to the government, or probably the proprietors, complaining of the Scotch-Irish, in an audacious and disorderly manner, possessing themselves of the whole of Conestoga Manor, of fifteen thousand acres, being the best land in the country. In doing this by force, they alleged that it was against the laws of God and nature that so much land should be idle while so many Christians wanted it to labor on and raise their bread. They were finally dispossessed by the sheriff and his posse, and their cabins, to the number of thirty, were burned.
These men apparently held in contempt the sham purchases of Penn from the Indians; asserted that the treaties by which the lands were secured to the proprietors were nothing more than downright farces; and they justified their course by assuming that if the Penn family had a right to "fillibuster" on an extensive scale, the same right to enjoy enough land to support their families should not be denied them. If the disciples of George Fox, by craft and cunning, could obtain from the Indians thousands upon thousands of acres of land by a royal grant and the presentation of baubles that shamed the idea of a purchase, the disciples of John Calvin thought they had an equal right to possess themselves of at least a portion of the acres wrested by stratagem from the Indians. They considered the Penns usurpers and pretenders, and despised their feudal prerogatives which gave them pomp and circumstance, and refused to pay them the quit-rents, which enabled them to rule by deputy, and riot in the luxury of aristocratic life in England, rather than adopt the unostentatious manners of the new world.
Logan's successor was Richard Peters. He, too, was deeply devoted to the proprietors, and used his utmost exertions to get quit-rents out of the squatters. Failing to do so peaceably, he went to Marsh Creek, then in Lancaster county, for the express purpose of dispossessing them, and measuring the lands of the manor. This occurred in 1743. The squatters assembled in great force, notwithstanding the secretary was accompanied by the sheriff and a magistrate, and forbade Peters to proceed. On his refusal, the chain was broken, and demonstrations of a riot made, whereupon the surveying party retired. The settlers were afterward indicted, but the matter was compromised by the secretary granting them leases on very favorable terms.
From the counties of Chester and Lancaster, these settlers gradually worked their way to the west, and about 1748 the Kittochtinny Valley was tolerably well settled. The influx of emigrants from Europe—embracing Irish, Scotch, Scotch-Irish, German, and a few English—was so great, that it followed, as a matter of course, that the Juniata Valley was in its turn soon invaded.
There, in all probability, the proprietors would have suffered them to remain, as they knew little of, and cared less, about the land; but the Indians made complaint of the aggressions. The Six Nations took the matter in hand, and declared that usurping the lands they had guaranteed to their cousins, the Delawares, as a sacred hunting-ground, was a breach of faith, and that the settlers must be removed; or, if the settlers persisted in their encroachments, the Delawares would take up the hatchet against them. Only too glad to get rid of their settlers in the lower counties, the government made little effort to remove them from the Indian lands. True, to satisfy the Indians, they issued proclamations warning squatters to keep off these lands, under certain penalties which they knew could not be executed.
These usurpations of land, and the contumely with which the settlers treated the Indians, at length threatened serious consequences. The Delawares, as well as the Six Nations, made complaints such as could not be misunderstood. The proprietors, at length alarmed at the probable consequences of letting their squatters usurp the lands or hunting-grounds of the Indians, sent Peters and others to dispossess them. The following is Secretary Peters's report, sent to Governor Hamilton in 1750:—
TO JAMES HAMILTON, ESQ., GOVERNOR OF PENNSYLVANIA.
May it please your honor, Mr. Weiser and I having received your honor's orders to give information to the proper magistrates against all such as had presumed to settle on the lands beyond the Kittochtinny Mountains not purchased of the Indians, in contempt of the laws repeatedly signified by proclamations, and particularly by your honor's last one, and to bring them to a legal conviction, lest for want of their removal a breach should ensue between the Six Nations of Indians and this Province, we set out on Tuesday, the 15th of May, 1750, for the new county of Cumberland, where the places on which the trespassers had settled lay.
At Mr. Croghan's we met with five Indians,—three from Shamokin, two of which were sons of the late Shickcalamy, who transact the business of the Six Nations with this government; two were just arrived from Alleghany, viz., one of the Mohawk's nation, called Aaron, and Andrew Montour, the interpreter at Ohio. Mr. Montour telling us he had a message from the Ohio Indians and Twightwees to this government, and desiring a conference, one was held on the 18th of May last, in the presence of James Galbreath, George Croghan, William Wilson, and Hermanus Alricks, Esqrs., justices of the county of Cumberland; and when Mr. Montour's business was done, we, with the advice of the other justices, imparted to the Indians the design we were assembled upon; at which they expressed great satisfaction.
Another conference was held, at the instance of the Indians, in the presence of Mr. Galbreath and Mr. Croghan, before mentioned, wherein they expressed themselves as follows:—