This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world's books discoverable online.
It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that's often difficult to discover.
Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book's long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you.
Usage guidelines
Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.
We also ask that you:
+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes.
+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google's system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.
+ Maintain attribution The Google "watermark" you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.
+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can't offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book's appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.
About Google Book Search
Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web
at http : //books . google . com/|
Digitized by
Digitized by
Digitized by
Digitized by
Digitized by
Digitized by
Digitized by
Digitized by
Digitized by
Digitized by
k
HISTORY
OF
ptttsburgh anb Entitrons
From Prehistoric Days to the Beginning of the American Revolution
VOLUME I
BY
GEORGE THORNTON FLEMING
"History — ^which is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind." — Gibbon
:=^i(.^^»^
THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY, INC.,
NEW YORK AND CHICAGO.
1922
Digitized by
COPYRIGHT, 1932 THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY, INC.
t~". '
Digitized by
152402 Digitized by Google
Crasmud Wiilsion
Digitized by
FOREWORD.
N ORDER that accounts of notable events, the life stories of men and women, the manners of the times, may be transmitted to coming generations, it is necessary that these be recorded from time to time, and that these records may meet the de- mands of future ages it is most essential that they be exact and true. Hence the necessity for choosing capable and de- pendable recorders, for it is not everyone who can write well that can write history, no more than that everyone who can write entertainingly can write poetry. Indeed, historians, like poets, are born, not made to order.
Pittsburgh has been quite fortunate in having such history writers as Brackenridge, Craig, Veech, Darlington, Errett, Lambing, Parke, Dahl- inger and Fleming, each and everyone a careful, conscientious chronicler of the times in which he lived, or lives, as well as being industrious col- lectors of data relating to the beginnings of local history, its growth and present condition.
The latest extended history of Pittsburgh was published in 1898, which was just at the beginning of the Vave of prosperity which, in the course of a score of years, has placed it among the greater cities on the continent, and well to the front among cities of the world, as cities go, and far in the lead as a manufacturing and financial center. This has made a revision and extension of its history necessary.
Fortunately we have with us a historian, to the manner bom, in George T. Fleming, who is still actively and persistently engaged in local historical research, as shown in the columns of the **Sunday Gazette- Times," as well as in his wonderful collection of pictures and other data relating to the growth and development of the city.
The selection of Mr. Fleming to prepare this latest history of Htts- burgh, and the region round about, was most fortunate for the city as well as for the publishers. He is not only a sturdy grubber after facts but has the ability to dress them up in pleasing style and set them in graceful order.
It is the desire, as well as the purpose of the editor and publishers of this history, that it shall be valuable not only as a narrative of historic events, but as a compendium of facts relating to men and matters, events and happenings pertaining to the triumphant growth of Pittsburgh, its institutions, and its fame. Necessarily it will be somewhat encyclopedic, but space limits compel this. And yet it is, probably, the more fitting form, as it will facilitate the finding of whatsoever data that may be de- sired. Of one thing we feel assured, that the work will be thoroughly dependable, and fully up to date. Erasmus Wilson.
Pittsburgh, December i, IQ20.
Digitized by
Digitized by
INTRODUCTION.
HE necessity for another history of Pittsburgh for the purpose of bringing it up to date is obvious when it is remembered that the last extensive work was published in 1889. Great events have happened in 'the more than a third of a century that has elapsed, not only National in character but State and local also, and Pittsburgh's share in these National and State events demand recording. The city has grown largely, both in area and popu- lation. These facts will be narrated by several writers in the subse- quent volumes of this series, entitled "Pittsburgh and Environs," and the narration will be a story of progress and success. However, in the allotment of the various periods of Pittsburgh history to be given con- sideration in the work as a whole, the earliest history of the region alluded to in old histories as that "About the Forks of the Ohio;" the "Region of the Upper Ohio," and "the Ohio Country," has been assigned to the writer hereof, and finds place in the general work upon comple- tion as Volume I, whereupon the inquiry arises: "Has the author of Volume I in matter, character and manner of presentation given those most interested in the general work such a volume as they will appre- ciate ?" Before attempting an answer it may be well to note some objec- tions that may be presumed.
First — "The subject matter ranges too widely, goes too far back, and many things irrelevant and immaterial to the history of Pittsburgh and the region round about, have been included in the text" This objection was foreseen, hence explanations have been made as occasion required in the text. The desire of the author has been to collect the whole story of the period to be written of, heretofore recorded in fragments in more than a score of books, many rare and long out of print and only a few accessible, even as reference works, in our public libraries. It is for the readers of this volume to decide whether or not the author has suc- ceeded in his attempt. He is conscious of having done his best towards that end, retarded and delayed by many disturbing conditions, physical and otherwise.
Again, it may be said that too much space has been apportioned to the history of the Indians who once inhabited this region. "As a race they have withered from the land," declared Charles Sprague in an oration in 1825. But they yet exist ; a changed race. Their part in the wars of the Eighteenth Century that in the end gave this continent to the Anglo-Saxon, has been best told by Francis Parkman, and all Ameri- can historians have devoted pages to the "North American Indians" and their deeds. The history of the Indian nations who ranged the Ohio
Digitized by
viii INTRODUCTION
every manner. Mr. Edward E. Eggers, Librarian of the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny (now usually referred to as the North Side Library), has been most helpful in many ways, and his assistants in the Reference Department kind and obliging in every way. Dr. William J. Holland, Director of the Carnegie Museum, deserves mention for his interest and suggestions.
The great value of the researches of my friend, Mr. Charles A. Hanna, of New York, has been exemplified by the number of references to his exhaustive work, "The Wilderness Trail," a unique and engrossing his- tory of the vast trans-Allegheny region and all the events of that region wherein the Indian traders figured. Dr. Archer Butler Hulbert, of Marietta, Ohio, is another living author who has been drawn on fre* quently, whose labors evoke a degree of admiration scarcely less than Mr. Hanna's. Miss Mary O'Hara Darlington, of Pittsburgh, is another friend who has the most sincere thanks of the author for data regarding Henry Bouquet and his times, drawn from her father and mother's works. Attorney Charles W. Dahlinger, of Pittsburgh, editor of the "Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine," a close friend, who was called on for advice as a most competent authority on Pittsburgh history, which was freely and cheerfully g^ven. His exceedingly entertaining work, "Pittsburgh, a Sketch of its Early Social Life," has been most valuable in many respects, and also his contributions to the "Magazine," above mentioned.
The late Erasmus Wilson, a fellow-worker for more than a decade, evinced his interest in this history by contributing the short introductory note. Now that he has passed to his reward, these few lines of his will surely appeal to the subscribers and all readers of the history as a grace- ful act of appreciation and testimony of his best wishes for the success of the work.
To the many friends who have subscribed for the history by reason of friendship and long association, my thanks are especially due, and none the less to all subscribers, if for no other reason than that they are loyal to old Pittsburgh, a city of opportunity.
George Thornton Fleming.
Pittsburgh, February 25, 1922.
Digitized by
PUBLISHERS' NOTE
N this work is presented a comprehensive narrative of "Pitts- burgh and Environs," from primeval days to the present time. It is the first history of this region since that of 1898. Vol I, entitled "From Prehistoric Days to the Beginning of the American Revolution," is by Mr. George Thornton Fleming, an investigator, annalist and writer of unusual power. Its difference from the usual historical narratives lies not only in its great particularity as to events, but in literary execution — ^authentic history written with brilliancy and impressive originality. Investigators will turn to these pages in very many days to come.
Volumns II and III, beginning with the formation of the community and tracing its development to the present time, are the work of well equipped local contributors, and members of the editorial staff. Princi- pal among the former is Mr. Charles Sumner Howell, for many years connected with the city press, who has contributed many of the most important chapters; among other contributors are: Mr. George H. Lamb, A. M., librarian Carnegie Free Library, of Braddock; and Mr. William F. Stevens, librarian Carnegie Library, of Homestead. Chief of the publishers' staff in the field is Mr. Frank R. Holmes, a writer of wide experience.
The biographical volumes, which form a fitting adjunct to the work, contain the life history of the Makers of Pittsburgh and Environs from the first to those who are yet active in the various walks of com- munity life. These narratives have been prepared in the field, and in every instance have been submitted to the persons in interest for verifi- cation.
In the various fields of history and biography the publishers feel assured that the entire work will have an enduring value as a com- pendium of information, and without which very much important history would go unrecorded.
Digitized by
Digitized by
CONTENTS
~ PAGE
Chapter I — Before the White Man Came i
Chapter II — Historic Mounds and Prehistoric Mound Builders 22
Chapter III — In the Days of the Iroquois 59
Chapter IV — ^The Barbaric Republic 72
Chapter V — The Lenni-Lenape, alias the Delawares 89
Chapter VI — The Migrations of the Delawares and the Shawanese.. no
Chapter VII — Indians in Petticoats 132
Chapter VIII — Our Indian Nomenclature 146
Chapter IX — The Wilderness Trail and the Wilderness Traders. . . 155
Chapter X — Conrad Weiser, Ambassador Extraordinary 184
Chapter XI — New France in America 204
Chapter XII — In the Name of the King 215
Chapter XIII — Washington and Gist; Emissary and Guide 234
Chapter XIV— The Struggle for a Continent 256
Chapter XV — ^Two Famous Hostages 289
Chapter XVI — Edward Braddock, Generalisimo 305
Chapter XVII — Edward Braddock, Generalissimo (continued) 345
Chapter XVIII — ^The French Regime in Western Pennsylvania. . . . 367
Chapter XIX — ^John Forbes and James Grant 385
Chapter XX— "I Have Called the Place Pittsburgh" 405
Chapter XXI — The Perilous Missions of Christian Frederick Post. . 417
Chapter XXII— Fort Pitt, 1758-1763 448
Chapter XXIII— When Pontiac Struck 473
Chapter XXIV — Henry Boquet, Soldier of Fortune 495
Chapter XXV— Fort Pitt, 1764-1774 519
Chapter XXVI — ^Virginia Assumes Jurisdiction 545
Chapter XXVII — George Croghan, King of the Traders 561
Digitized by
Digitized by
Digitized by
Digitized by
CHAPTER I. Before the White Man Came.
Before the white man came, the region herein termed "Pittsburgh and Its Environs" was included in the wilderness lying contiguous to the Ohio river and its tributaries, but a small part of that vast extent of unoccupied and unexplored land south of the Great Lakes and east of the Mississippi river. We may say practically unoccupied, in com- parison with the state of occupancy during any time within the last century. We are to use the word "wilderness" in its primary meaning — 2L wild, the word pure Anglo-Saxon in origin, and defined as a tract uncultivated and uninhabited by human beings, whether a forest or a barren plain. After the definition above, Webster in his earlier editions distinctly states that in the United States the word "wilderness" is applied only to a forest. The presumption is tenable that when the vast prairies illuminated his comprehension, the great lexicographer con- cluded there might be a prairie wilderness also, and therefore dropped the statement that the word could be applied only to a forest. We can in no wise consider the secondary meaning of the word, that of a desert, to be applicable at any time to any part of the Upper Ohio Valley region. The site of Pittsburgh lay long undiscovered and undis- turbed in the vast solitude of the forest primeval, and far beyond the British frontier, which was that part of the rugged Appalachian chain we know as the Alleghenies, and that chain was a barrier to settlement, as will be shown.
Who of white blood first set his feet upon the historic soil about the Forks of the Ohio is a question to which no records can supply an answer. That he was a white man, for the purpose of gain, is altogether probable. His people needed, must have, furs. The habitat of the fur-bearing animals that he knew lay in the forest wilderness. The Indian inhabitants were few in number, and lived mainly by the chase. With the first settlement of Canada by the French, there began commercial transactions with the Aborigines. The Dutch traders from the Albany region followed closely after the French, and then the English traders, "brave, inglorious men, long since passed to deep and merited oblivion," pioneers, nevertheless, leading the advance of the settlers in the conquering march of the Course of Empire towards the setting sun. We are to learn of these fur traders of our colonial days, particularly of the Pennsylvania traders who toiled the wilderness trail over the Alleghenies, and whose petty commerce involved two great nations in a long war, and prepared the way for American independence and territorial expansion for the United States of America, a nation bom of that independence.
Pitta.— 1
Digitized by
2 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
The first white men came through the wilderness, througn the. vast solitudes of the forest primeval, where
The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight Stand like Druids of old, with voices sad and prophetic ; Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.
Yes, and the hardwoods, too, and all the well known deciduous trees of our American flora, with their vines and creepers and tanglements, and with the deadwood, the debris of numberless storms and hurricanes of past ages. Nevertheless it was not a trackless forest, for there existed certain well defined trails or paths, traversed for centuries by the roving feet of the red men in their hunting trips, on their migrations, by their warriors when on the war path, until the narrow trails changed to well defined paths becoming, with the advent of the whites, historic highways. Instances are the Venango trail, the Kittanning path, Ne- macolin's path, later Braddock's road, the Muskingum and Sandusky trails from the confluence of the two rivers forming the Forks of the Ohio at Pittsburgh, and the Catawba or Great Warriors path from the south via Cumberland Gap to the Ohio river at the mouth of the Sciota.
The wilderness was not trackless, for the wild beasts of the forest made well marked paths. Buffalo trails were especially prominent, for these animals ranged the region of the Upper Ohio Valley when the white men came. Often these trails broadened into real roads, made such by the tread of vast hordes of these heavy beasts, in countless years, in going to and fro from the salt licks and their feeding grounds. The first explorers in the western wilderness found the Indian trails and the buffalo roads, and always spoke of them as distinct thorough- fares. The Indian trail was usually a narrow path or runway, for the Indians traveled always in single file. These runways were always from two to three feet wide only, and were not worn so deeply into the ground as the buffalo traces, though the Indians' path was often a foot or two below the surrounding ground, worn thus by the hoofs of their ponies.
Trees and bushes in places encroached upon the paths so that it was not possible to see far ahead. Often these slender trails were blocked by inpenetrable growths, and a single windstorm in the virgin forests would fill the paths with fallen branches, and often trunks of trees. The overhanging bushes, in the heavy dew of the morning or after a rain, completely drenched the travelers with the water retained in their branches.
There were other animals than the buffalo that laid off a road ; the deer, too, made their runways by instinct, and found the easiest paths to the passes of the mountains, to the shallowest fords, the richest feeding grounds, and the indispensable salt licks. The Indian, dependent upon game, followed the paths or traces made and frequented by the beasts
Digitized by
BEFORE THE WHITE MAN CAME 3
going to their food, water and salt, and to other habitats in the chang- ing seasons. It was only natural that these trails became vocational with the Indians. The trails were not always silent, nor were they bloodless, for the Indians' enemies sought them, and the evolution of the trail into the warpath was easy, and natural also.
The trails were of different kinds. Archer Butler Hulbert divides them into hunting, war, portage, river, and trade trails. One or more of each variety led to the Forks of the Ohio at Pittsburgh. There were no blazed trails in the wilderness forest. Blazing trees was peculiarly a white man's custom, as well as his invention. It was beneath an Indian's dignity to mark out his way. It was an affront also to suggest it, as discrediting the keen woodcraft for which the red man is remark- able. It required labor to hack trees, and patience, which was not an Indian attribute. Then, too, a warrior never worked, and in any event such work was useless. He could justly sneer at the clumsy white man who depended on the white blaze to find his way through or out of the wilderness of woods.
When the first white traders came into the western woodland, they found the well marked forest trails, and followed them until they became the avenues of trade. The traders established trading posts in the wilderness, built warehouses of hewn logs, forts for the protection of their goods, and then new routes became necessary — "fur routes," or "traders' paths," and these came also to be traveled by the Indians and their peltry-laden ponies, and backward with the trader's goods — the peltries bought weapons, blankets, trinkets, powder and lead, and bad liquor.
There is ample evidence that the going through the wilderness was good. There are journals of the first missionaries who recorded things as they saw them, strange things and most notable. The testimony of the Rev. David McClure is material on this point. He said: "The roads through this Indian country are no more than a single horse path among the trees. For a wilderness, the traveling was pleasant, and there was no underbrush, and the trees do not grow very close together."
McClure was journeying west from Pittsburgh in the fall of 1772. Describing a stretch of the trail along the Ohio below the mouth of the Big Beaver river, he said : "The woods were clear from the under- brush, and the oaks and black walnut and other timber do not grow very compact, and there is scarcely anything to incommode a traveler in riding almost in any direction. The Indians have a habit of burning over the ground, that they may have the advantage of seeing game at a distance among the trees." Again he said : "The soil is luxuriant ; the growth principally white and black oak. The sweetest plums grow in great abundance in this country, and were in great perfection. Grapes grow spontaneously here, and wind around the trees."^
i"Diaiy of the Rev. David McClure," 1772; pp. 49-Sa
Digitized by
4 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
Dr. Schoepf, the German savant, tells of the forest as he exjplored it in the vicinity of Pittsburgh in 1783: "In different wanderings on the other side of the Allegheny from Pittsburgh, we had the oppor- tunity of observing the fineness and luxuriant fruitfulness of the soil in its primeval and undisturbed condition. The indigenous plants had a rich and rank appearance, and grew to a greater height and strength than they do elsewhere. The woods for the most part are entirely free from undergrowth, which is very convenient for both the hunter and traveler."^ Schoepf is telling of the land now the North Side of Pitts- burgh. He saw the diversified forest of wildwood, river and small streams, but the time was twenty-five years after General John Forbes came to the Forks of the Ohio, and there were semblages of civilization, and a rude town already well known as Pittsburgh.
That one could ride fast through the woods^ needs no proof to one who has read of the miraculous escape of John Slover, guide to Colonel Crawford in the ill-fated expedition against the Indians of the Sandusky region in 1782. Slover was captured with Crawford, and, tied to a stake and the fire lighted, was saved by the fury of a sudden thunder- storm which extinguished the fire. This was a bad omen to the Indians, and they put off the torture until the next day. Slover managed to work loose from his bonds in the night, and escaped. On the margin of the Shawanese village he came to some horses tethered, and, seizing a strong, active one, rode it straight away for seventy miles until the poor beast dropped from exhaustion. This feat shows that Slover could not have met with any serious obstructions. However, he had lived among the Indians, and may have picked his way. His narrative is that he kept his steed at all the speed it was capable of .^
More testimony of the state of the wilderness seems necessary, for the changing of the vast forest wilderness into the abode of civilized men is the main theme of this history story, the enumeration of the wonderful changes that have taken place within a century and a half in the region about Pittsburgh. These changes, with their concomitant events in the western country, came to those who witnessed them in startling remembrances wherein the romance of reality about them swept away the dreams of the forests of old. To quote that noted pioneer, the Rev. Dr. Joseph Doddridge, such "find it difficult to realize the features of the wilderness which was the abode of their infant days,"
Dr. Doddridge was a child of the forest. Though born in an older settled portion of Pennsylvania, in Bedford county, in 1769, he was removed in 1773 with his parents to the western part of Washington
2"Re!se durch Einegc," etc. ; "A Journey through some of the Middle and South- em States of North America," John David Schoepf, M. D., 1783; p. 41S
«"Narrativcs of Dr. Knight and John Slo'V'cr," Cincinnati; "Early History of Western Pennsylvania and the West; I. D. Rupp, Pittsburgh, 1846, p. 210. "Incidents of Border Life;" pp. 145-147.
Digitized by
BEFORE THE WHITE MAN CAME 5
county, Pennsylvania, then under Virginia jurisdiction. Slight wonder he moralizes and becomes philosphical in his noted work* which was published in Wellsburg (now West Virginia), in 1824, when he was sixty-five years old. Though this book is intensely interesting even to this generation, and is in itself an authentic history and there could and may be much taken from it to enlighten and corroborate, it is desirable at this point to quote only his impressions of the forest, the wilderness, he lived to see "blossom as the rose." No better testimony can be procured, nor is any more pertinent or instructive. He says :
To a person who has witnessed all the changes which have taken place in the west- ern country since its first settlement — a person surrounded everjrwhere by the busy hum of men and the splendor, arts, refinements and comforts of civilized life, his former state and that of his country have vanished from his memory; or, if sometimes he bestows a reflection upon its original aspect, the mind seems to be carried back to a period of time more remote than it really is. The immense changes which have taken place in the physical and moral state of the country have been gradual, and therefore scarcely perceived from year to year, but the view from one extreme to the other is like the prospect of the opposite shore, over a vast expanse of water, whose hills, valleys, mountains and forests present a confused and romantic scenery which losses itself in ^e distant horizon.
Dr. Doddridge is looking backwards. Ruminating upon the many and astounding changes, he esteems himself a hundred years old, instead of sixty. He could say of events: "Some of which I was, and all of which I saw," He recalls the forest as he knew it: "A wilderness of vast extent, presenting the virgin face of nature, unchanged by human habitation or art, is certainly one of the most sublime terrestrial objects which the Creator ever presented to the view of man, but those portions of the earth which bear this character derive their features of sublimity from very different aspects."
Dr. Doddridge compares the deserts of Africa, the steppes of Russia, and the Polar solitudes, with the forest wilderness and the Valley of the Mississippi. After some remarks on the geography and natural history of the country lying between the Mississippi and the Appalachian chain, he proceeds with his description of the wilderness:
One prominent feature of a wilderness is its solitude. Those who plunged into the bosom of the forest left behind them not only the busy hum of men, but domestic life generally. The departing rays of the setting sun did not receive the requiem of the feathered songsters of the grove, nor was the blushing aurora ushered in by the shrill clarion of the domestic fowls. The solitude of the night was interrupted only by the howl of the wolf, the melancholy moan of the ill-boding owl, or the shriek of the frightful panther. Even the faithful dog, the only steadfast companion of man among the brute creation, partook of the silence of the wilderness. This discipline of his mas- ter forbade him to bark or move but in obedience to command, and his native sagacity soon taught him the propriety of obedience to his severe master. The day was, if pos- sible, more solitary than the night. The noise of the wild turkey, the croaking of the
^''Notes on the Settlement and Indian Wars of the Western Parts of Virginia and Pennsylvania from 1763 to 1783 inclusive, together with a Review of the State of Society and Manners of the First Settlers of the Western Country," by Joseph Dodd- ridge, Edition 1913, pp. 19-20,
Digitized by
6 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
raven, "the woodpecker tapping the hollow beech tree/' did not much enliven the dreary scene.
The various tribes of singing birds are not inhabitants of the desert; they are not carniverous, and therefore must be fed by the labors of man. At any rate, they did not exist in this country at its first settlement.^
We are to give full credence to the statements of Dr. Doddridge in the conviction that he is giving us the knowledge of his own senses, that of a child of the forest clearing who saw the loved songsters come and the wild beasts go. He has much more to tell of the wilderness as he knew it. Perhaps it is well to follow him further for a proper under- standing of the country about Pittsburgh before the white man came, and to dwell in imagination upon the scenes he describes. Fully com- prehending these descriptions, the transition of the region to the require- ments of civilized life that occurred within his lifetime, will seem all the more wonderful with the story added of the passing of the red men who devastated and ravaged the settlements — ^a shocking story of cruelty and savage warfare. Dr. Doddridge plays upon the imagination. He wants his words to live, to burn deep into the soul of his reader. We read his words in awe. Imagination responds to his call :
Let the imagination of the reader pursue the track of adventure into this solitary wilderness. Bending his course toward the setting sun, over undulating hills, under the shades of the large forest trees, and wading through the rank weeds and grass which then covered the ground. Now viewing from the top of a hill the winding course of the creek whose stream he wishes to explore, doubtful of its course and of his own, he ascertains the cardinal points of north and south by the thickness of the moss on the north side of the ancient trees. Now descending into a valley and presag- ing his approach to a river by seeing a large ash, basswood and sugar trees, beautifully festooned with wild grapevines. Watchful as Argus, his restless eye catches every- thing around him. In an unknown region, and surrounded with dangers, he is the sen- tinel of his own safety and relies on himself alone for protection. The toilsome march of the day ended, he seeks for safety some narrow sequestered hollow, and by the side of a large log builds a fire, and after eating his coarse and scanty meal, wraps himself up in his blankets and lays him down on his bed of leaves, with his feet to his little fire, for repose, hoping for favorable dreams ominous of future good luck, while his faithful dog and gun repose by his side.6
Dr. Doddridge is telling an experience — that of the explorer and the pioneer. Though the quoting of his words anticipates the coming of the white man and the era of permanent settlements in the region, it is necessary to a proper understanding of its geography and condition when the fearless explorers, typified in Christopher Gist and Daniel Boone, first saw the land; so too, the no less intrepid envoy, young George Washington; the martyred pioneer, surveyor and soldier, Wil- liam Crawford ; and a long line of daring traders from east of the Sus- quehanna, the Pennsylvania traders, among whom George Croghan was king, who boldly plunged through the wilderness and, embarking at the Forks of the Ohio, penetrated the Indian country, establishing
«"Notes ;" Doddridge, p. 22. ^Jbid,, p. 22.
Digitized by
BEFORE THE WHITE MAN CAME 7
their trading stations among all the tribes east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio. There were other envoys also — Conrad Weiser and Christian Frederick Post, whose plain tales of daring and suffering ending in success, appeal most powerfully to the reader's sympathy; then the Moravian missionaries: John Heckewelder, Bishop Loskiel, and their coreligionists, who brought the light of the gospel to the Indians, and had the successful efforts of years swept away in a day by the vengeance of the frontiersman — ^a vengeance that ended in butchery. All these voyagers, like the coureurs de bois of the French, saw the wilderness as Dr. Doddridge pictures it to us. The story of each looms up in the mention. But to recur again to Dr. Doddridge's "Nates ;'* he continues :
But let not the reader suppose that the pilgrim of the wilderness could feast his imagination with the romantic beauties of nature without any drawback from conflicting passions. His situation did not afford him much time for contemplation. He was an exfle from the warm clothing and plentiful mansions of society. His homely woodman's dress soon became old and ragged, the cravings of hunger compelled him to sustain from day to day, fatigues of the chase. Often he had to eat his venison, bear meat, wild turkey, without bread or salt. Nor was this all; at every step the stnmg passions of hope and fear were in full exercise. His situation was not without its dangers. He did not know at what tread his foot might be stung by a serpent; at what moment he might meet with the formidable bear; or, if in the evening, he knew not on what limb over his head the murderous panther might be perched in a squatting attitude to drop down upon and tear him to pieces in a moment. When watching a deer lick from his blind at night, the planther was often his rival in the same business, and if, by his growl or otherwise the man discovered his rival's presense, the lord of the world always retired as speedily and secretly as possible, leaving him the undis- turbed possession of the chance of game.
The solitude of the wilderness gave rise to forebodings. Dr. Dod- dridge had experienced these, and relates his feelings and the experience of others as he heard them from the lips of the pioneers. Resuming his story, one may read :
The wilderness was a region of superstition. The adventurous hunter sought for ominous presages of his future, good or bad luck in everything about him. Much of his success depended on the state of the weather; snow and rain were favorable, because in the former he could track his game, and the latter prevented them from hear- ing the rustling of the leaves beneath his feet. The appearance of the sky, mommg and evening, gave him the signs of the times in regard to the weather. So far, he was a philosopher. Perhaps he was aided in his prognostics on this subject by some old rheumatic pain which he called his weather clock. Say what you please about this, doctors, but the first settlers wer« seldom mistaken in this indication of the weather. The croaking of a raven, the howling of a dog, the screech of an owl, were as prophetic of future misfortunes among the first adventurers into this country, as they were among the andent pagans; but above all, their dreams were regarded as ominous of good or evil.
Dr. Doddridge advises his readers not to be surprised at the super- stition which existed among the first adventurers of the western wilder- ness. He opined that it was universally associated with ignorance in all those who occupy perilous situations of life, and instances the sailor, and the use of charms, incantations and amulets which constituted
Digitized by
8 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
a part of the superstition of all ages and nations. He cites the perilous situation of the borderers and the passion of fear excited by danger on this class of adventurers.
The forests were lasting. More than half a century after Doddridge wrote, there were vast woodland regions in Western Pennsylvania. There were others in Dr. Doddridge's years (he died in 1836) who told of the solitude of the wooded wilderness. Henry Marie Brackenridge one, exiled from his home in Pittsburgh at the tender age of seven to St. Genevieve on the Mississippi, in the then Spanish territory of Louisiana — Brackenridge will be quoted later on in this history, and his life story from his own writings given. He made the journey from Pittsburgh in a flatboat in charge of John B. C. Lucas, a native of France, subsequently a politician, associate judge, member of Congress from the Pittsburgh district, and later judge of the United States courts in Missouri territory, but when the boy Brackenridge was with him, was engaged in fur-trading in Upper Louisiana. The boy had slight recollections of the outward voyage. Ten days out from Pittsburgh, they landed at "Hobson's Choice," long since a part of Cincinnati, and, when Brackenridge was there, the seat of Wayne's encampment. The year is readily fixed, 1793. Brackenridge said:'' "I have no distinct recollection of the appearance of the Ohio river in the course of our descent, except that instead of being enlivened by towns and farms along its banks, it was a woody wilderness shut in to the water's edge. At that time, the fair city which now vies with the most ancient seats of civilization and the arts on this continent, was not. Excepting the openings and clearings made for the camp, the ground was covered by lofty trees and entangled vines."
In a few days, Lucas set off again, proceeding silently and as near as possible to the Kentucky shore, from apprehensions of the Indians. "How deep a solitude at that day reigned on the beautiful banks of the Ohio," exclaimed Brackenridge. It was a perilous voyage, but they went through in safety. Brackenridge did not remember the Falls of the Ohio at Louisville. It was spring, and the waters were high; the boat passed over the falls as over any other part of the river. He was impressed with the solitude, even at his tender age. He said: "From this place to the mouth of the river, about five hundred miles, the banks presented an unbroken wilderness, the solitude was not disturbed by a single human voice out of our boat."
Young Brackenridge remained in. St. Genevieve three years, practi- cally one of the French family in whose charge he had been placed by Lucas, who then proceeded on his trading expedition into Upper Louisiana. When Lucas returned, the boy had acquired a fluency in the French language, which was his father's object in exiling him the
T^Recollections of Persons and Places in the West,** H. M. Brackenridge, a native of the Wc8t» traveler, author, jurist; edition of 1868; p. 17.
Digitized by
BEFORE THE WHITE MAN CAME 9
thousand miles from his Pittsburgh home. On the return, the party stopped at the mouth of the Kaskaskia, where the boy was left for several days with the notorious Thomas Power, a renegade Englishman and naturalized Spaniard, and a base political intriguer. Then ten years old, the boy had more pronounced recollections of his voyage.
Brackenridge's brief account of his stay there is most interesting. His description of the scenery savors of Chateaubriand. Brackenridge .said: "It was about the middle of summer, the air was delightfully mild and clear, while nature was clad in her most luxuriant robes. We gathered the wild pea-vine and made ourselves soft beds under the shade of the trees which stretched their giant vine-clad arms over the stream. Flocks of screaming paroquets frequently lighted over our heads, and the humming birds, attracted by the neighboring honey- suckles, came whizzing and flitting around us, and then flashed away again."
A recent writer, John Finley,® quotes from Chateaubriand's vivid imagery of the forests of America as that author rhapsodizes in his "Atala." Mr. Finley shows that it is a mistake to suppose the American forests and plains were trackless before white men came. One who has read "Atala" must be divested of his author's illusions. Describing a valley, Chateaubriand said:
Trees of every form, of every color and every perfume, throng and grow together, up into the air in flights, and weary the eye to follow. Wild vines intertwining each other at the feet of their trees, escalade their trunks and creep along the extrem- ity of their branches, stretching from the maple to the tulip tree, from the tulip tree to the hollyhock, and thus forming grottos, arches and porticos. Often in their wanderings from tree to tree, these creepers cross the arm of a river over which they throw a bridge of flowers.
A multitude of animals spread about life and enchantment. From the extremities may be seen bears, intoxicated with the grape, staggering upon the branches of the elm trees. Caribous bathe in the lake; black squirrels play among the thick foliage; mocking birds and Virginia pigeons, not bigger than sparrows, fly down upon the turf reddened with strawberries; green parrots with yellow heads, purple woodpeckers and cardinals red, clamber up to the very tops of the cypress trees ; humming birds sparkle upon the jessamine of the Floridas; and bird-catching serpents hiss while suspended to the domes of the woods, where they swim about like creepers themselves.
After one has paused to take a deep breath at this point in the perusal, he can come back to earth and take note that the author of "Atala" has wandered from the eastern bank of the Mississippi to the Everglades. We drop gently, therefore, from "the domes of the woods" to the solid earth, and read on, for we are coming now to something like the northern woods, and we are to pay particular attention to the difference in the forests through which Rene and Atala advanced, etc., and the forests of Dr. Doddridge's years, and those through which Thomas Ashe rode and tells of. Chateaubriand proceeds: "All here
S'The French in the Heart of America," Scribner's Mag., 1912; in book form I9I5» pp. 175, et seq. See also "Atala," Harry's translation, pp. 2, 3, 19.
Digitized by
lo HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
is sound and motion when a breeze happens to animate these solitudes, to swing these floating bodies, to confound these masses of white, blue, green, and pink; to mix the colors and to combine all the murmurs. There issue such sounds from the depths of the forests, and such things pass before the eyes, that I should in vain endeavor to describe them to those who have never visited these primitive fields of nature."
Let us here put our imaginations to work, and observe Atala and Rene "advancing with difficulty under a vault of smilax, amidst vines, indigo plants, bean trees, and creeping ivy that entangled their feet like nets, while serpents hissed in every direction, and wolves, bears, caribous and young tigers, come to hide themselves in these retreats, made them resound with their roarings." A fine sort of a trackless howl- ing wilderness through which M. Chateaubriand leads his readers — ^a wilderness in which Mr. Finley intimates was there only in the author's thought ; his body was presumably at home.
H. M. Brackenridge saw a different wilderness of forest when he again passed up the Ohio around the French town of Gallipolis, where he remained a year with the celebrated Dr. Saugrain. Henry Howe in his "Historical Collections of Ohio" has given us a view of this forest- surrounded hamlet of log huts.®
No such a forest so closely surrounded Pittsburgh in Brackenridge's boyhood, for the pioneers had then been swinging their axes for forty years. The elder Brackenridge, riding the trail from Philadelphia in 1781, saw it also, and Major Ebenezer Denny, first mayor of the city of Pittsburgh, in 1816, often riding the same road when a boy of thirteen and a bearer of dispatches to the commandant at Fort Pitt in 1774, and seventeen years later riding the road again from Pittsburgh to Phila- delphia in six days, with the official report of St. Clair's defeat. All the soldiers of Great Britain that served the King at Fort Pitt came the wilderness trail through the forest ; the caravans also of the Pennsylvania traders, and Craig, O'Hara, the Wilkinses, and a long line of the pioneers of Pittsburgh. Later came the conestogas of the emigrants, and the pack-trains of the freighters, and finally the stage coach, the canal, and the railroad.
A different forest from the elysium at Kaskaskia, H. M. Bracken- ridge saw on the Ohio on his return to Pittsburgh. He attests that the banks were uninhabited, and no boats going down; he and his fellow- voyagers, short of provisions, were in danger of starvation. Their hunters had often poor success. A huge bear came out from the forest-lined shore and attacked their boat in mid-stream, threat- ening them with destruction. Killed after a hard battle, the bearmeat provided a feast not more providential and the manna in the wilderness of old. A herd of buffalo next appeared to offer a
dEditioa of 1848; p. 180.
Digitized by
BEFORE THE WHITE MAN CAME ii
victim, and not long after, when encamping for the night in a beautiful grove of sugar trees, the voyagers were made aware of a flock of wild turkeys roosting above their heads. More feasting followed. Years later. Judge Brackenridge, writing of these incidents of his boyhood, described the trees of the forests he had known — the beautiful sugar maple, the towering pecane of the Mississippi in magnificent groves also; and the gigantic and remarkable sycamore; the sugar and syca- more most common about the town of Pittsburgh. With what we may believe a sigh, Brackenridge penned these lines in 1830: "The wonderful productions of nature are however fast disappearing before the ax of the settler, and in time these plantations of groves and trees which may be ranked among the proudest of her works, will be known to tra- dition, like the race of the giants."
The tradition is here. Brackenridge saw the groves go, for he lived to be eighty-six, dying in Pittsburgh in 1872. No history of Pittsburgh can be written without frequent reference to the Brackenridges, for both wrote much history of this place, and the younger much of the townspeople, of some of whom no one else has left mention.
Washington, in his Journals of 1753 and 1770, the latter of his trip from Pittsburgh to the Kanawha, has much description of the lands through which he traveled from day to day, but he looked on it with the eyes of the surveyor and the farmer, for he was both. Anon he trained a military eye upon certain suggestive situations as most suit- able for fortification. Thus his well known and oft-quoted observations ^^ 1 753 on his first seeing the confluence of the rivers at what was subsequently the site of Pittsburgh, and also in the same vein at his first view of McKee's Rocks. Washington saw much bad land, for he records, December 7, 1753:
At twelve o'clock wc set out for the fort, and were prevented arriving there until the iith by excessive rains, snows, and bad travelbg through the many, mires and swamps. These we were obliged to pass to avoid crossing the creek, which wa? impassable either by fording or rafting, the water was so high and rapid.
We passed over much good land since we left Venango, and through several very extensive and rich meadows, one of which, I believe, was nearly four miles in length and considerably wide in some places.
Washington was traveling from Venango (now Franklin, in Venango county), to the French Fort Le Boeuf, at what is now the town of Waterford, in Erie county, Pennsylvania, in an airline a distance of forty miles only.
It is to be noted that there were natural clearings in the forest. The one spoken of by Washington, similar to those in Central Pennsylvania, from which the name "Clearfield" has been given to the Pennsylvania county and town, these "clear fields" a noted section on the Kittanning path.
Conrad Weiser in his journals has little to say of topography, neither
Digitized by
12 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
has George Croghan in his. Christopher Gist, a surveyor, is always specific in stating his bearings and courses and the number of miles traveled. Like Washington, Gist had his eye on the land for the possi- bilities of settlement. Thus, in going from Shannopin's Town (which was on the Allegheny river at what is now the foot of Thirty-third street, Pittsburgh), to Logstown, on the Ohio, subsequently the site of Wayne's encampment, he called Legionville. Gist wrote :
Nov. 24th, 1750. — Set out from Shannopin's Town and swam our horses across the River Ohio (Allegheny) 74 w. 4, etc., and went down the river. All the land from Shannopin's Town is good along the River, but the bottoms are broad. At a Dis- tance from the River good Land for Farming covered with small white and red Oaks and tolerably level ; fine runs for mills, &c.io
Post came the northern trail to Logstown, starting at Philadelphia and traveling by way of Shamokin, now Sunbury. He came the long, hard trail to Venango and thence across the counties of Venango, Mer- cer, Lawrence and Beaver, to Logstown, which was above Old Economy, now Ambridge. He returned the same road. At times he describes the country, especially if it was bad. Thus, September 9, 1758: "We took a little footpath hardly to be seen. We lost it and went through thick bushes till we came to a mire which we did not see till we were in it, and Tom Hickman fell in and almost broke a leg. We had hard work to get the horse out again. The Lord helped me that I got safe from my horse. We passed many such places; it rained all day and we got a double portion of it, because we received all that hung on the bushes. We were as wet las if we were swimming all the day. At night we laid ourselves down in a swampy place to sleep, where we had nothing but the heavens for our covering."
"Tom Hickman" was one of Post's Indian guides. Post's mission to the Indians on the Ohio will be told in Chapter XXI.
On September 13th, Post again had bad traveling. He wrote in his journal this day: "We went through a bad swamp where there were some very thick thorns so that they tore our clothes and flesh, both hands and face, to a bad degree."
The wilderness woodland of Western Pennsylvania was good and bad in spots, it is to be observed. Clear fields, burned over wastes, mire, vast stretches of swampland such as the Pymatuning swamp in Mercer and Crawford counties, and such arable land as mentioned by Washington and Gist, though heavily wooded. These pioneer surveyors were used to the wilderness, its tumults and its solemn stillness. The solitude of the deep woods did not impress them. They were used to it from childhood. It did impress many who journeyed to Pittsburgh in the early days of the town, the stories of these tourists to come later in this history. As late as 1841, when Dickens was here, the forests were
io"Gist's Journals, etc.," William M. Darlington, Pittsburgh, 1893; P. 34.
Digitized by
BEFORE THE WHITE MAN CAME 13
such in extent as to draw from him the description he has given us in his "American Notes." Many of these tourists went home and wrote books recording their adventures, experiences, impressions, and the history, natural and secular, of the regions traversed, and some have been charged with transgressing the vale of truth. No better records of the early history of the ''Western Country," as it was for many years called, have been handed down to us than these records of these touring journal-writers. What they said of the woods through which they staged, or rode, or came by horse-drawn vehicle, is pertinent to the story of the region before the white man came to stay, or had not yet occupied all of the section about the Forks of the Ohio — or, we may say, the Upper Ohio Valley, or even "Pittsburgh and Its Environs," or, in the language of the Census Bureau, "Pittsburgh's Metropolitan District" — a designation most used in marts of trade.
Some of the tales of these tourists are most interesting, especially those who in the language of the Modern West can be regarded as "tenderfeet."
Thomas Ashe, whose story of the woods will come later in this chapter, was an Irish tourist and a man of curious mind. He was in Pittsburgh in 1806, and remained there until spring, visiting many places in the region. He journeyed from Pittsburgh to Erie via the Franklin road. He saw everything. In the language of his English publisher in the preface to Ashe's Book :^^ "Mr. Ashe here gives an account everyway satisfactory. With all the necessary requirements he went on an exploratory journey with the sole view of examining this inter- esting country, and his researches, delivered in the familiar style of letters, in which he carries the reader along with him, cannot fail to interest and inform the politician, the statesman, the philosopher, and the antiquarian. He explains the delusions that have been held up by fanciful or partial writers as to the country by which so many indi- viduals have been misled, and he furnishes to the naturalist a variety of interesting information," etc.
This is true. Ashe was especially full in details, and was greatly interested in the fauna and flora of the country he traversed. He paid particular notice to the roads, especially to those leading to the Onon- daga salt region of New York State, and necessarily mentions the paths made by the native animals in their resorting to the salt licks. He noted that: "The best roads to the Onondaga from all parts, are the buffalo tracks, so-called from having been observed to be made by the buffaloes in their annual visitations to the lakes for their pasture grounds, and though this is a distance of above two hundred miles, the best surveyor could not have chosen a more direct course, or a firmer or better ground.
ii^Travels in America Performed in the Year 1806, etc.;" by Thomas Ashe, Esq., London printed; Newbuiyport Edition, i8o8» most common.
Digitized by
14 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
I have often followed these tracks with safety and admiration. I per- ceived them chosen as if by the nicest judgment, and when, at times, I was perplexed to find them revert on themselves in parallel lines, I soon found it occasioned by swamps, ponds or precipices, which the animals knew how to avoid, but, that object being effected, the road again swept into its due course and bore towards its destination as if under the direction of a compass."
It is to be noted how closely Ashe's language, written one hundred
years previously, approaches Dr. Hulbert's description of the buffalo traces.^2
Ashe met and interviewed old settlers who knew the buffalo, and no other proof is necessary to adduce at this point than that evidenced in the naming of the city of Buffalo, to show how the American bison once ranged the country of Western Pennsylvania when the first white man came to it. So large were the herds encountered by the French in their first explorations in Northwestern Pennsylvania, that they called French creek in Crawford and Erie counties, the "Riviere aux Boeufs." Ashe states :
One old man, one of the first settlers in this country, built his log house on the immediate borders of a salt spring. He informed me that for the first several seasons the buffaloes paid him their visits with the utmost regularity; they traveled in single file, always following each other in equal distances, forming droves on their arrival of about three hundred each. The first and second years, so unacquainted were these poor brutes with the use of this man's house or with his nature, that in a few hours they rubbed the house completely down, taking delight in turning the logs off with their horns, while he had some difficulty to escape from being trampled under their feet, or crushed to death in his own room. At that period he supposed there could not have been less than ten thousand in the neighborhood of the spring. They sought for no manner of food, but only bathed and drank three or four times a day, and rolled in the earth, or reposed with their flanks distended in the adjacent shade, and on the fifth and sixth days separated into distinct droves, bathed, drank, and departed in single file according to die exact order of their arrival. They all rolled successively in the same hole, and each thus carried away a coat of mud to preserve the moisture on their skin, and which, when hardened and baked by the sun, would resist the stings of millions of insects that otherwise would have persecuted these peaceful travelers to madness or even death. ^ 8
Ashe may have been told this, or he may have extracted the story from some work on natural history current in his day. He tells the habits of the bison truthfully, and accounts for the roads as other writers have done. He mentions the wallow and the wallowing. Buf- falo wallows in the region about Pittsburgh will strike the reader as ancient history in its insertion here, nevertheless we have the name, buffalo, geographically applied more than once within thirty miles of the city — Buffalo creek, emptying into the Allegheny river at Freeport, in Armstrong county, and North and South Buffalo townships in that
i2"Historic Highways," VoL II, Archer Butler Hulbert; Chap I., "Indian Thor- oughfares."
i8««Xravcls, etc;" Ashe, supra., p. 48.
Digitized by
BEFORE THE WHITE MAN CAME 15
locality ; also Buffalo township and Buffalo creek in Washington county. These applications of the borderer's name for the bison recognize the fact that the localities so-named were once part of that animal's habitat. It may be noticed that Ashe's statistics are given only in round numbers.
It was while en route to Pittsburgh, after leaving Bedford, that Ashe met with the adventures that caused him to describe the woodland solitudes that encompassed him. Night came on him in crossing the AUeghenies, he said, on account of having traveled along so attentive to objects around him and wasted so much time in visionary speculations. He found himself on the summit of the ridge where the road was nar- row, and bounded by frightful precipices. If he attempted to advance, a sudden and rapid death seemed unavoidable to him; if he remained where he was, wolves, panthers and tiger cats were at hand to devour him. He chose the latter risk as having less of fatal certainty in it. "I thought I could effect something by resistance," he said, "or that for- tune might favor me by giving a more suitable supper and a different hunting ground to the ferocious animals."
So he remained in the woods, and had abundance of time for reflec- tion. Strange thoughts filled his excited brain. He recorded them all in his stilted style. He said :
The progress of night was considerably advanced, and the powerful exhilarations of the preceding sun for want of wind to disperse, or waft them to other parts, were returning to their parent wood. They at first hovered in the form of transparent clouds over small creeks and rivulets in the intervals of the mountains, and then assumed a wider range, spreading over the entire valley and giving to it the appearance of a calm, continued sea. This beautiful transfiguration took place several hundred feet below me, while the summit of the hill had no mist and the dew was not sensible. Th^ moon shone but capriciously, for though some places were adorned with her brightest beams and exhibited various fantastic forms and covers, others were unaf- fected by her light, and awfully mountained an unvaried gloom, a darkness visible con- veying terror and dismay.**
Ashe was having a night of it. The vividness of his surroundings had plunged him in deep awe. He tells of his impressions :
Such impressions were fining fast on my imagination, till an object of inex- pressible sublimity gave a different direction to my thoughts and seized the entire possession of my mind. The heavenly vault appeared to be all on fire, not exhibiting the stream of character of the aurora bcMealis, but an immensity vivid and clear, through which the stars detached from the firmament traversed in eccentric directions, followed by trains of light of diversified magnitude and brightness. Many meteors rose majestically out of the horizon, and having gradually attained an elevation of thirty degrees, suddenly burst and descended to the earth in a shower of brilliant sparks or glittering gems. This splendid phenomenon was succeeded by a multitude of shooting stars, and balls and columns of fire, which, after assuming a variety of forms, vertical, spiral and circular, vanished in slight flashes of lightning and left the sky in its usual appearance and serenity. "Nature stood checked*' during this exhibition; all was a "death-like silence and a dread repose." Would it had continued for a timet I had insensibly dropped on my knees, and felt that I was offering to ttie great Creator of the works which I witnessed, the purest tribute of admiration and praise. My heart was full ; I could not repress by gratitude, and tears gushed from my eyes.
i^'^Travels," etc. ; Ashe, p. 16, et seq.
Digitized by
i6 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
One familiar with the proceedings of the councils with the Indians, wishes he had a string of wampum handy with which to "wipe the tears from his eyes and clear his heart/' etc. We may or may not believe that Ashe was sincere, for a few weeks later he was a discredited man in Pittsburgh, with the reputation of an adventurer and so untruthful in some of his statements and dishonest in his dealings that his words are taken with some degree of allowance. To continue the story of his night in the woods, we are told :
These pious, pleasing sensations were soon forced to yield to others rising out of objects and circumstances around me. The profound silence maintained during the luminous representations was followed by the din of the demons of the woods. Clouds of owls rose out of the valleys and flitted screaming about my head. The wdves, too, held some prey in chase, probably deer; their bowlings were reverberated from moun- tain to mountain, or carried through the windings of the vales, returned to the ear an unexpected wonder. Nor was the panther idle; though he is never to be heard till in the act of springing on his victim, when he utters a horrid cry. The wolf in hunting howls all the time, certainly with the view of striking terror, for being less fleet than many of the animals on which he subsists, they would escape him did he not thus check their speed by confounding their faculties. This is particularly the case with the deer.
Ashe tells next how the wild beasts take their prey, as revealed to him in the midnight in the forest, especially the methods of the tiger- cat, the Pennsylvania catamount most probably referred to. Then he resumes the story of his experiences, stating:
The intervals between the cries and roarings were filled by the noise of millions of little beings. Every tree, shrub, plant and vegetable harbored some thousands of inhabitants, endowed with the faculty of expressing their passions, wants and appe- tites, in different tones and varied modulations. The most remarkable was the voice of the whip-poor-will, plaintive and sad; "whip-poor-will" was his constant exclama- tion, nor did he quit his place, but seemed to brave the chastisement which he repeatedly lamented. The moon by this time had sunk into the horizon, which was the signal for multitudes of lightning flies to rise amidst the trees and spread a new species of radi- ance around. In many places, where they fell and rose in numbers, they fell like a shower of sparks, and in others, where thinly scattered, they emitted an intermittent pleasing ray.
Ashe is frequently guilty of hyperbole. He terms Mt. Washington, on the south side of Pittsburgh, a mountain, and with "thousands of inhabitants on every shrub," etc. Ashe certainly was in a densely populated region and, we may fairly assume, was not lonesome. He gives us a graphic and interesting account of the forest wilderness at night, and his experiences in it were the same as the woodland rangers, white or red, except that these men, accustomed to the noises of the woods, curled up, as Dr. Doddridge has related, and slept undisturbed by the din around them — new, strange and terrifying to a lone traveler. The noises Ashe mentions were familiar to the first settlers, and con- tinued until the woodland was cleared, and the wildest and largest of the carnivora were driven to the recesses of the mountains. With the dawn, the turmoil of the night ceased, and Ashe was transported from a disturb- ing commotion to dead silence, and in consequence became pensive
Digitized by
BEFORE THE WHITE MAN CAME 17
again. He relates : "At length the day began to dawn ; both the noisy and the glittering world withdrew and left to nature a silent, solemn repose of one-half hour. This I employed in reflections on the immensity and number of her works and the presumption of man in pretending to count and describe them. Who dares compose a history of nature, should first pass a night where I did. He would be taught the vanity of his views and the audacity of his intentions."
Ashe begins a new chapter here, after a half page of reflections, after the paragraph just quoted. His chapters are all in the form of letters beginning "Dear Sir," and signed "T. A." at the conclusion of the first one ; the rest are merely dated, the one now to be noticed, dated as the preceding: "Pittsburgh October 1806." He describes a beautiful valley as he saw it at dawn on resuming his journey on horseback, and his description of this has been greatly admired. He has also some description of American forests which is corroborative of what has been stated ante in this chapter. He begins his chapter thus :
As day approached from the east, I recommenced my jottrney. The sun soon after colored "in gay attire" some of the summits of the mountains, but his lum- inous body was not visible for considerable time, and when it did appear in all its majesty, its rays were for several hours too oblique to penetrate the depths of the valley and disperse the ocean which the preceding day had formed. It was inter- esting to observe with what reluctance the mists dissipated ; till touched by the magic beam they were one uniform sheet They then assumed a variety of forms, clouds representing grotesque and lively figures, crowning some of the highest trees. Some descended to the bosom of the stream and followed the windings of the waters; others hovered over fountains and springs ; while the larger portion rose boldly to the moun- tain tops, in defiance of the sun, to gain the higher atmosphere and again descend to the earth in dew or showers.
The birds with the first dawn left the recesses of the valley and taking their elevated seats joined in one universal choir. At least nothing had more the resem- blance of a general thanksgiving, or oblation of praise to the Author of life and light, and though it might have been but a burst of exultation for the return to mom, I pre- ferred thinking it a grateful expression of worship.^s
Ashe had reached a habitation, and stopped for refreshments. We may believe his account of the bird concert a phantasy, for nothing is truer than the fact that our song birds came with the first settlers, as Dr. Doddridge well knew and has recorded. Mr. Cuming, a con- temporary traveler, noted the absence of song birds : "Thursday, twenty- first August, I walked out with the first dawn of a fine morning, nothing being wanting to render it delightful except the carol of the winged inhabitants of the woods, which throughout this country is very rare." Cuming was in an old settled country, too, just west of Washington, Pennsylvania.^*
Ashe, after breakfasting, borrowed a rifle from his host the settler, and plunged into the forest. He remarks: "The American forests have
is'TravcIs," etc; Ashe, pp. 20-21.
^•'•Sketches of a Tour to the Western Country, etc.,'' F. Cuming, Pittsburgh, 1810; p. 215. Pitta.— 2
Digitized by
i8 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
generally one interesting quality, that of being entirely free from under^ or brush, wood. This is owing to the extraordinary height and spreading tops of the trees, which thus prevent the sun from penetrating to the ground and nourishing inferior articles of vegetation. In consequence of the above circumstance, one can walk in them with much pleasure and see an enemy from a considerable distance."
Ashe is only partly right here. After shooting "a very large bear" which tumbled x>ff the limb of a "very large*' tree conveniently close by, hjls story of this adventure uncorroborated, he tells of his further wander- ings in the forest, saying : "I continued on my way until I came to a wood of younger growth interspersed with spots entirely clear of timber and marked by traces of former cultivation. I examined the place with care. It was an Indian camp such as is often seen from the borders of the Atlantic t© the great western waters, and even to the Pacific Ocean."
Ashe's bear was probably one of the Chateaubriand species, "intoxi- cated with the wild grape, staggering off the limb." Ashe remained over night with the settler, and the next merning rode on towards Pittsburgh. To continue his story, reading further, it states that:
Autumn had already begun to shed a varied tint over the numerous subjects of her rich domain. I amused myself in endeavoring to co^nt and classify the colors which she employs to diversify nature and distinguish her reign from that of other seasons, but I made little progress, for the scene was too grand, extensive and sub- lime to come under the confined control of human calculation. I was on a vast emi- nence commanding a view of a valley in which stood millions of trees and from which many millions more gradually rose in the form of an immense amphitheatre. It appeared as if every tree, though many were of the same class, had shades, hue and character peculiar to itself, derived from individual altitude, growth and soil; and presentation to heavenly bodies and the emanations issuing from them. It was one of those scenes on which the mind would dwell with infinite rapture, but which can never be (Jescribed with justice and truth except by one inspired by Him "whose breath per- fumes them, and whose pencil paints.*'^? But,
"Who can paint
Like Nature? Can imagination boast
Amidst her creation, hues like these?"
Thomson.
After crossing the Laurel Ridge and proceeding through the Ligonier Valley, Ashe's narrative continues in a few paragraphs until he announces his arrival in Pittsburgh. He said: "Nothing worthy of mention struck my notice until I arrived within three miles of Pittsburgh, when I descended into the beautiful vale which leads into that town. It was" impossible to behold anything more interesting than this; it extended three miles on a perfect level, cultivated irl the highest degree, bounded by rising ground on the left and a transparent river on the right, and leading to a well inhabited town where I meant to repose after a journey of 320 miles, 150 of them over stupendous mountains and bar- ren rocks."
Ashe IS likely wrong in his statements of distance. From one place
""Travels;" p. 23.
Digitized by
BEFORE THE WHITE MAN CAME 19
only could he see a river on his right, and this was the Allegheny, for he was traveling the old Forbes road from Bedford, which took the high ground coming into Pittsburgh from Turtle Creek, and when within six miles of the town of Pittsburgh could look down upon and enter the East Liberty Valley — almost all of the level portion of Pittsburgh's East End, as that section is most commonly called.
We must admit Tourist Ashe has given us a fairly good account of the forest wilderness of Western Pennsylvania, as he observed it and its lights and shadows. There were variations from the woods he traveled through — changes caused by man designedly. Callahan has some account of these changes. He says:
During the Indian's occupancy he left his mark in the form of burned woods. He burned much less in regions farther west, but there is no question that he was vigor- ously applying the torch up to the time he took his departure. The clearings made by the Indians for agricultural purposes were comparatively large, but they were small in comparison with openings made by fires set accidentally, wantonly, or to the end that more wild game might abound, with improved opporttmities for hunting. Though white men are rated high as destroyers of forests, they are not in the same class with the Indian. He used little wood, destroyed vastly more to make room for his fields, but his real work of forest destroying was done by fire. He was wasteful and destruc- tive as savages usually are, and the word economy had no place in his vocabulary. The Indian is by nature an incendiary, and forest burning was his besetting sin. The few poles and trees which he took for use, and the thousands he destroyed to make his cornfields, were a small drain on the forests in comparison with the millions which his woods fire consumed. It is not known how long before the white men came to Vir- ginia, but the custom was general at the time of the first settlement, and was appar- ently of long standing and evidently growing worse.
The same was also true of the country of Western Pennsylvania. Callahan thinks the custom of destruction was learned from the west- em Indians. He noted that swampland too damp to burn had escaped repeated visitations by fire. Few if any other kinds of land escaped. Throughout hundreds of square miles the undergrowth had been injured or destroyed; in places the mature trees alone remained, so thin in localities that the woods resembled parks rather than forests, and these facts have been abundantly set forth in contemporaneous writ- ings. When the first whites came,, the forests in Virginia had appar- ently reached the last stage before their fall. No small wood was coming on to take the place of the old trees, and the death of the mature timber presaged that many regions would be treeless. Callahan quotes Philip A. Bruce, ^uthor of the "Economic History of Virginia."^* Free- dom from undergrowth was one of the most notable features of the original woods of the State west of the mountains ; these conditions were not so bad as in the eastern section. This may have been due to the
i8"Genealogical and Personal History of the Upper Monongahela Valley, W. Va., with an Account of the Resources and Industries of the Upper Monongahda Valley and Tributory Region," by J. M. Callahan, with various historical articles by staff writers under the Editorial Supervision of Bernard L. Butcher, Lewis His. Pub. Co., 1912; VoL I, p. 208, et seq.
Digitized by
20 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
fact that the mountain section was almost unknown for eighty years after the Indians departed. In that time, burnt woods will recuperate in a damp climate and on a rich soil. In that section the first whites were generally impressed with the burned or open tracts, and there were instances where the savages were interrupted in the act of burning. The Indians reasoned that the end justified the means. Their food supply was directly increased by fires which facilitated hunting opera- tions and, indirectly, by opening the way for the growth of grass, nuts, fruits and berries, thereby inviting game to congregate in certain localities. The cunning red man observed, too, that fruitbearing trees multiply more rapidly and yield more abundantly when grown on the edges of burned tracts than in the forest. The fall of millions of feet of fine timber was nothing to the Indians if briers and grass followed, for this brought together beasts and birds which furnished the Indians more food than they could have procured in the standing timber before the timber was destroyed.
There were burned tracts in many places in the western country. Had Ashe been a pioneer, he would have noted the open spaces in the woods to have been once burned over, if such had been the case. What was true of burned-over woodland in the transmontane region of Western Pennsylvania does not appear to have been observed in the Upper Ohio Valley, for many travelers have noted the closely wooded shores of the Ohio other than those quoted in this chapter. As late as 1847 this forest growth was remarkable. It was observed by Dickens in descend- ing the Ohio from Pittsburgh. He said :
A line broad river always, but in some parts much wider than others, and then there is usually a green island covered with trees, dividing it into two streams. Occa- sionally we stopped for a few minutes, maybe to take in wood, maybe for passengers at some small town or village, (I ought to say city, for every place is a city here) ; but the banks are for the most part deep solitude, overgrown with trees which hereabout are already in leaf and very green. For miles and miles and miles, these solitudes are unbroken by any sign of human life or a trace of human footsteps, nor is anything seen to hover about them but the bluejay, whose color is so bright and yet so delicate that it looks like a flying flower. At lengthened intervals a log cabin with its little space of cleared land about it, nestles under a rising ground and sends its thread of blue smdce curling up into the sky. It stands in the comer of the poor field of wheat, which is full of great unsightly stumps like earthy butcher's blocks. Sometimes the ground is only just now cleared, the felled trees lying upon the soil, and the log house only this morning begun.
And still there is the same eternal foreground. The river has washed away its banks and stately trees have fallen down into the stream. Som% have been there so long that they are mere dry, grisly skeletons. Some have just toppled over and, having earth yet about their roots, are bathing their green heads in the river and putting forth new shoots and branches. Some are almost sliding down, as you lode at them, and some were drowned so long ago that their bleached arms start out from the middle of the current, and seem to try to grasp the boat and drag it under water.19
"What might be expected," asks Mr. Archibald Prentice, the Man- chester editor, in comment, "after this description, but an unbroken
i»"American Notes;" Chap. XI
Digitized by
BEFORE THE WHITE MAN CAME 21
solitude and an eternal monotony relieved only by an occasional de- formity?" Prentice criticizes his distinguished countryman, saying: "Reading his description again, I am tempted to transcribe it as a curious specimen of the author's utter indifference to the beautiful scenery under which he remained sitting in 'the little stern gallery' of the ladies' cabin, rather than mounting on the paddle box or on the upper deck to see that which it is to be presumed he went to see."*<^
Mr. Prentice was in Pittsburgh in June, 1848. He followed Dickens' route six years later than Dickens, and he has given us a charming description of the "Belle Riviere of the French." His final shot at Dickens was suggested when he arose one morning and found the boat tied to the bank in a fog so dense he could not see ten yards on either side — ^not much of a fog to a Pittsburgher. Prentice ventures the assertion "that in such a mist, Charles Dickens might have come down the river, only he does not say so."
Nevertheless, Dickens has described the forest wilderness on its river boundaries quite accurately. The settlers' clearings were only breaks in its monotony. His description, fifty years later than H. M. Brackenridge's, differs from Brackenridge's only in this respect.
It was a wonderful wilderness — ^that of the Western Country before the white man came. In it were traces of a people who lived in the long, long-ago. These traces suggest a story, for they were to be seen about Pittsburgh until quite recently, and their exploration was a matter of moment. Then, too, when the white came to stay, the red man left for good, and this fact, too, suggests a chapter on his departure, and why he went and what happened as he took up "the trail of the setting sun," as the orators used to put it.
2o"A Tour of the United States," Archibald Prentice, London; also Halifax Ed., 1858, pp. 51-52.
Digitized by
CHAPTER 11. Historic Mounds and Prehistoric Mound Builders.
The first wilderness was not altogether uninhabited by human beings before the white man came. This we know, for the history of the aboriginal inhabitants, the Indians, runs concurrently with the history of our country from the first discoveries on the continent of North America. There were people in the region about Pittsburgh for ages, perhaps, before the invention of letters, perhaps before thie age of history writing, certainly anterior to the discovery of America. To quote Dr. Doddridge here is pertinent, for his thoughts as he has set them forth in his "Notes" have given the inspiration to write this chapter, which might have been suggested by the mention of the historic mounds in and near Pittsburgh. Little has been said of these mounds in Pittsburgh history ; their existence has been noted briefly, as will be seen. Everts* artists thought well enough of the McKee's Rocks Mound to draw a picture of it, a representation now most valuable, as the mound has been destroyed.^ The history of its destruction is Pittsburgh history, as will appear and which will follow in this chapter, and as part of the history of the mound builders, if the word "history" may be permitted in this connection.
The researches of archaeologists in other sections of the United States as tending to show the builders of all mounds in the United States were the same people, and that the local mounds were similar in struc- ture, workmanship, design and contents, to other mounds, are judged to be relevant, and the descriptions of many mounds by tourists, travel- ers, authors and scientists, will naturally be included. While a new and strange chapter in the "History of Pittsburgh and Its Environs," it is none the less interesting, and justification for its insertion can be found in the long and frequent items in the newspapers when the McKee's Rocks explorations were under way. Additional justification can be found in Dr. Doddridge's "Notes." Doubtless the thoughts he penned there were the thoughts of his neighbors also, for as one pro- ceeds in the reading of this chapter it will be evident that the mounds were objects of great curiosity to the early settlers, and that eminent men explored them and wrote the results in book form. While these may not be in consonance with the deductions of more modem archaeolo- gists, they are none the less interesting. Among the early writers on the work of the mound builders was the Pittsburgh "Author, Traveler and Jurist," Henry Marie Brackenridge, who, bom in Pittsburgh in 1787, knew of the historic mounds in this region, and as a boy played
iScc "History of Allegheny County, Pa.;" (Everts ft Co.) 1876, p. ia6, for view of Mound
Digitized by
MOUNDS AND MOUND BUILDERS 23
about one, at least. Early tourists such as Ashe and Cuming, who tarried in Pittsburgh while on their travels in North America, have left us most readable stories of the impressions these mounds made upon them, and some history of them as they obtained it in the localities under their observation.
Dr. Doddridge's reflections resulting from the state of the wilderness as he and other pioneers knew it, have been given in Chapter I. We cannot doubt their truth and his sincerity. He recites this and its influence and tendencies. He tells us:
Many circumstances concurred to awaken in the mind of the early adventurer into this country the most serieus and even melancholy reflections. He saw everywhere around him induhitable evidences of the former existence of a large population of bar- barians which had long ago perished from the earth. Their arrowheads furnished him with gunflints ; stone hatchets, pipes and fragments of earthenware were found in every place. The remains of their rude fortifications were met with in many places; some of them of considerable extent and magnitude. Seated on the summit of some sepul- chral mound containing the ashes of tens of thousands of the dead, he said to himself :
"This is the grave, and this no doubt, the temple of worship of a long succession of generations long since mouldered into dust; these surroundmg valleys were onee animated by their labors, hunting and wars, their songs and dances; but oblivion has drawn her impenetrable veil over their whole history; no lettered page, no sculptured monument, informs who they were, from whence they came, the period of their exist- ence, or by what dreadful catastrophe the iron hand of death has given so complete an overthrown and made the whole of this country an immense Golgotha."
Dr. Doddridge writes truly. He had in mind such elaborate works of this adjudged prehistoric race as remain evident today at Mounds- ville. West Virginia, and at Marietta, Circleville, Fort Ancient, and many other places in Ohio; though, as he states, ancient mounds were once numerous in the whole region about Pittsburgh. He mentions these relics and the mounds as aspects of the Western Country at the coming of the first adventurers into the bosom of its forests. What they saw and found pertained, he thought, to the story of the settle- ments, and incidentally to the poor and hazardous lot of the settlers.
These evidences of a population in his time considered to have been numerous and to have existed and perished long anterior to the period of history, led Dr. Doddridge to insert in his "Notes" the chapter headed "The Remains of an Extinct People," in which he describes such of the antiquities of the region as came under his notice, with much mention and history of similar mounds in all parts of the earth. He had himself procured ten copper beads of sixty which were taken from an ancient grave on Grave Creek Flat, in Marshall county, West Virginia, near Moundsville, the county seat, once called Elizabeth. This was not far from his home in Wellsburg, Brooke county. Naturally, from his expressions above quoted, he was greatly interested in these sepulchral mounds and the smaller graves of that region, and familiar with the researches of Dr. Caleb Atwater, the historian of Ohio, and those of Thomas JefFer$on, both of whom he mentions. Some of Dod- dridge's speculations upon the extinct people are instructive, and what he tells of the mounds as he knew them is real history now.
Digitized by
24 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
Dr. Doddridge regarded the sepulchral mounds as by far the greatest figure among our country's antiquities. In point of magnitude, he said, some of them are truly sublime and imposing monuments of human labor for the burial of the dead. This is particularly true of the Grave Creek Mound, and will apply also to that which once stood on the top of McKee's Rocks. Most logically, Doddridge would first describe the Grave Creek Mound. His figures are nearly accurate. Extravagant dimensions have been published of this great mound. Thus, in Sears' "Description of the State of Virginia :"*
EuzABETH — ^This town is twelve miles below Wheeling, on a plain once the habi- tation of a large population whose remains are visible in numerous ancient tumuli scat- tered over its surface. The largest is ii6 feet high, and surrounded by a ditch 400 yards in circuit.
Dr. Doddridge's descriptions and remarks fit in nicely with that of other writers, as will be noted. He says in his chapter on "The Remains of an Extinct People:" "The large grave on Grave Creek Flat is the only large one in this section of the country. The diameter of its base is said to be 100 yards, its altitude is at least 75 feet; some g^ve it as 90 feet. The diameter at the top is 15 yards. The sides and tops of the mound are covered with trees of all sizes and ages, intermingled with fallen and decaying timber like the surrounding woods. Supposing this august pyramid to contain human bones in equal proportions with the lesser mounds which have been opened from time to time, what myriads of human beings must repose in its vast dimensions !"
Dr. Doddridge was writing prior to 1824, long before any investiga- tion of the mound revealed its actual construction within. At this point Dr. Doddridge appended the footnote pertaining to Jefferson's exploration. The McKee's Rocks Mound was one of the smaller kind, compared with this great hill, and was not over twenty (perhaps eighteen) feet in height. Dr. Doddridge proceeds: "The present owner of this mound, the author has been informed, has expressed his deter- mination to preserve it in its original state during his life. He will not suffer the axe to violate its timber, nor the mattocks its earth. May the successors to the title of the estate forever feel the same pious regard for this august mansion of the dead, and preserve the venerable monument of antiquity from that destruction which has already annihilated or defaced a large number of lesser depositories of the dead."
Dr. Doddridge does not agree with many writers of his time who regarded these sepulchral mounds peculiar to America. He said if such were the fact, they would be objects of greater curiosity, as belonging exclusively to this quarter of the globe they would tend to prove that the Aborigines of America were different from all other
2"A Pictorial Description of the United States, etc;" Robert Scars; New York, 1856; p. 337.
Digitized by
MOUNDS AND MOUND BUILDERS 25
nations of the earth, at least in their manner of disposing of their dead. He goes into the history of mounds in all sections of the globe, stating that all of the sepuchral class that had been opened in Asia and America contained, about the center of the bottom, a coffin or vault of stone which contained but one skeleton. This was regarded as the sarcophagus of the patriarch, or first monarch of the tribe or nation to which the sepulchre belonged. Thenceforward all his people were deposited in the grave of the founder of the nation. In process of time the daily increasing mound became the national history. Its age was the age of the nation, and its magnitude gave the census of the relative numbers and military force with regard to other nations about them. "What a sublime spectacle," exclaims Dr. Doddridge, "to the people to whom it belonged, must one of those large sepulchres have been ! The remains of the first chief of the nation, with his people and their successors through many generations, reposing together in the same tomb."
How analagous the Doctor's observations are to the story of the opening of the McKee's Rocks Mound, and the explanatory lectures of Drs. Magee and Putnam, to be noted later, must strike one here as worthy of remark. Dr. Doddridge next calls attention to the fact well known in his day, that some of the North American Indians had been in the habit, since the coming of the first Europeans, of collecting the bones of their dead from every quarter for the purpose of depositing them with those of their people at their chief towns. The Doctor thinks this must have been the general practice during the time of the erection of the large ancient graves exemplified in the Grave Creek Mound, for the bones found in those which had been opened had been thrown pro- miscuously together in large collections, as if emptied out of baskets or bags. This is true of many since opened. Jefferson's researches reveal this, and Tomlinson's also, and it was proven true of the McKee's Rocks Mound.
Dr. Doddridge considered strong evidence of the great age of these rude remains of antiquity was to be found in the fact that nowhere there existed even a traditionary account of their origin. He asks : "After what lapse of time does tradition degenerate into fable ? At what period of time does fable itself wear out and consign all antiquity to a total and acknowledged oblivion?" All this, he said, had happened with regard to the antiquities of the ancient nations such as Greece, where written history originated. It may be well to recur to some of Dr. Dod- dridge's reflections, hence for a time we may leave him and proceed to the story of the antiquities of Pittsburgh and environs.
The mound at McKee's Rocks was opened in July, 1896, and thor- oughly explored. Many bones were found, and a number of skeletons taken out, including several of extraordinary size, which are preserved in the Carnegie Museum of Pittsburgh. Details of the exhumations from this mound are presented further on in this chapter.
Digitized by
26 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
A similar mound once adorned the summit of Grant's Hill in Pitts- burg, on the square bounded by Grant and Ross streets, Fifth avenue and Diamond street, this plot now the site of the court house of Alle- gheny county. By successive gradations this hill has been cut down about forty feet. The celebrated Hugh Henry Brackenridge mentions the Grant Hill Mound in his description of Pittsburgh as the rude town about Fort Pitt existed when Brackenridge came to this place in the summer of 1781. When John Scull and his first partner, Joseph Hall, came five years later, Brackenridge proceeded to boom the town in the "Pittsburgh Gazette," the paper still in existence, which Scull and Hall then founded.
Brackenridge the elder, in distinction from his equally distinguished son, Henry Marie Brackenridge, also an author and jurist, wrote a series of articles which were printed in the "Pittsburgh Gazette" begin- ning with the first number of the paper, July 29, 1786, and continued through six numbers. These articles were headed "Observations on the Country at the Head of the Ohio River, with Digressions on Various Subjects." He mentioned the mound on Grant's Hill briefly: "On the summit of the hill is a mound of earth supposed to be a catacomb. There can be no doubt of this, as upon opening some of the like tumuli or hills of earth, bones are found. The places where stones are plenty, these mounds are raised of stones, and skeletons are found in them." From Brackenridge's few words, the inference is readily drawn that he gave no credence to the theory of a prehistoric race. To him and his townsmen the mounds were ancient burial places of the savages, nothing mere.
There were other mounds about Pittsburgh — sl small one in what is MOW Burgwin Park, a playground and a grove of fine old oaks, five acres in extent, at Second and Hazlewood avenues, Pittsburgh; but the most celebrated and largest was on the summit of McKee's Rocks, the "Written Rocks" mentioned by Celoron in his Journal of 1749. These historic "Rocks" are on the Ohio river, at the mouth of Chartiers creek, three miles below the confluence of the two rivers at Pittsburgh, the "Forks of the Ohio" in colonial history, the acute angle there locally called "the Point/' One can correctly say "the Rocks" are three miles below the Point Bridge, for Pittsburgh on the south side extends to Chartiers creek. The mound at McKee's Rocks was most likely a smooth, grass-covered tumulus originally. In the sketch of Everts' already mentioned, large trees are shown, estimated by botanists at that date to have been over one hundred years old. These trees were cut away when the mound was opened in 1896. To the knowledge of the writer hereof, there was a small grove on the mound in 1888, when last visited by him.'
«"History Allegheny County, Pa.;" p. 126.
Digitized by
MOUNDS AND MOUND BUILDERS 27
Naturally the opening of the mound excited great curiosity in the then village of McKee's Rocks, and called for daily and some extended items of news in the Pittsburgh newspapers. The explorations were conducted by Professor F. H. Gerrodette, who had for his chief assistant Thomas Harper, of Pittsburgh. The work was done under the direction of a sub-committee of the Committee on the Museum of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Fine Arts and Museum Collection Fund. This sub-committee consisted of Dr. William J. Holland, since 1898 the director of the Museum, and Mr. Charles C. Mellor, now deceased.
Professor Gerrodette came to Pittsburgh in June, 1896, as director of the Carnegie Museum, which had been opened in November, 1895, on the recommendation of that noted American anthropologist. Dr. Frederick Ward Putnam, long curator at the Peabody Museum of Arch- aeology and Anthropology of Harvard University, and in 1896 curator of anthropology in the American Museum of New York City. Before the exhumations at McKee's Rocks were completed, Professor Putnam came on and assisted in the work. Gerrodette, however, resigned Sep- tember 19, 1896, before the work was concluded.
Gerrodette in his training had awakened in him a taste for ethno- logical research, and soon after entering on his duties as director urged the committee on the Museum to permit him to undertake the thorough examination of the McKee's Rocks Mound. Permission was obtained from the owners of the land, the McKee heirs, to make the necessary excavations. Gerrodette was to prepare a monograph upon the subject, which he did not do. For two months Gerrodette gave all his time to work of exploration of the mound, which proved a task of considerable magnitude, involving great and peculiar care. The results of these explorations were epitomized in the annual report of the director of the Museum, Dr. Holland, for the year ending March 31, 1898, which reads : "F. H. Gerrodette and Thomas Harper, Pittsburgh, Pa. Objects excavated at McKee's Rocks Mound. Consisting of thirty-one skele- tons, arrow points, shells, beads, bones of various animals, etc. Together with earth surrounding the burial-places, stones used for encasing the dead, and sections of large trees growing above the remains. In all, about 331 objects, besides a series of photographs made during the excavations. Collected September 30, 1896."
Gerrodette in his explorations accumulated a fine collection of flints and other Indian implements from the McKee's Rocks bottoms. Har- per, too, was considerable of an antiquarian in Indian relics. His col- lection of hundreds of such from various countries is one of the largest in the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh.
The work of excavating at McKee's Rocks began July 18, 1896, and from the record above it appears that the relics obtained were safely and permanently placed September 30th. Th^ actual cost of the excava-
Digitized by
28 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
tions and exploring, as given in the financial statement in the Museum report (supra) under the line "Special Research, etc.," was $712.60.
In the work of exhumation, the first results were obtained August 1st, when two skeletons and two skull bones were brought to light, the first skeleton five feet under ground, fifteen feet from the summit and the center of the mound, and sixteen feet from the southern circum- ference. The thighbones were first discovered, the head lying towards the center. The skulls were in good condition; the teeth in both jaws well preserved. The wisdom teeth indicated the skull of an adult. A few small bones of the skeleton were missing — a humerus and some vertebrae evidently having decayed, but the pelvic and thighbones were complete. There were many arrowheads around the skeleton. The second skeleton was fifteen feet distant from the first, and much like it. The next day another was taken out — that of a man six feet four inches in height. August 4th, the fourth skelton was exhumed, and two days later three more, one of these in a sitting posture, and near the head was a peculiar piece of pottery, suggestive of a pot of food placed with the remains. With the other skeletons were the bones of a baby and other bones badly jumbled together.
August 7th was the great day of the work. The exhibits this day were most interesting. They included the remains of two ancient fire- places, in the ashes of which were found fragmentary pieces of bones, some of which appeared to be portions of a skull. The inference drawn was that these fragments were portions of a body that had been burned. They were small and soft, and in a crumbling condition; from a superficial examination it could not be determined whether they were animal or human. Thereupon the newswriters began to conjecture. One said, "If human, it will go to prove that the mound was used by the ancient mound builders for sacrificial purposes, and on this fireplace were probably offered human sacrifices — prisoners, or others who were captured in battle." It will not be necessary to discuss the question whether "others captured in battle" were prisoners or not.
A large quantity of stones, shells, and ashes of charcoal, were found in each of the fireplaces, one of which was in a scattered condition and covered a space of two feet wide by four long. The bones were badly discolored by fire. The first fireplace was on a line twenty feet from the center of the mound, and the same distance south of the center. The second was fourteen feet south of the center, on a line ten feet from it, and three feet from the baseline of mound. The fireplace in which the bones were discovered was the larger. When touched by the hand, the bones crumbled to pieces. The usual quantity of arrow and spear heads, flints, etc., were unearthed, but no skeletons. Some of the bones were saved by delicate handling.
The operations of August 12th were also of great interest. The
Digitized by
MOUNDS AND MOUND BUILDERS 29
bones of a female skeleton were dug up, and some of a small child which had evidently been buried in the lap of the female, who was promptly conjectured to have been the child's mother, from the position when found. The body of the woman had evidently been buried with great care, and was sitting in an upright position. Around her had been placed some large flat stones, forming a cist which completely surrounded the skeleton. From the cist only a skull protruded above the limbs below. When the stones were removed, the bones of the child were revealed, a portion of the skull enclosed. Some tiny teeth and a few bones were all that were left of the child. A pottery vessel had been placed alongside of the head of the woman. This vessel was in a fairly good state of preservation, but a piece had been broken off. The vessel was of black clay, baked with shells, and was almost entirely smooth. The skeleton found thus in such a cist and buried with evidences of great care, appeared to indicate that in life she had been a person of distinction. Whereupon by the increasing host of conjecturers she was, with surprising unanimity, dubbed the "Queen of the Mound Builders." They made no reference to her missing crown. The skeleton indicated a woman of good size. Underneath the woman and child, the ninth skeleton was discovered, that of a male. The body of the woman apparently had rested in the lap of the man at the time of burial. The bones of the male skeleton were much decayed. They revealed that they were the framework of a large man.
The finding of the skeleton in a sitting posture alone would indicate great antiquity, for that form of burial was an ancient usage, and not confined to the Western Hemisphere. Dr. J. Wells Foster quotes Herodotus on this point (Book IV, Chap. 190), where "the Father of History," in speaking of the wandering tribes of Northern Africa, says : "They bury their dead according to the fashion of the Greeks, ♦ ♦ ♦ They bury them sitting, and are right careful when the sick man is at the point of giving up the ghost, to make him sit down and not let him die lying down.*
In many mounds exhumed in Wisconsin, Iowa and Illinois, some of them by Dr. Foster himself, corpses were found sitting, as was this one taken from McKee's Rocks. Dr. Foster also cites the ancient Britons, who buried their dead thus, with the hands raised to the neck and the elbows brought to the knees. The headliners were probably justified in displaying the line "Mounds of Sacrifice" over the insertion of the news story from the mound, August 7, 1896. There is ample authority for the statement that cremation and inhumation have been practiced for ages, though not always at the same time. The charcoal layers, while a frequent accompaniment, were not always found by the mound explorers. The ceremonies of interment, Squier and Davis
^''Prehistoric Races of the United States of America," J. Wells Poster, LL. D.; Chicago, 188^; p. 196.
Digitized by
30 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
remark, as far as could be deduced from the examinations of the mounds and other burial places, seem to indicate that they were conducted with great regularity and system, and that burial was a solemn and deliberate rite, regulated by fixed customs of perhaps religious or supernatural origin.* These archaeologists found layers of charcoal in the excavation of a sepulchral mound twenty-seven feet high, near their home town, Chilicothe, Ohio. Dr. Foster observes, "what strange rites were prac- ticed around the altars in the sacrificial mounds, must be forever, that is to some degree, veiled from our comprehension." He thinks that the mound builders, like the Persian sun-worshippers, had their magi^ without whose presence the sacrifice could not go on, and that the elaborately carved pipes, precious stones brought from, a distance, and garments woven with patient toil, were freely condemned to undergo the ordeal of fire. Worse than all, the reliquuB of charred bones leave behind the terrible conviction that on these occasions human victims were offered up as an acceptable sacrifice to the elements the sacrificers worshipped. With such suggestive reminders of grewsome barbaric rites, no sighs need be uttered for the passing of the mound on McKee's Rocks.
From day to day, skeletons were taken from the mound. On August
2 1 St, the twentieth and best preserved skeleton was taken out; all the large bones, the vertebrae, ribs and leg bones and the arm bones and those of the hands, were in excellent condition, but the skull had been crushed in by a heavy stone. The femures measured twenty-one inches. The jaws also were in good condition, with not a tooth missing. The stone had crushed the head and chest far down upon the chest. In life, this man measured seven feet in height. The skeleton, as it lay, with the lower bones of the feet gone above the ankle, measured six feet three inches ; allowing four inches for the neck and six for the feet, would show the man to have been over seven feet ; the thigh bones alone revealed a man of extraordinary size. Again were the headliners happy. This was "the King of the Tribe." The body was found close to three skeletons exhumed a few days before, and was on a center line from them, about three feet distant and fifteen inches deeper.
Skeleton No. 21 was taken out August 25th, and No. 22 the next day. With No. 21 were some implements and many specimens of ancient handicraft pronounced by the archaeologists to be the finest specimens that had been discovered to that date. Among them was a fiat amulet five inches long and three and a half wide. The ornaments and some stone implements were found between the thigh bones. No.
22 was found only three feet and six inches below the surface, in the center of the mound. They composed a heterogeneous heap, and so badly broken that only a few of the skull bones could be identified.
(('' Ancient Monuments of the Mississipin Valley," Squier and Davis; pp. 196-197.
Digitized by
MOUNDS AND MOUND BUILDERS 31
This body had been buried in a stone cist. The skeleton was in the roots of the tree, and indicated a man of extraordinary size. He can truthfully be said to have been "rooted to the spot/' and the reporters did not neglect to say so.
No. 23 was headless — "A Beheaded Warrior," the headliners called him — rather, what was left of him. This skeleton lay under a giant oak three feet six inches in diameter, or about eleven feet in circum- ference, which showed one hundred sixty-eight rings, thus indicating its age. The skeleton parts were intermingled with the roots of the tree. This was a most interesting find. The bones indicated a man of extraordinary size.
The news of the opening of the mound and the "finds" therein brought several noted scientists to Pittsburgh. There were also some local archaeologists. Thomas Malone of Pittsburgh testified through the newspapers that he had assisted in opening several of the Ohio mounds, and some in Indiana and Tennessee, and from his knowledge of them he was thoroughly convinced that the bones taken from the McKee's Rocks Mound were more than five hundred years old. Mere opinion, this, but it is supported by other and noted scientists.
Charles F. Trill, formerly of the Smithsonian Institution, visited the mound August 28th. Trill attested that the work of exhumation had been well and methodically done. The reporters interviewed him. He told them among other things: "The ancient mound builders built several distinct kinds of mounds: One pyramidal with a flat top; the second, the fortifications made from earth; the third, the burial, those of a conical shape. These latter were usually found with the apex worn away by the elements, or by attrition from the feet of men, and the tops thus gradually became rounded." Further, Trill's account reads:
The prehistoric mounds were of course erected by the tnound builders proper, that unknown race that has left so many traces of that character on this continent These mounds were evidently held in high reverence by the Aborigines — ^what we know as the Indians, and they too interred their dead in the mounds. The secondary burials were always near the surface, and they were generally found in a sitting posi- tion. If the mound at McKee's Rodcs had been built by the mound buiiders proper, the grave of the chief, or dignitary, they covered, was about three feet below the origi- nal surface of the grotmd or the base line of the motmd. In these graves calcined bones are frequently found, undeniably indicating cremation. This sort of grave was directly beneath the apex of the motmd, and if found, indicates that the mound was built by the unknown race that once inhabited this continent in portions. In their mounds this pottery is found, always black and nearly so, and of good workmanship. The implements found are highly polished, and made from attractive species of stone. The pipes usually have the figure of an animal carved on them, and are short, while the Indians' pipes are longer.
Professor Trill explained further — ^for the reading public of Western Pennsylvania and adjacent territory was hungry for news from the mound, and explanation of its mysteries. He said: "The fact that skeletons are found near the surface, always indicates secondary burials,
Digitized by
32 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
and, if in sitting posture, to my mind there is no doubt that they are the remains of the Aborigines, possibly the warriors slain in battle and taken to the mound for final interment. An interesting fact is that of locality. The mounds were always built on the second terrace or level from a river. This is true of the mound at McKee's Rocks. If a white man's knife were found in it, it would serve only to show that the later Indians who were buried there had come in contact with civilization."
Trill at this point in his explanatory discourse told of the researches of Squier and Davis, and informed the reporters that their book shed much information on the subject of our American mounds. It surely does.®
Dr. Trill mentioned a fourth species of mound, animal mounds, and he said he had found these only in the Northwest. They were not burial mounds, but were built in the shape of some animal — some rough outline, most often that of the bear, perhaps without ears, but the general contour plainly indicating what was intended to be represented. There were mounds whose shape was fully as plain as a human figure.
Dr. Frederick Ward Putnam came to Pittsburgh, September i, 1896, in response to an invitation from the local committee of the Carnegie Museum in charge of the exploration of the McKee's Rocks Mound — Dr. W. J^ Holland and Mr. Charles C. Mellor. Dr. Putnam was at the time secretary of the Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as curator of the Peabody Museum at Cambridge. He was the guest of the committee. He repaired immediately to McKee's Rocks and inspected the work. That afternoon a skeleton was taken out, with the usual attendant relics, among these a gorget about four inches square. Dr. Putnam regarded this find of much value, and ventured the opinion that it placed the age of the mound as one thousand years, certainly not less than seven hundred, he said. He, too, talked to the reporters. He said :
There is not the slightest doubt that the McKee's Rocks Mound is an Indian burial place similar to hundreds of others in the Ohio Valley. Its size and arrange- ment proves that it is of g^eat age. The work of exhumation has been done in the most satisfactory manner. I myself found the remains of a skeleton just to the left of the main cut and near the center, which settles the matter of age in my mind The skeleton was at the base of the mound, upon iron-impregnated ground, and had been there for hundreds of years, beneath tons of clay which would preserve the bones almost indefinitely; yet when taken out, there was nothing left but small par- ticles of bone dust or cells imbedded in the clay, and renmants of spear heads, and the gorget This particular skeleton was undoubtedly the first interment in tbat place, doubtless a person of importance in life. Others may be upon the same level, and I think are.
Later, more bodies were buried on top of the first, and another layer of dirt This alteration of corpses and layers of earth was followed until the mound reached its height previous to this exploration. Now I cannot say positively as to intensive burials. There is certain proof that an entrance had been made at the top of the mound and continued down for two 01: three feet, but if anyone has been buried there, it is not yet
•"Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley."
Digitized by
MOUNDS AND MOUND BUILDERS 33
known. This is the only intrusion, and may have been merely an attempt to explore the mound, and soon abandoned. I saw a skull when it was brought to the surface, which was alleged to have been that of a Mohawk, but I do not think it ever belonged to any of the Iroquois tribes. This mound was constructed a burial mound, and is not of the fortification type. The skeleton I found was below the cut made by Bennett in 1887, and had not been disturbed.7
The same day (September 2nd), Prof. W. J. Magee, of the Smith- sonian Institution, arrived in Pittsburgh. He came especially to see the work at the mound. Dr. Magee was head of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Institution. With Dr. Holland and Mr. Mellor, Magee visited the mound and viewed the work and listened to the report on the progress and the results of the work so far.
There had become widespread a story that the McKee's Rocks ex- plorations were a great hoax; that an old burying ground had been desecrated, and the remains of many of the first settlers ruthlessly destroyed or carried away. This story received much credence. Some of the names of such early settlers were given; some of later date were also named. In one instance the man was found alive ; in another, the doubters were taken to an old graveyard in the vicinity and shown the grave of a man plainly marked, who was alleged to have been buried in the ancient mound. Therefore, to fully refute such silly and impossible allegations, it was determined by the Museum Committee on the Mound to hold a public meeting where the visiting scientists could lecture on Historic Mounds and Prehigtoric Mound Builders, and instruct the people of Pittsburgh and others interested, concerning recent archae- ological investigations, and what had been revealed by them.
The meeting was held in the Carnegie Music Hall, the auditorium of the Carnegie Free Library of Allegheny, at Federal and Ohio streets, now on the North Side of the city of Pittsburgh. The meeting was presided over by Samuel H. Church, of Pittsburgh. Seated with him on the platform were the Rev. Father A. A. Lambing, Dr. Holland, Mr. Mellor, Mayor Henry P. Ford of Pittsburgh, and the speakers of the evening (September 2d).
Professor Magee spoke first. He began with the geological phase of his subject, then passed to the ethnological and archaeological aspects. He announced that the McKee's Rocks Mound was a thor- oughly typical structure of the prehistoric class, (laying special emphasis on the words mound and structure) such as are found in all parts of our country. He said at one point: "I desire to say with emphasis that the builders of all of them were the same race. As to the antiquity of this mound at McKee's Rocks, I do not desire to venture an opinion. Though one tree found growing on its surface is shown to have been at least one hundred and seventy years old, the mound itself may have existed centuries before the tree began to grow."
7No account of this "cut" has been obtained. Pitts.— s
Digitized by
34 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
Dr. Putnam followed. He stated that he had devoted more than thirty years of his life to the study of mound building, and that he had been present at the opening of hundreds of them, and, in addition, had superintended the opening of hundreds more. He described the best known mounds in the United States, illustrating many by drawing sketches on a blackboard. He dwelt on the two great varieties of the prehistoric races, termed by scientists the "Longheaded" and the "Shortheaded" stocks. He said the relics found at McKee's Rocks were common to those found in the mounds in the Mississippi Valley. The bones might determine the kind of "old people" that originally populated Western Pennsylvania, for the skulls denoted a people of the "broad- headed" stock. The Doctor illustrated this from skulls he had brought with him, showing points in common with those of the Southwest. An underjaw indicated formatively and structurally that it had not belonged to a white man. The upper arm bones of the skeleton numbered eighteen and twenty, both found near the surface of the mound, gave indubitable evidence that they were parts of the framework of prehistoric men ; the same evidence was presented by the flattened tibiae. With much more proof of a similar character. Dr. Putnam kept the interest of his audience attentive to the end of his discourse. He concluded: "The evidence I have produced proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that these bones are those of the *old people' of the Ohio Valley, and there is no evidence even of the slightest character, in any bone taken from the mound at McKee's Rocks, that a white man was ever interred in it."
The heads, a tooth covered with copper, and the ornaments found with the skeletons, were given full consideration by Dr. Putnam. He said they showed intimate relations between the builders of the McKee's Rocks Mound and those farther down the Ohio river. Stereopticon views of the skeletons were shown by Professor Gerrodette in their original positions, and also views of the work of excavation at various stages. There was a large audience present.
"The Last of the Wyandottes," the reporters called No. 29, which was brought to light September 8th. This skeleton was found on the top of the mound, only eighteen inches under the sod. Like some others, he was evidently at interment crouched in a heap, with head towards the center, and a rude cist of stones built around him. No. 28 was alongside, the two forming the shape of a T. Some arrow heads, a tooth, a piece of pottery, were about these bones. No. 29, the reporters noted, "had the distinction of having been buried higher than any in the sacred pile, fourteen feet six inches from the natural level." This "brave" did not live his allotted time ; an arrow, perhaps a bullet wound in his left jaw had taken him off in his prime. He had all his teeth in most excellent condition.
Among the last skeletons taken out were two on September 5th,
Digitized by
MOUNDS AND MOUND BUILDERS 35
interred in a single cist. The skull of one was within the interlaced roots of a tree, the roots over an inch in diameter, which had forced themselves through the cist. Mr. Harper removed the skull and the enclosing roots. These singular objects, as taken out, form one of the most curious and interesting exhibits of the mound relics in the Car- negie Museum. No implements or ornaments were found with these two skeletons. What were supposed to be charred bones were taken out September loth, and sent with the other relics to the Museum. No other bones were found later.
Of all these skeletons, but two indicated violent death — ^"The Head- less Warrior" one, and the young man with the wound in his jaw. Around the beheaded one there was no stone cist. The beheaded one measured from top of the head to below the knees six feet two inches. The position in which he had been found indicated he had been decap- itated before burial, the skull having been found below the shoulder blades, the face turned upwards and in an .opposite direction from the position of the body. The skull was in a crumbling condition. This was No. 23, before noted.
A large skeleton was unearthed September 2nd ; as it lay, it measured six feet two inches. A skeleton marked No. 27 is laid out in the Museum as found in the mound, fifteen feet four inches from the top, considered from the number of ornaments found around it and from its position to have been a great warrior, of more than average size. With him there were taken out a stone tomahawk, five excellent perforators, two flakers, an amulet, a bone scraper, two spear points, a bear's tooth encased in a copper sheath, 160 shell beads, 357 loose beads, and a pottery vessel. These articles have been arranged around the skeleton in the glass case in which it has been placed. It is a curious sight. A single glance is sufficient to tell the most casual visitor that the bones are very old, for they look it. The word relics applies properly to all ma- . terial taken fi^om the mound.
Among other visitors was Captain J. R. Johnson, of Clarksville, Pennsylvania, who had opened many mounds in the Southwest and had obtained a valuable collection of relics from them. He stated the mound was like many he had seen explored in the Southwest. M. W. Thompson, then chief engineer for the Pennsylvania railroad, was a visitor, and was questioned regarding intensive burials in the mound. His opinion was to the contrary. He said, "From what I know about mounds, I am positive no such burials were ever made in this mound. The state of the layers of earth proves that conclusively."
Dr. R. A. Brown, of Leavenworth, Kansas, then president of the Leavenworth Academy of Natural Sciences, came to see the relics and the work. He said that thirty-one mounds, several of which had been opened, were within a few miles of Leavenworth. He advanced the
Digitized by
36 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
theory that these works were original with the mound builders proper, who had been driven to the West by the Indians, who later added to the mounds, and that some burials in the Leavenworth mounds that were near the tops could not have been later than the Revolutionary War period. From what the Doctor knew of the Indians of that sec- tion, he was thoroughly convinced that they were absolutely too lazy to undertake the work of heaping dirt upon the remains of their dead. The western mounds, Dr. Brown said, were different from that on McKee's Rocks ; those in the West were covered with stones, while at McKee's Rocks nothing but soft earth was heaped over the bodies. Towards the Ohio or to the north, there were the remains of a good sodded slope and a fine grove on it.
Besides the numerous articles which have been mentioned as taken out with the bones, there were also many arrow and spear points found loose, and a number of stone implements such as axes, tomahawks, and broken pieces of three pottery vessels. All of these were sent to the Museum, and are part of the collection there of the McKee's Rocks Mound.
Dr. Holland, in charge of the work of exhumation, with Mr. Mellor, his colleague, was at the time chancellor of the University of Western Pennsylvania, now the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Holland gave the history of these mounds much study and research. He was much sought by the reporters for his opinions, and gave them freely, with clear explanations, which were printed with the daily news of the explorations in the papers. He said among other things, that the McKee's Rocks Mound was a genuine work of the class once common in all this region. He had frequent conversations with the late William M. Darlington, the Pittsburgh historian, concerning the mounds on McKee's Rocks and on Grant's Hill, who described the latter. Mr. Darlington related that he had as a boy played among the stones that surmounted the mound on Grant's Hill.
There was a small mound on the "Puckety road," seven miles from the city, to the north and east, which, in connection with Dr. Hiram Depuy, Dr. Holland had opened. "We found," said the Doctor, "several acres which abounded in shells and the bones of Indians, dogs, deer and other animals, at a depth of from twelve to eighteen inches. We regarded the site as one once occupied by an Indian village which had been probably chosen with reference to the safety of the inhabitants, as the view extending to the Allegheny river on one side and the Monon- gahela on the other would reveal the approach of an enemy from either side, and thus afford an opportunity of escape to the river bottom on the opposite side. The purchase of this land for the erection of a Roman Catholic church and for cemetery purposes put a stop to the work of exploration."
Digitized by
MOUNDS AND MOUND BUILDERS 37
Dr. Depuy, now of Tacoma, Washington, writes that the Puckety Road Mound, was known as Rich Hill, and was three-quarters of a mile east of the intersection of that road with Lincoln avenue. The mound was not known as a burial place until opened in 1886. Dr. Depuy in his letter describes the work of exhumation as carried on under the direction of himself and Dr. Holland. His description of the contents of the mound is so similar to that of the contents of the McKee's Rocks mound, that it may be omitted here. Several skeletons were exhumed from the Puckety Road Mound. The situation of this mound was high and cor- responds with the situation of other mounds mentioned herein.
Dr. Holland's impromptu talks to the newspaper representatives included substantially the facts of science as narrated before in the lectures of the scientists who have been quoted. The McKee's Rocks Mound, he said, had been known for a century and a half, and has been frequently mentioned in local histories. The relics, implements, and the bones and the shapes of the skulls, reveal indubitably the existence in this section of the prehistoric race termed the mound builders.
The Depuy Collection from the Puckety road excavations is in the Carnegie Museum. It is catalogued in the Annual Report for 1898, in the Loan Collection lists; the Indian or prehistoric relics — ^pipes, bones, teeth and stone implements — ^in this collection numbering 364 objects. "The Indian implements were mostly obtained from burial, places near Pittsburgh," the catalogue said. Captain James R. Johnson loaned that year a similar and larger collection of Indian relics collected by his son, H. L. Johnson, of Clarksville, Tennessee, in that vicinity, comprising 408 items, numbering 758 objects — ^Indian pottery, flint and stone implements, altogether similar to the relics found about Pittsburgh. There are many relics such as these in the Museum, one of the notable that of Isaac Yohe, of Monongahela, Pennsylvania. These are among the earliest exhibits in the Museum. They have been listed in the cata- logue of the first annual report, 1898. In looking over these lists there can be found frequent mention of antiquities of Indian relics picked up in and about Pittsburgh, and also of "the extinct people," as Dr. Dod- dridge has termed them.
Having thus given the story of the exploration of the McKee's Rocks Mound and its lessons, if only for comparison, it is fitting to tell of others similar, and presenting practically the same story of the mound builders proper, and to tell also some story of the fortification mounds, for some of these were in the Western Country, as all the country beyond the Alleghenies was termed in Colonial and Revolutionary times. The most elaborate, largest and celebrated work of the mound builders in North America is the great mound at Moundsville, West Virginia, known to archaeologists and in history as the Grave Creek Mound. Moundsville, the county seat of Marshall county, West Virginia, has
Digitized by
38 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
been given that name since the beginning of the Civil War, for geogra- phies of that period show the name Elizabeth, the first name of the town. In the story of this great tomb there will be observable through- out a striking similarity to the mound on McKee's Rocks, and it will be evident that the same race of people built both. The problem why one was built of such astounding dimensions, and others of various and far smaller dimensions, must remain forever unanswered. In the un- folding of the history of the mounds in this region and in Virginia and the Upper Ohio Valley, two of our Pittsburgh historians will appear prominently, and be quoted as authority, and their accounts are old. These men were Neville B. Craig and Henry Marie Brackenridge, both natives of Pittsburgh and contemporaries almost from birth: 1787-1786, respectively. Each knew of the mound on McKee's Rocks, and each in boyhood romped over the mound on Grant's Hill, and played in the beautiful grove on its summit and sloping sides.*
The historian Avery in a recent work, in his chapter therein headed "The Neolithic Americans," gives a good description of the Grave Creek Mound, which he portrays as seventy feet high and cone-shaped, and nearly three hundred feet in diameter at its base.* Mr. Avery doubtless obtains his facts from Craig's "Olden Time," (Vol. I, pp. 232, et seq), where the editor of that work inserted an extract from the "American Pioneer," and a long letter from A. B. Tomlinson giving the history of the mound from the time Tomlinson's grandfather settled on Grave Creek in 1772. The "Pioneer" in its introductory paragraph said that great praise was due Mr. Tomlinson for his careful preservation of that tremendous structure of ancient American aboriginal industry. "Many of our towns," continues the editor of the "Pioneer," "vandal-like, have destroyed their ancient curiosities. What a pity!" (Pittsburgh has for one). The "Pioneer" printed also a short letter from A. B. Boreman, of Elizabethtown, who sent a facsimile of the "stone" taken from the mound, of which more anon. Mr. Boreman said there were a great many mounds in the vicinity of Grave Creek, "some of which had been digged down, and in which there had been found many bones of human beings; copper beads, also, and stone tubes ten and one-half inches in length and having a calibre of three-fourths of an inch, some of which were full of something that might be called red paint of a light shade, with other things of a similar character." The mound, he said, was situated on an extended plain and within the suburbs of the town, 250 yards from the court house, and a quarter of a mile from the Ohio river. Boreman placed its altitude at 69 feet, and the circumference of the base a little more than 300 yards. It was shaped like the frustrum of
^"Recollections of Persons and Places in the West," H. M. Brackenridge, 1830; p. 61.
•"A History of the United States and its People, etc," Elroy McKcndrec Avery: Cleveland, 1901 ; Vol. I, p. 3^
Digitized by
MOUNDS AND MOUND BUILDERS 39
a cone, flat on top, the distance across the top 50 feet. These figured closely approximate Avery's.
Tomlinson's letter reveals so much in telling of the exploration of his mound that is so similar to the account of the explorations of the mound on McKee's Rocks that his narrative will be largely drawn on in order to show the similarities and differences between the mounds, and that the contents of the mounds was not materially dissimilar with the exception of the vaults, which betoken much labor. Mr. Tomlinson first describes the Grave Creek Flats, a large scope of bottom land extending from north to south about four miles, and containing nearly 3,000 acres. Big and Little Grave creeks both enter into the Ohio at these flats. The flats and the creeks obtained their names by reason of the many tumuli, commonly called Indian graves, which were located on the flats, and especially between the creeks. The creeks were not navigable, but of the kind known to settlers as mill streams. The flats were composed of first and second bottoms, the first about 200 yards wide, running the whole length of the flats. The great flood of 1832, Mr. Tomlinson asserts, was ten feet on this bottom, but lacked from ten to twenty feet from the height of the second bottom where the Indian mounds were. There were no signs of any such works on the lower land. Mr. Tomlinson thought it could reasonably be inferred that the brow of the second bottom was the bank of the river when the works were erected. This was not uncommon, he said, where such works appear near the streams that have first and second bottoms. This deduction does not necessarily follow, for the mound builders may have known of and seen the first bottom frequently overflowed and the second high and dry, and built accordingly. Elizabethtown, now Moundsville, is situated on the second bottom, near the mouth of Little Grave creek and on the widest part of the flats. Mr. Tomlinson wrote as follows concerning the "Mammoth Mound," as he termed it, which with its contents formed the subject of his narrative: "This mound is sur- rounded by various other mounds and ancient works, and in respect to other localities the situation, as respects defense, was well chosen on the brow of the second bottom, and partially encompassed by steepes and ravines."
Tomlinson recites the dimensions as given by Boreman, stating that the flat on the top of the mound until about the time he writes, was dish-shaped. The depth of the depression in the center was three feet, and its width forty feet. He thought this depression was caused by the falling-in of the two vaults which were originally constructed in the mound, but which had fallen in, and the earth had sunken over them.
Tomlinson's description is most interesting :
The mound was discovered by my grandfather soon after he settled the flats, and was covered with as large timbers as any in the surrounding forests, and as close
Digitized by
40 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
together. The center of the hollow was occupied by a large black beech. The mound was early and much visited. Dates were cut on this beech as early as 1734.' It was literally covered with names and dates to the height of ten feet, none of a more remote period than the date above; most of them were added after the country began to be settled, from 1779 to 1790. On the very summit of the mound stood a white oak which seemed to have died of old age about fifteen years ago. It stood on the western edge of the dish. We cut it off and with great care and nicety, counted the growths, which evidently showed the tree to have been five hundred years old. It carried its thick- ness well for about fifty feet, where it branched out into several large limbs. Top and all, it was about seventy feet high, which, added to the height of the mound, it might well have been styled the Ancient Monarch of the Flats, if not of the forest A black oak stands now on the east side of the mound, which is as large as the white oak was, but it is situated on the side of the mound, about ten feet lower than the throne of the white oak.
Prompted by curiosity, or some other cause, on March 19^ i8j8, we commenced an excavation in this mound. I wrought at it myself from the commencement to the termination, and what I am about to tell you is from my own personal observation, which if necessary could be substantiated by others. We commenced on the north side and excavated towards the center. Our horizontal shaft was ten feet high and seven feet wide, and ran on the natural surface of the ground or floor of the mound.
At a distance of iii feet we came to a vault that had been excavated in the natural earth before the mound was commenced. This vault was dug out eight by twelve feet square and seven feet deep. Along each side and the two ends, upright timbers were placed which supported timbers that were thrown across the vault and supported the ceiling. These timbers were covered over with rough unhewn stone, of the same quality as is common in the neighborhood. These timbers rotted, and the stone tum- bled into the vault, the earth of the mound following quite filled it The timbers were entirely deranged, but could be traced by the rotten wood, which was in such condi- tion as to be rubbed to pieces between the fingers. The vault was as dry as any tight room; its sides very nearly correspond with the cardinal points of the compass, and it was lengthwise from north to south.
In this vault were found two human skeletons, one of which had no ornaments or artificial work of any kind about it The other was surrounded by 650 ivory beads and an ivory ornament about six inches long, one and five-eights inches wide in the middle, and half an inch wide at the ends, with two holes through it of one-eighth of an inch diameter. It is flat on one side and oval on the other. The beads resemble button moulds, and vary in diameter from three to five-eights of an inch. In thickness they vary Ifrom that of a common pasteboard to one-fourth of an inch, the size of the holes through them varying with the diameter of the beads from one-eighth of an inch in the largest Some of the beads are in good state of preserva- tion, retaining even the original polish; others not so favorably situated are decayed, some crumbled to dust I count only the whole ones left The large ornament is in a good state of preservation, but somewhat corroded. The first skeleton we found on the 4th of April ; the second on the i6th.
Mr. Tomlinson sent a drawing of the ornament, which Craig was obliged to omit from his story. He was unable to reproduce the other drawing Tomlinson mentions further on. In fact, with the exception of one of Celoron's leaden plates and a map of Braddock's route "the Olden Time" is not illustrated. To continue Tomlinson's story :
After searching this vault, we commenced a shaft ten feet in diameter at the cen- ter of the mound, on top and in the bottom of the depression before mentioned. At the depth of thirty-four or thirty-five feet above the vault, at the bottom, we discov- ered another vault, which occupied the middle space between the bottom and the top. The shaft we -continued down through the mound to our first excavation.
The second or upper vault was discovered June oth. It had been constructed in
Digitized by
MOUNDS AND MOUND BUILDERS 41
every respect like that at the base of the mound, except that its length lay east and west, or across that at the base perpendicularly over it. It was equally filled with earth, rotten wood, etc., by the falling in of the ceiling. The floor of this vault was also sunken by the falling in of the lower one, with the exception of a portion of one end.
In the upper vault was found one skeleton only, but many trinklets, as 1,700 ivory beads, 500 sea shells of the involute species, that were worn as beads, and five copper bracelets that were about ihe wrist bones of the skeleton. There were also 150 pieces of isinglass (mica), and the stone of which I send you a drawing herewith. The stone is flat on both sides, and is about three-eights of an inch thick. It has no engraving on it except on one side. There is no appearance of any hole or ear, as if it had been worn as a medal. It is of sandstone, of a very fine and close grit The beads found m this vault were like those found in the other one, as to size, material and decay. The bracelets are of pure copper coated with rust as thick as brown paper. They are an oblong circle (?). The inner diameter of one is two and one- fourth inches one way, and two and five-eighths the other. They vary in size and thickness; the largest is half an inch thick, and the smallest half that thickness. They were made of round bars beat so that the ends came together, which forms the circle. The five bracelets weigh seventeen ounces. The shells in this vault were three-eights of an inch long and one-fourth inch in diameter at the swell, or largest part The pieces of isinglass are but little thicker than writing paper, and are generally from one and a half to two inches square ; each piece had two or three holes through it about the size of a knitting needle, most likely for the purpose of sewing or in some way fastenening them to the clothing.
The beads were found about the neck and breast bones of the skeleton. The sea shells were in like manner distributed over the neck and breast bones of the skeleton in the upper vault The bracelets were around the wrist bones, the pieces of isinglass were strewed all over the body. What a gorgeous looking object this monarch must have been. Five bracelets shining on the wrists, seventeen beads and five hundred sea shells that we found whole about his breast and neck, besides one hundred and fifty brilliants of mica on all parts of his bodyl No doubt oft the object of the thronged admiring gaze. The stone with the characters on it was found about two feet from the skeleton. Could it be read, doubtless would tell something of the history of this illus- trious bed, interred high above his quite gorgeous companion in the lower story.
The skeleton first found in the lower vault was lying on the back, parallel with and close to the west side of the vault. The feet were about the middle of the vault; its body was extended at full length; the left arm was lying along the left side; the right arm as if raised over the head; the bones lying near the right ear and crossed over the crown of the head. The head of this skelton was towards the south. There were no ornaments found with it The earth had fallen and covered it over before the ceiling fell, and thus protected it was not much broken. We have it preserved for the inspection of visitors ; it is five feet nine inches high, and has a full and perfect set of teeth in a good state of preservation; the head is of a fine intellectual mould; whether male or female cannot be ascertained, as the pelvis was broken. Opinions differ as to sex ; my own is, that it is of a male.
The second skeleton found in the vault, and which had the trinkets about it, lay on the west side, with the head to the east, or in the same direction to that on the opposite side. The feet of this one were likewise near the center of the west side. The earth had not crumbled down over it before the ceiling fell, consequently it was not much broken (as was also that in the upper vault). There is nothing in the remains of any of these skeletons which differ materially from those of common people.
The skeleton in the upper vault lay with its feet against the south side of the vault, and the head toward the northeast It is highly probable that the corpses were aU placed in a standing position, and subsequently fell. Those in the lower vault most likely stood on the east and west sides, opposite to each other— the one in the upper vault on the south side.
The mound is composed of the same kind of earth as that around it, being a fine loamy sand, but differs very much in color from that of the natural ground. After penetrating about eight feet with the first or horizontal excavation, blue spots began to
Digitized by
42 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
appear in the earth of which the mound is composed. On close examination these spots were found to contain ashes and bits of bones. These spots increased as we approached the center; at the distance of 120 feet within, the spots were so numerous and con- densed as to give the earth a clouded appearance, and excited the admiration of all who saw it. Every part of the mound presents the same appearance, except near the surface. I am convinced that the blue spots were occasioned by the depositing remains of bodies consumed by fire. I am also of the opinion that the upper vault wa« con- structed long after the lower one, but for this opinion I do not know that there is any evidence.
We have overlaid the excavation from the sides to the center with brick, and paved to bottom. We excavated the vault in the center twenty-eight feet in diameter. It is well walled with brick, and neatly plastered. The rotunda or shaft in the center is also walled with brick. The foundation of the rotunda is in the center of the lower vault, and around this we have made departments for the safe keeping of the relics, nearly where they were found ; this vault we light with twenty candles for the accom- modation of visitors, many of whom have never seen it
Upon the top of the mound and directly over the rotunda, we have erected a three- story frame building, which we call the observatory. The lower story is thirty-two feet in diameter, the second twenty-six feet, and the upper story ten.
Mr. Tomlinson proceeds to further describe this observatory, which he states was erected in 1837, ^^^ then says: "In addition to the relics found in the Mammoth Mound, I have a great number and variety of relics found in the neighborhood, many of them found with skeletons which were nearly decayed. I have some beads found about two miles from the great mound, that are evidently a kind of porcelain, and very similar if not identical in substance with artificial teeth set by dentists. I have also an image of stone found with other relics about eight miles distant ; it is in human shape, sitting in a cramped position, the face and eyes projecting upwards; the nose is what is called Roman. On the crown of the head is a knot, the hair is concentrated and tied. The head and features particularly are a display of great workmanship and ingenuity ; it is eleven inches in height, but if it were straight would be double that height. It is generally believed to be an idol." Mr. Craig makes no comments anywhere in Tomlinson's story, save the foot-note, referring to Tomlinson's sketch, to wit: *'This figure we must omit."***
Dr. J. W. Foster has inserted a woodcut engraving of the great mound in his work, "Prehistoric Races, etc." (p. 190), showing large trees on the summit and on the sides of the great mound, and the observatory that crowns it. He credits the picture to Squier and Davis. Dr. Foster's book was first published in 1873.
Dr. Foster quotes at length from Mr. Tomlinson's. account, which he states Tomlinson had published in pamphlet form when his explora- tions were completed. Foster gives the exact number of the ornaments Tomlinson found in the mound, in order to portray a just idea of their profusion. The discs cut from the shells of the Busycon perversum in all were 2,350; the small shells known as Marginella apicina^ which were
io"American Pioneer;" Vol. II, p. 239 et seq, "Olden Time;" Vol. I, pp. 2J2-2J&
Digitized by
MOUNDS AND MOUND BUILDERS 43
pierced at the shoulder for stringing, numbered 500 ; and the specimens of mica, 25. No date is given by Craig in the reproduction of Tom- linson's letter. Dr. Foster states that the stone "inscribed with antique alphabetical characters" was not produced by Tomlinson until two years after the explorations.
Dr. Clemens, "an observer," is quoted by Dr. Foster, Clemens stating that in carrying the horizontal excavation, at a distance of twelve or . fifteen feet there were found numerous masses composed of charcoal and burnt bones. On reaching the lower vault from the top, Clemens states further, it was determined to enlarge it for the accommodation of visitors, when ten or more skeletons were discovered.
Dr. Foster was well satisfied from the descriptions that the principal occupant of the mound, as indicated by its magnitude, was a royal personage. He draws the astounding inference and says no other can be drawn, than that many of this great one's attendants were strangled, and that others were sacrificed as a burnt offering. The same evidences of human sacrifice appeared plainly enough in the exhumations at McKee's Rocks. The strangulation theory we may accept only as infer- ential. Dr. Foster finds in ancient history good authority for his beliefs. He quotes Herodotus' account of the burial of the Scythian king.** A mound very nearly as large as that on Grave Creek is mentioned by Dr. Foster at Miamisburg, Montgomery county, Ohio, which he states meas- ures 68 feet in height and 850 in circumference.
There are many writers who have been interested in the Grave Creek Mound, and consequently much history of it, some of it old. Schoolcraft attempted to ascertain the purport of these mounds from living Indians in his time. Replies given him by the older sagamores were vague, which he thought could be regarded as designed in some measure to repress the inquisitive spirit among immigrants, which is known to be distasteful to the native red men, and calculated to awaken suspicion. Schoolcraft ventures the opinion that these rude mausolea were once regarded by the Indians as places of interment of their great men of past ages, and as places of resort for pious reflection and cor^- munion. He presents illustrations of a skull, and the stone with the curious inscriptions upon it, alleged to have been taken from the Great Mound on Grave creek. Schoolcraft accepted the stone as genuine, but gave no translation, nor any mention of any.** A footnote in the third edition of "Doddridge's Notes," (Pittsburgh, 1912, edited by John S. Ritenour and William T. Lindsey), states that the Grave Creek Great Mound was opened in 1888 by Mr. Tomlinson. The year is an error in composition, readily noted from Tomlinson's extended account above.
Dr. Doddridge, familiar with Jefferson's work, quotes him in the
""History;" Book IV, Chap. 72. "Pre-Historic Races ;" Foster, p. 192. i2"lndian Tribes of the United States, etc;" H. R, Schoolcraft, Vol. VI, p. 6ia.
Digitized by
44 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
original edition of Doddridge's "Notes on the Settlements/' in one of eleven footnotes made by Doddridge himself in his book. He mentions Jeflferson's estimate that the mound he examined on the Rivanna, in Albermarle county, Virginia, near Monticello, might contain a thousand skeletons. Doddridge, in supposing Jeflferson's estimate warranted, inquired what must be the number of skeletons in the great mound of Grave creek. Doddridge requested those curious enough to make the calculation to do so and make public the results.
The McKee's Rocks Mound yielded but thirty-one that could be identified. How many had disintegrated into bone dust cannot be estimated. A casual glance at the skeletons and remains of skeletons in the Carnegie Museum, and a comparison with the classroom skeletons for anatomical study, impresses the most ordinary observer that there is a vast difference in their appearances, and that the former are un- doubtedly of rare antiquity. The inference that they date back a thou- sand years is not untenable.
The Grave Creek Mound is also accorded mention by Winsor. In the chapter, "The Antiquity of Man in America," noting the protracted controversies over the genuineness of certain relics, he states that the best known of these was the inscribed stone found in the Great Mound on Grave Creek. He attests that this is the largest mound in the Ohio Valley, and that it was earliest described by its owner, Mr. Tomlinson, in 1838, and mentions Tomlinson's excavations and his construction of the rotunda in the center of the mound as a showroom for relics, and then says: "Here as taken from the mound, appeared two years later what is known as the Grave Creek Stone, bearing an inscription in inscrutable characters. The supposed relic soon attracted attention.^' Naturally it did. Schoolcraft was charmed with the find, and was ably supported by Dr. J. P. McLean in maintaining its authenticity, while Colonel Charles Whittlesey was sure of its fraudulent character. This was "the only" inscribed stone of the mound builders of the Upper Ohio region. None such could have been in the mound on Grant's Hill, and none was found in that on McKee's Rocks; nor are any mentioned by Jefferson, Brackenridge, and other early investigators. There are many persons yet living in the town of McKee's Rocks who saw the mound opened and what was taken from it, and many in Pittsburgh also, including Dr. Holland, who had charge of the work of excavation. All the relics from the mound can be seen in the "Indian Room" in the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh.^*
Dr. James M. Callahan, of West Virginia, in a recent work'* says: "Indian stone graves and earth mounds are found all over West Vir-
i8"Narrative and Critical History of America," Justin Winsor, Vol. I, p. 371. i^Sce 'Tublications of the Carnegie Museum,** No. 3, 1898; p. 100. i<("GenealogicaI and Personal History of the Upper Monongahda Valley," Lewis Pub. Co., New York, 1912; edited by Dr. B. L. Butdier; Vol I, p. 198.
Digitized by
MOUNDS AND MOUND BUILDERS 45
ginia. The largest mound and the largest anywhere is at Moundsville. This is one of the best known mounds in the country. A stone with hieroglyphics found in it many years ago led to a wide discussion among scholars in many countries. It was hoped for a time that its interpre- tation might be discovered, and that it would throw light on the origin of the Indians. The stone was finally pronounced a hoax. It was probably dropped in by some joker while the mound was being exca- vated, and when the workmen were temporarily absent."
Other tourists down the Ohio have described the Grave Creek Mound. Thus James Hall in 1828, who was there April i8th, remarks : "Between Wheeling and Marietta there is little worthy of attention, except the mounds and fortifications on Mr. Tomlinson's farm on Grave Creek. It is a circular mound sixty-eight feet high and fifty-five feet in diameter at the summit. This is one of the largest mounds in the Western Country, and exhibits every indication of great antiquity, its whole surface being covered with forest trees of the largest size, and the earth presenting no peculiarity to distinguish it from the adjacent soil."*®
Mr. Hall wrote before Tomlinson began his explorations. Henry Howe in his "Historical Collections of Virginia," (1845), describes the Grave Creek Mound at some length in his sketch of Marshall county, and presents a good picture of it.
F. Cuming, voyaging down the Ohio from Pittsburgh in 1806, landed at Grave creek and stopped with the Tomlinsons. He states that when he was with them they had been settled there thirty years. His story of the mound reads thus :
Mrs. Tomlinson obligingly permitted one of her sons to guide us to what is called the Indian grave, which is about a quarter of a mile to the southward of the house. It is a circular mound like the frustrum of a cane, about 180 yards in circumference round the base, sixty round the flat on the top, and about seventy feet perpendicular height. In the center of the flat top is a shallow hollow like a filled up crater of an old volcano, which hollow or settle is said to have been formed within the memory of the first neighboring settlers, and is suppo&ed by them to be occasioned by the settling of the earth on the decayed bodies.
The whole mound appears to be formed of clay, and is evidently a work of art, though I am not of opinion that it has been a general or public cemetery, but either a mausoleum raised over and in memory of a great Indian chief, a temple for religious worship, or a site of a fortification or citadel to serve as a place of retreat from a superior foe. About three years ago the neighbors perforated the north side at about half the elevation, digging in horizontally about twelve feet, without other satisfaction to their curiosity than the finding a part of a human jaw bone, the bone rough and honeycombed, but the teeth entire, and the surrounding clay of a white chalky substance.
There are four or five small mounds, all within a few hundred yards of the great one, each about thirty feet in diameter, much lower in proportion than it, all rounded over the top, and, like the great one, showing their antiquity by the size of the trees, plants and shrubs which cover them, and having more than the appearance of tumulL
The bark of the trees which crown this remarkable monument is covered by the initials of visitors cut into it wherever they could reach — ^the number of which, con- sidering the remote situation, is truly astonishing.17
i6"Letters from the West, etc.," James Hall, London, 1828; p. ;& i7"Tour to the Western Country."
Digitized by
46 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
We need not express surprise at Cuming's observations here. The mound has continued a great curiosity, and is well worth seeing. Mr. Cuming, in the appendices to his book, inserts one pertaining to mounds and the so-called "fortifications." He leads an extract of six and a half pages with this paragraph : "In the sixth volume of the 'American Philosophical Transactions' will be found the following observations on the American Antiquities by the Rt. Rev. Bishop Madison of Virginia. He treats of the supposed Indian fortifications in the Western Country, and adopts an entirely new opinion concerning them. Having visited some of these remarkable works on the river Kenhawa and its vicinity, he has been induced to wholly reject the common belief of their being fortifications or military works. His reasons for this conviction we oflfer in his own words."
Bishop Madison's opinion was based upon military principles — ^many ancient works had a ditch within the enclosure, and the earth that was thrown up, or the supposed parapet, lacked the elevation necessary for a defensive work. These circumstances occurred without exception in all the works he examined, which presented an entire or regular circle. The imaginary breastwork never exceeded four or five feet in height, in his time, many only three feet. A bank of earth thrown up in the usual way does not wash, and loses little of its height in a century, or twenty centuries, he said. One-fourth of the height would be more than a sufficient allowance for loss in this manner. The ditches were shallow — four feet wide usually, and a little more than two feet deep. He concluded that, making allowance for the operation of all the causes that tend to diminish the depth of a ditch, and from the meas- urements of many ditches he had taken, that originally they were very trifling fossse, and from a study of military art from past ages in many countries, even in ancient Greece, that these "ancient fortifications" in North America, as a defense, could not oppose a sufficient obstacle to human agility, and this point would be decided in nearly the same manner by every people unacquainted with gunpowder. The decision would not admit of such fosses and parapets as we find dispersed over the Western Country, "and man in this new world has lost no portion of his former agility," he forcefully finished.
Bishop Madison noted particularly the constant similarity of the "antiquities" he examined. It was as constant, he said, as the rude edifices or cabins that the first white settlers reared. The description of one answered for all. There was no anomoly observable except that occasionally the variation of a few yards in the diameter of the circles.
These observations in the main will apply to the "imaginary forti- fications," as Bishop Madison terms them, about Pittsburgh. In Vir- ginia, in nearly all he examined, in a direct line with the gateway to the fort, there was a mound of easy access, from ten to twenty-five feet
Digitized by
MOUNDS AND MOUND BUILDERS 47
in height. These mounds effectually commanded the whole enclosure. There was not a missile weapon, the Bishop said, that would not, from the height and distance of the mound, fall within the fortification, and that they would not have fallen in vain.
To rear a fortification and then build a castle or mound around it, v^rhich would give to an enemy the entire command of the fortification, would, in his opinion, be as little recomtnended by an Esquimau as by a Bonaparte. There was no such blunder committed, he contended — no such discordancy of means to be found. On the contrary, there could be traced a perfect harmony of parts. Bishop Madison follows these statements with much matter relating to the mounds, and his remarks and conclusions are pertinent to the story of Pittsburgh's mounds. To quote Bishop Madison freely:
These mounds are universally cemeteries. Wherever they have been opened, we find human bones and Indian relics. They have grown up gradually as death robbed a family of its relatives, or a tribe of its warriors. Alternate strata of bones and earth, mingled with stones and Indian relics, establish this position, and hence it is, we find, near the summit of these mounds, articles of European manufacture such as the toma- hawk and the knife, but never at any depth. in the mound. Besides, it is well known that among many of the Indian tribes the bones of the deceased are annually collected and deposited in one place; that funeral rites are then solemnized with the warmest expressions of love and friendship ; and that this untutored rac^ urged by the feelings of nature, consigned to the bosom of earth, along with the remains of their deceased relatives and friends, food, weapons of war, and often those articles which they pos- sessed and most highly valued when alive. This custom has reared, beyond doubt, those numerous mounds. Thus, instead of having any relation to military arrangements or involving any of the absurdity above mentioned, they furnish, on the contrary, strong evidence that the enclosures themselves were not destined for defensive works, because reared as these motmds have been, by small but successive annual increments, they plainly evince that the enclosures which are so near to them have been, not the tem- porary stations of a retiring or weakened army, but the fixed habitations of a family and a long line of descendants.
That these mounds, or repositories of the dead, sometimes also called barrows, were formed by the deposition of bones and earth at different periods, is now rendered certain by the perfect examination to which one of them on the Rivanna was subjected by the author of the "Notes on Virginia." His penetrating genius seldom touches a subject without throwing on it new light. Upon this he has shown all that can be desired. The manner in which the mound or barrow was opened, afforded an oppor- tunity in viewing its interior with accuracy.
Bishop Madison quotes Jeflferson here:
Appearances certainly indicate that it has derived both origin and growth from the accustomary collection of bones and deposition of them together; that the first col- lection had been deposited on the common surface of the earth, and a few stones put dver it; that the second had been laid on this, had covered more or less of it in pro- portion to the number of bones, and was then covered with earth, and so on. The following are the particular circumstances which gave it this aspect: (i) The number of bones; (2) their confused positions; (3) their being in different strata; (4) the strata in one part having no correspondence with those in another; (5) the different states of decay in these strata, which seem to indicate a difference in the time of inhumation ; (6) the existence of infant bones among them.is
i«"Note8 on Virginia," in "Writings of Jefferson;" Library Edition, 1903, Vol. II, pp. 137-138.
Digitized by
48 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
Bishop Madison continues:
The number of bones in this barrow, which was only forty-five feet in diameter at the base and about twelve feet high, authorized the conjecture (by Jefferson) that it contained a thousand skeletons. Now as all of these numerous barrows have the most obvious similarity, we may conclude that what is true of one is cceteris paribus, appli- cable to all. The only difference consists in their dimensions. I visited one situated on the low grounds of the Kenhawa which might be almost called the pyramid of the West. Its base measured 140 yards in circumference, its altitude very nearly forty feet. It resembles a truncated cone; upon the top there is a level of twelve or thirteen feet in diameter. A tall oak of two and a half feet in diameter which had grown on the top, and had long looked down on the humbler foresters below, had experienced a revolu- tionary breeze which swept it from its majestic station, apparently about six or seven years before my visit. Within a few miles of this stands another which b said to be higher. No marks of excavation near the mound are to be seen. On the contrary, it is probable from an examination of the work that the earth composing the mound was brought from some distance. It is also highly probable that this was done at different periods, for we cannot believe that the savages would submit to the patient exertion of labor requisite to accomplish a work at any one undertaking. Near to this large one are several upon a much smaller scale. But if that upon the Rivanna, which was so accu- rately examined, contained the bones of a thousand people, this upon the Kenhawa would contain forty times that number, estimating their capacities as cones. But who will believe that war has ever been glutted with so many Indian victims by any one battle The probability seems to. be that these mounds, formed upon so large a scale^ were national burying places, especially as they are not connected with any particular enclosure, whilst those upon a smaller scale, and which are immediately connected with such a work, were the repositories of those who had there once enjoyed a fixed habita- tion. But whether the conjectures be admitted or not, the inferences from what has been said, that those enclosures could not be designed as fortifications, will, I think, be obvious to any one.
Bishop Madison gives three more strong reasons for his belief ; first, some were built at the foot of a hill where stones could have been rolled down on them by the thousands; again, many were too remote from water, and no indications of any wells; water is most necessary to the besieged. Still again, the works were too numerous, every foot of the Western Country was covered by them, had been valiantly and obstinately disputed. Those met with on the Kanawha and every tributary of that stream, several in a square mile, were as thick as the cabins of the farmers. There were no advantageous selections of ground for forts such as at the junction of the Kanawha and Elk rivers, and too many in low places; in short, no fortifications where civilized people would have built them.
James Madison, above quoted, born in 1749, died in 1812, was the first Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Virginia. He was first a member of the faculty and then president of William and Mary College. He was consecrated bishop in 1790. He published sermons and occasional papers, and was best known for his eulogy on Washington in 1800, and for a map of Virginia which he prepared.
How much these deductions and opinions may differ from those of more modern antiquarians can be left to the reader to be determined from the close reading of the extracts from the writings and discourses
Digitized by
MOUNDS AND MOUND BUILDERS 49
of such archaeologists as Drs. Putnam, Foster, Moorhead, Holland and others, who have been quoted. In connection with the story of the McKee's Rocks Mound they are most interesting. Thomas Jefferson has been mentioned as having been interested in Indian antiquities, and discourses on them. He observes :
They consist of nothing like monuments. I would not honor with that name arrow points, stone hatchets, stone pipes, and half-shapen images. Of labor on the large scale, I think there is no remain as respectable as would be a common ditch for the draining of lands, unless indeed it would be the Barrows, of which many are to be found all over in this country. These are of different sizes, some of them constructed of earth and some of loose stones. That they were repositories of the dead has been obvious to all, but on what particular occasion constructed was a matter of doubt. Some have thought they covered the bones of those who have fallen in battles fought on the spot of the monument Some ascribe them to the custom said to prevail among Indians, of collect- ing at certain periods the bones of all their dead wheresoever deposited at the time of death. Others again, suppose them the general sepulchre for towns conjectured to have been on or near these grounds, and this opinion was supported by the quality of the lands in which they are found, those constructed of earth being generally in the softest and most fertile meadow grounds on river sides, and by a tradition said to be handed down from the aboriginal Indians, that when they settled in a town, the first person who died was placed erect and earth put upon him, so as to cover and support him ; and that when another died, a narrow passage was dug to the first, the second reclined against him, and the cover of earth replaced, and so on. There being one of these in my neighbor- hood, I wished to satisfy myself whether any and which of these opinions was just. For this purpose I determined to open it and examine it thoroughly. It was situated on the low grounds of the Rivanna, about two miles above its principal fork and opposite to some hills on which had been an Indian town. It was of a spheroidal form, of about forty feet in diameter at the base, and had been of about twelve feet altitude, though now reduced by the plow to seven and a half, having been under cultivation about a dozen years. Before this it was covered with trees of twelve inches diameter, and around the base was an excavation of five feet in depth and width, from whence the earth had been taken, of which the hillock was formed.^^
In the mound, Jefferson found abundance of human bones which from their position it was evident had been thrown or piled promiscu- ously there together ; bones of the head and feet being in contact ; some vertical, some oblique, some horizontal, and directed to every point of the compass. These bones, when exposed to the air, crumbled to dust. Some of the skulls, jawbones and teeth were taken out nearly in a perfect state, but would fall to pieces on being examined. It was evident that this assemblage of bones was made up from persons of all ages, and at different periods of time. The mound was composed of alternate strata of bones, stones and earth. Hence it would seem that barrows, or mounds as they are most usually called, were formed by the Indians whose custom it was to collect the bones of their deceased friends at certain periods and deposit them together in this manner. "Qut," Mr. Jefferson observes: "On whatever occasion they may have been made,
^•''Notes of Virginia;" Thomas Jefferson, given as on p. 156. I find these para- graphs in the second American Edition by Carey, Philadelphia, 1704, pp. 138-139.— Edi- tor. See also "Writings of JeflFerson;'* Library Edition, 1903, VoLII, pp. 134-135.
Pitta— 4
Digitized by
so HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
they are of considerable notoriety among the Indians ; for a party passing about thirty years ago through the part of the country where this barrow is, went through the woods directly to it without any instructions or inquiry, and having stayed about it some time, with expressions which were construed those of sorrow, they returned to the high road which they had left about half a dozen miles to pay this visit, and pursued their journey."
Says Samuel G. Drake: "In these tumuli are usually found, with the bones, such instruments only as appear to have been used for superstitious purposes, ornaments of war. Of the latter kind no more formidable weapons have been discovered than tomahawks, spear and arrow heads, which can be supposed to have been deposited before the arrival of Europeans in America. What Mr. Jeflferson found in the barrow he dissected, besides bones, or anything, he does not inform us. In several of the depositories in the city of Cincinnati, which Dr. Daniel Drake examined, numerous utensils were found. He has g^ven a most accurate account of them. He divides them into two classes: ancient and modem ; or, ancient and more ancient. Among the latter, he says, there is not a single edifice, nor any ruins which prove the existence in former ages of a building composed of imperishable materials. No fragment of a column, no bricks, nor single hewn stone large enough to have been incorporated into a wall, has been discovered."*®
Dr. Daniel Drake was one of the early physicians in Cincinnati, and an author of medical works, editor of medical journals, and a prolific writer. S. G. Drake in this citation makes no footnote reference to any work of Daniel Drake, merely quotes him. There were many mounds in and about Cincinnati, the largest originally thirty-five feet high, which was cut down to twenty-seven feet by General Anthony Wayne for military purposes when he was encamped there in 1794. These mounds at Cincinnati were all on the Ohio side, and were similar to those in Pittsburgh and that at McKee's Rocks. Cuming evidently knew the Rev. John Heckewelder, the Moravian missionary to the Indians in Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio. Cuming seems to have written to Heckewelder, for in the appendices to Cuming's book there is one communicated in a letter to him by Heckewelder, and dated "Gnadenhuetten (Muskingum, Ohio), 3 Feb. 1810." Heckewelder said that while in the Big Beaver reg^ion in 1771, that within the earthen walls of an Indian fortification he saw at the depth of about three feet "a large body of cinders the same that are found in our smith shops."
Heckewelder conversed with the oldest Indians, and to him these related the story of the nation, the Delawares, called the "Tallegawe," who had inhabited the region before the Delawares came, and these old Indians affirmed that all the fortifications had been erected by the
20"Picturc8 of Cincinnati and the Miami Valley," 1815.
Digitized by
MOUNDS AND MOUND BUILDERS S^
"Tallegawe;" that the nations coming in from the west and northwest (namely, the Delawares and those of their stock), had been attacked by them at their crossing of the Mississippi ; that great and bloody wars had been carried on between them, but that in the end, the Tallegawe were totally routed and extirpated; that these people had been a very tall race, much taller and stouter than the Delawares; and that the word "Allegheny" had derived its name from the Tallegawe.^^
The spelling "Tallegawe" i^ Cuming's. Heckewelder's spelling is "Talligue, or Talligewi." He mentions Colonel John Gibson's opinion that the proper title is "Alligewi," for the Delawares to Heckewelder's knowledge called the Allegheny river "Alligewi Sipu," or the River of the Alligewi. Heckewelder, who lived for years among the Lenape, or Delawares, saw everything with Delaware eyes and wrote from the Delaware point of view. The story of the passing of the mythical Alligewi is a typical Indian traditional story. The Lenape did most of the fighting with these enemies, while the Mengwe, or Iroquois, hung in the rear and enjoyed the fruits of victory. Battles were fought without quarter given, and hundreds fell on each side. This, war lasted for many years, Heckewelder relates that the Alligewi fortified their large towns and erected fortifications on the large rivers and near lakes, where they were successively attacked, and sometimes stormed by the allied enemy nations. After an engagement, the slain were buried in holes or gathered together in heaps, and earth piled over them.
This procedure will account for many small moilnds in which bones were found promiscuously, but it cannot account for the elaborate mounds such as the Grave Creek and McKee's Rocks, for the manner of interments in them and the all too suggestive evidences of barbaric rites preclude any ideas of hasty burial. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe these mounds were gradually erected, with delibera- tion, and without interference. However, in the story of the prehistoric races, that of the Talligewi, or whatever name we may call them, is not without pertinence to the history of Pittsburgh and Pennsylvania, for the Indians who came hither by reason of that conquest, figure largely in our State and city's history. Their chiefs have left their names, and their town's names also have come down to us in commemoration and as fixed designations, of which more anon.
Mr. Charles A. Hanna, in his comprehensive work, "The Wilderness Trail," quotes Dr. Cyrus Thomas, who wrote a monograph on "The Cherokees in Pre-Columbian Times," wherein Thomas advances the theory that the Cherokees were the Talligewi of Heckewelder, and that they reached the heads of the Tennessee river from the Ohio Valley
SI See "History. Manners and Customs of the Indian Nations who once Inhabited Pennsylvania and the Neighboring States;" Rev. John Hedcewelder; originally pub- lished by him in i8i8^ under the auspices of the American Philosophical Society; reprint 1876, by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
Digitized by
52 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
by way of the Great ICanawha, and cites in proof the similarity between the great mound at Moundsville, the burial mounds in the Kanawha Valley near Charleston (described by Bishop Madison. — Ed.), and those constructed by the Cherokees in Eastern Tennessee and Western North Carolina. Dr. Thomas noted that the names first applied by the Spanish to the Kanawha and Tennessee rivers were variations of the spelling, Cherokee. Heckewelder's recital of the disappearance of the Tallegewi is that they finally abandoned the Pennsylvania region and the Ohio Valley to their conquerors and fled down the Mississippi and were never afterwards heard of.
We can have no doubt that the original races of Aborigines warred much among themselves; that is, one Indian stock against another. Iroquoian was ever antagonistic to Algonquian, and the Iroquoian conquered and subdued. Whether the Tallegewi were the mound builders, or whether the mound builders antedated them, must be left to conjecture. Some light may be thrown on this question in the chapter on the Indians (Chap. Ill) in narrating the events that led to wars among two rival European nations, and the condition of the Indian tribes about the Forks of the Ohio when the white man came.
Brackenridge, in a chapter headed ''Antiquities in the Valley of the Mississippi,"^' states that no apology is needed for devoting a chapter to a subject that has been dignified by the pens of Mr. Jefferson, Dr. B. C. Barton and Bishop Madison. Says Brackenridge: "With all possible deference to these respectable names, I cannot but think their theories founded on very imperfect acquaintance with these remains, having never themselves visited any but the least considerable, and but few having been described with accuracy. The subject is still new, and I know of none which opens a wider field of interesting and amusing speculation."
Brackenridge devoted considerable space to the long since exploded theory that the mounds were erected by a colony of Welsh or Danes who were supposed to have found their way to North America by accident. He describes the difference between the mode of fortifying in Europe almost from time immemorial, and the ancient fortifications of the Western Country. He said : "The place is usually such as con- venience would dictate, or as best adapted to the ground; three miles below Pittsburgh, on a kind of promontory called McKee's Rocks, nearly inaccessible on three sides there is a fortification formed by a single line on the land side. They are sometimes, it is true, laid off with regularity, in the form of a parallelogram, semicircle, or square, but most commonly they are irregular."
We know the McKee's Rocks Mound was not a fortification in any sense. It was on high ground. Brackenridge scouts the idea that
22**vicws of Louisiana, with a Journal of a Voyage up the Missouri River in z8ii/' by H. M. Brackenridge, Esq., Pittsburgh, 1814.
Digitized by
MOUNDS AND MOUND BUILDERS 53
any Europeans were connected in any way with the antiquities. This notion had had widespread diffusion in the time he was writing, and has since been given much space by Winsor and other historians.
Brackenridge describes himself on the title page of his "Recollec- tions of Persons and Places in the West," as a "Traveler, Author, Jurist." His "Views of Louisiana" is one of his first books. He was in no large sense a scientist. He wrote principally of the great Cahokia Mound and those in the American Bottom on the Illinois side of the Mississippi. As his death occurred in 1871 in Pittsburgh, at the age of eighty-four, he had ample opportunity to keep pace with archaeo- logical research almost to the end of his life. He seems to have done so, for in the last edition of his "Recollections" (1868), the final appendix bears the heading: "Mounds, or Pyramids," and in this he tells further of the mounds opposite St. Louis, which he first visited in 181 1. He quotes at length from an article on these mounds in a St. Louis paper printed that year.
In the twenty-seventh chapter of his "Recollections," writing of his return to Missouri, and mentioning his literary pursuits then (1830), he reverts to his collection of essays published in his "Views of Lou- isiana," as showing him "thus aspiring to the ambitious distinction of authorship." He states also that this youthful production was favor- ably mentioned by the "London Quarterly" and the "Edinburgh Review." He goes on to say: "Nothing interested me so much as the remains of antiquity, the evidences of a more numerous and more civilized people throughout the Valley of the Mississippi. Besides the chapter on this great subject, I made a special communication to Mr. Jefferson, who as president of the American Philosophical Society transmitted it to that enlightened body, who published it among their Transactions. This led to my being chosen a member of the Antiquarian Society of Boston, and of a similar society at Copenhagen in Denmark."
He said further : "In imagination I peopled this now silent plain with the numerous human beings who once animated it, busily engaged in the occupations of peace, or more deeply agitated by the thrilling incidents of pestilence and war. In my book, which may now be found in some public library, there will be seen a full account of these mounds, and in the meantime hath not my friend, Caleb Atwater, in his curious and interesting volume on the Antiquities, made honorable mention of me, my theories on this subject and descriptions of those which came under my personal observations? Mr. Jefferson and Bishop Madison of' Virginia were among the first to notice these Western Antiquities, and afterwards a Mr. Harris, in his journal, gave a particular account of those at Marietta."'*
38The Rev. Thaddeus Ma«on Harris, whose "Journal" was imbtished in Boston, 1805. His voyage in a flatboat down the Ohio was made in 1803. Dr. Atwater was one of the early historians of Ohia
Digitized by
54 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
Flints, arrow and spear heads were found in all the region about Pittsburgh. In 1876, when the "History of Allegheny County" was published by Everts & Company, the number of these relics and the frequency with which they were picked up, especially in the Sewickley Valley, received mention in the book. Stone axes were common, and pieces of pottery and various utensils were often unearthed near Leets- dale, in the Sewickley bottom, and within one mile in this locality five mounds were at one time visible. Near Ford City, on the Allegheny, in Armstrong county, the remains of an ancient fort could be readily traced to about the middle of the nineteenth century. Writers of Armstrong county history, as late as 1883, tell of various aged persons they had met who had seen the vestiges of this ancient fort, and had traced and measured the fosse and parapet, and who had dug up quan- tities of lead from the front of the parapet, evidently shot from across the river. The writers of the history of the vicinity could tell also of aged persons who had dug up, and of farmers who had plowed up, great numbers of flint arrow heads and broken pottery of rare design and of various types and colors. The old people told also of a wonder- fully walled well near the fort, which was cleaned out, bringing to light unmistakable parts of human bones — a deep well, indeed, such as no Indian ever dug, for the red men pitched their teepees and built their towns near running water always. This well was found acci- dentally by settlers who came on the spot in 1813, and it was used for many years. It remained a small spring until about 1902, when it was filled up and obliterated.**
These Armstrong county pioneers were of course not aware of such elaborate works of the aboriginal people as those near Newark, Miamis- burg, Chilicothe, Circleville, Fort Ancient, and other places in Ohio. They may have thought their ancient fort was the only one of its kind.
The mounds about Pittsburgh, which were well known to past generations and many of the present, have passed away and left only thoughts such as inspired Dr. Doddridge a century ago. He thought these primeval people were a race of barbarian^, and has told us they had left nothing but their forts or town walls and their graves. He says: "It is often asked whether those people who have left behind them the antiquities of our country, were the ancestors of the present Indians? Unquestionably they were; and, reader, their contemporaries of Europe and Asia were your ancestors and mine. Humiliating as this statement may seem, it must be true; otherwise there must have been two creations of the human race, and that we have no reason to suppose.'***^
2*"Ford City, Pennsylvania; a Locational Skctdi," etc.; edited by John N. McCue, 1917; pp. S-7.
25"Notes on Settlement, etc.;" Edition 1912, p. 36.
Digitized by
MOUNDS AND MOUND BUILDERS 55
In estimates of the great age of the works of the mound builders, great stress is laid upon the fact that immense forest trees grew upon the mounds, and even greater stress upon the condition of the masses of human bones found in them, which did not admit of removal, crum- bling into dust on exposure to air. Such was the case with many exhumed at McKee's Rocks. There are records of tumuli, especially of tumuli in England, known to be older than the Christian era, from which bones were taken out and which have remained entire, Brackenridge, closing his chapter above mentioned, quotes appropriately from Selleck Osbom :
He grasped a hero's antique bust,
The marble crumbled into dust
And sank beneath the shade.
The study of primeval man is fascinating; the more pursued, the more the student is puzzled. Others present only mystery.
Dr. Thomas Wentworth Higginson in his article, "The First Ameri- cans," has given us an interesting story. He said c^* "The mound builders were formerly regarded as a race so remote from the present Indian tribes that there could be nothing in common between them, yet all recent inquiries tend to diminish the distance." He discussed also the evidences that aboriginal man in America was contemporary with the mammoth, and left the question open. He closed his article inquiringly thus: "Must we admit that in our eflForts to explain the origin of the first Americans it is necessary, after all, to end with an interrogation point?" He inclined to the opinion of Lewis H. Morgan, that there never was, in North Americst at least, a prehistoric civilization, properly so-called, but only an advanced and wonderfully skilled barbarism, or semi-civilization at the utmost.^^
We may concede that the most recent explorations of these ancient tumuli erected by a people that existed before American history, or any history, could be written, have radically changed all our conceptions of such a people. Modem archaeologists admit that the notions of their predecessors in the science were partly if not wholly in error in their notions. In the more accurate studies and researches of late years, many assumptions of former years have not been substantiated. Whether or not the so-called Mound Builders and the American Indians were two distinct races is not pertinent to this history. It is now accepted that they were not. The best authorities in archaeological researches hold fast to the theory that they were one and the same people.^® A mass of testimony is furnished in support of the settlement of the long mooted question, and the speculations of former years have been swept away.
^•"Harper's Magazine," July, 1882.
37"Montezuma's Dinner," Lewis H. Morgan, in '^orth American Review," April, 1876
28"Twelf th Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology ;" p. 17, Art 7 ; quoted by Dr. Archer Butler Hulbert, in "Historic Highways;" Vol. I, p. 38.
Digitized by
56 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
Beyond a doubt, the region about Pittsburgh for untold ages before the white man came was inhabited by human beings of the American race, perhaps the Red Race, in error called Indians by Columbus, a misnomer that will endure for all time. But there has been no tes- timony adduced that supports the theory that a teeming population was anywhere in North America. Such a theory is now regarded as altogether fanciful. The sizes and dimensions of the largest mounds do not reveal that a vast number of men were employed in their con- struction, hence the examination of the works does not imply a great population. It is now believed that the population in the mound building era never exceeded the population of the continent when the first white man landed here and made records. There were undoubtedly congested areas such as along the rich alluvial bottoms, and especially those in the Ohio Valley where the mounds and works are most numer- ous, for thes6 bottoms were most fertile, and we must believe the Amer- ican race primeval was to some extent an agricultural people and lived otherwise than by the chase and by fishing. The Aborigines were car- niverous, hence brave, for primitive man slew the primitive beasts with primitive weapons. Pittsburgh people and many aged people of the community about McKee's Rocks of fifty years ago, will readily recall the fine farm lands along Chartier's creek, and the wide well tilled bottoms on the Ohio now occupied by the shops and yards of the Pitts- burgh & Lake Erie railroad, and by the immense works of the Pressed Steel Car Company. F. Cuming in 1807 described the "Rocks" and McKee's fine farm land. It is easy of belief that these alluvial and easily cultivated loam soils were put to practical use agriculturally by the primitive people who left their mound upon the promontory of the famous Rocks, an object of curiosity for ages, to be exhumed in these modern years of scientific research ; and its sacred relics and crumbling bones are destined, amid the magnificence of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum, to awaken awe and give rise to strange speculations in the minds of curious observers for perhaps centuries to come.
While it must be admitted that this chapter cannot as a whole be called historical, its contents have not been incorporated in any history of Pittsburgh heretofore published; for, although the explorations of the McKee's Rocks Mound took place a quarter of a century ago, its lessons and the story of its exploration are subsequent to all our histories except Miss Killikelly's, published in 1906, who made no mention of the work of exploration and its results. It may be admitted also that it was unnecessary to go into such an extended account, for the many care little for such a story, and, not well informed on archae- ological researches, may consider the story but a chain of conjectures, though some deductions seem plausible enough. To this it may be answered that the opening of McKee's Rocks Mound was a national
Digitized by
MOUNDS AND MOUND BUILDERS 57
scientific event, as well as a local affair of interest, and even beyond the community o£ Pittsburgh; that eminent scientists came here, and that the explorations lasting nearly three months, were given ample space in the newspapers, and these newspaper accounts are records made at the time, and have now passed into history. Finally, the results o£ the explorations have been for twenty-five years an exhibit of a more than ordinary nature in the Carnegie Museum, daily viewed by hundreds of visitors, on holidays by thousands, and that these visitors should be interested in the story of the mound and the Mound Builders generally, is a logical conclusion. We may extend this conclusion to apply to all Pittsburgh people and those of the city's environs ; not only to the people of today, but to future generations — as long at least as the Museum shall endure, which we may consider to be for all time, unless destroyed by some cataclysm of nature, or like Ypres and Verdun.
It is true that the Mound Builders made no history that concerns Pittsburgh. The Red Race that came after or descended from them, made enough, and in the recording of that history and its succeeding history, lies the duty and the task of the historian of the region.
Many will agree with the learned Dr. Doddridge that the antiquities of the Western Country of his day— our region of Western Pennsylvania, Eastern Ohio, and Northern West Virginia — do not present to the mind the slightest evidence that this section of our country was ever inhabited by a civilized people before the white man came across the sea. No traces of the arts of building, sculpture or painting, were found in Dr. Doddridge's lifetime, and none since; and no stones for building purposes that bear the mark of a hammer. Rude sketches of birds and animals, chiseled into rocks, are still extant, notably on the shore of the Ohio river at Smith's Ferry, Pennsylvania, almost at the State line, and now under water by reason of slackwater navigation, and on the Allegheny river. near Franklin, Pennsylvania. To these the name "Pictured Rocks" has been given. One of the best specimens and largest of these rocks was on a farm near Millsboro, Pennsylvania, on the Monongahela river, which was blown up by the irate landholder a few years ago to stop the continual trespass of curiosity seekers who came in numbers, to the detriment of his crops.*^ We may also conclude that it is idle to amuse ourselves with fanciful creations, while great and momentous facts of history are waiting to find a record and com- ment, many of which have occurred within the memory of men now living. Indeed, but a few generations ago there resided in the country about Pittsburgh many old people who had lived in Colonial days. Early historians of Pittsburgh knew these persons — Neville B. Craig
29Pictures of this rock in ''Pennsylvania, Colonial and Federal/' Howard M. Jen- kins, Vol. I, p. 20. Picture of "Indian God Rock" near Franklin, in Schoolcraft's "Indian Nations," etc.; Vol. VI.
Digitized by
S8 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
and Henry Marie Brackenridge, for instance. Then, too, there are the events of absorbing interest in the two decades of the twentieth century that have already passed ; hence we proceed to the stories of more modern times, and permit the prehistoric races — ^rather, what remains of them — to lie unexhumed, wrapt in the mystery that shrouds them.
Digitized by
Digitized by
Digitized by
CHAPTER III. In the Days of the Iroquois.
When the first white men crossed the Allegheny mountains and came to the Western Country, they found it "occupied by the Indians," some historians assert ; others say "inhabited by the Indians." Both are in a measure wrong in their statements. "Possessed" is altogether a better word, and more truthfully expresses the fact. The first history of the region arises from this possession; its origin and nature passes rapidly to English claims and English-Indian alliances, disclosing a rivalry ages old and leading to extended warfare. Most histories of Pennsylvania begin with accounts of the Indians that William Penn found dwelling on the Delaware in 1682, and with whom he made his famous treaty. Some histories go back to Columbus.
Neville B. Craig begins his "History of Pittsburgh" with some account of the earliest known occupants of the region; Howard N. Jenkins' first chapter in that elaborate work, "Pennsylvania, Colonial and Federal," is headed, "The Indians of Pennsylvania." Judge James Veech, in his "Monongahela of Old," first tells of the Mound Builders, passes to the story of the Indian occupants, thence follows the line of events. So, too, others — and the same is true of most histories of the United States. The Aborigines cannot be passed over, and their history must be told, regionally at least, in any history of any part of the country. It is more than regional history when Pittsburgh is the subject, for hereabouts mighty events, following trivial ones, took place, which brought on the long war between France and Great Britain, called by the English colonists the French and Indian War, which in the end decided the fate of the North American continent, when the issue was whether Celtic Gaul or the Anglo-Saxon should rule this continent, and, incidentally, whether the region treated of in this history as "Pitts- burgh and Its Environs," in fact the Western Country, should be part of New France in America or be brought under the Royal Banner of St. George.
With that decision the history of the region changed, but the phases given it by the Indians still continued. In the sense of color, it was red; perhaps not so sanguine in hue as when the French allied tribes ravaged the length and breadth of Pennsylvania and left a shocking record. Not until Anthony Wayne punished the Western tribes on the Maumee in August, 1794, did the menace of the red warrior depart from Western Pennsylvania. From the time when Governor Dinwiddie sent the youthful George Washington as ambassador to the French com- mander in Northwestern Pennsylvania in 1753, until twenty years after
Digitized by
6o HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
British sovereignty had ceased in the Thirteen Colonies, the bane of the savage was ever at hand in the Western Country, and armed forces and block houses were constantly required to protect the settlers in even a slight degree, not only in the trans-Allegheny region, but also the older settlements along and east of the Susquehanna. True, there were lulls in the warfare — intervals of peace — ^but the menace remained, and the peaceful periods were short and fleeting.
It will therefore be proper to tell of the tribes that occupied the Western Country, their mode of life, and how governed ; their activities in war; their racial and political enmities; their espousal of the cause of "Onontio" — the governor-general of French Canada, or of "Onas" — William Penn, the proprietor of Pennsylvania, each claiming jurisdic- tion of the region about the Forks of the Ohio, and thereby running counter to the claims of the government of the colony of Virginia.
Before coming to these claims of the English colonial governors, and antecedent even to the claims of France to the region, the story of the Pennsylvania Algonquins and their subserviency to other tribes, or their enmity, must be written, and a strange story it is. Then, too, how came these tribes to the region, neither indigenous nor long seated here? Herein first looms up the power of the most wonderful con- federacy of savage nations, the purest democracy since the early days of Athens, rivaling that, in fact — the League of the Iroquois, "The Romans of America," in the language of De Witt Clinton. In the story of the Indians of Western Pennsylvania the Iroquois are the land- lords; the other tribes were tenants at will — especially the Delawares and Shawanese — for both these tribes had fixed habitations assigned them in the region of the Upper Ohio, and with them most of the Indian history of Pittsburgh has to do.
The Ottawas, Wyandots, Miamis, Cherokees, Mohicans, and even more remote tribes, have also place in our local Indian history, but in the main, the Delawares and Shawanese are the chief sources of it. The Mingoes, oftmentioned, were Iroquois; emigrants, we may term them, from the most western of the Western Iroquois in New York, or those who dwelt on the shores of Lake Erie and at the headwaters of the Allegheny, thence following an easy waterway to the Ohio, which river they regarded as the main stream, only a continuation of the Allegheny. Delaware and Seneca names therefore are most common commemorations in our regional geographical nomenclature, and will receive more extended notice farther on, as they most frequently occur in this history and should have mention.
The region beyond the Alleghenies, to be more explicit, that extend- ing westward from the northern Susquehanna at its forks was Iroquoian hunting grounds. In this vast timbered area, abounding in mountain and stream, the Indian found his ideal country. The Iroquois, while
Digitized by
IN THE DAYS OF THE IROQUOIS 6i
savage in nature and indulging to excess all their savage propensities and barbaric rites, were nevertheless semi-civilized. They had their dwelling houses of bark, their farms and gardens well tilled by their women, and above all their Long House, or seat of assembly. They were warriors — a race of warriors, whose origin was lost in myths, weird, shudder-causing, wonderful. But they loved the chase also, for they required the peltries of the fur-bearing animals for clothing and home comfort. So when the conquest was over for a season, their hunters sought the woodland wilderness, trapped the bear, the otter and the beaver, and killed the buffalo and deer for meat and skins, and in this pursuit roamed over wide stretches, for the warrior-hunter was at home anywhere. He was never lost or dismayed. In the inimitable language of Parkman we are awakened to this truth. He tells us that "The Indian is the true child of the forest and the desert. The wastes and solitudes of nature are his congenial home. His haughty mind is imbued with the spirit of the wilderness, and the light of civilization falls on him with a blighting power. His unruly pride and untamed freedom are in harmony with the lonely mountains, cataracts and rivers, among which he dwells; and primitive America, with her savage scenery and savage men, opens to the imagination a boundless world, unmatched in wild sublimity."^
In the wilderness of Western Pennsylvania, in its vast forests of pine and hemlock and in the deciduous woods along its quickly flowing streams and on its clear lakes, the Iroquois hunters reveled in the chase, and that, conquerors as they were for centuries, they should share this hunting ground with the conquered, awakens surprise and evokes inquiry. The tribes of the Algonquian stock were here by their permission — the Delawares and the Shawanese driven here at the behest of Onas, and in all it is a strange story, curious in inception, dramatic in its forceful telling, and tragic in its ultimate results: The name Delawares, it will be noted, is of English derivation ; rightly these were the Lenape — ^in Indian orthography, the Len-ni-Len-a-pe, a tribe of the great Algonquian family whose history is more inextricably inter- woven with Pennsylvania history than that of any other, not even excepting the Iroquois and the Delaware congeners variously called Shawanese, Shawanoes and Shawnees.
The Iroquois therefore call for special and specific mention, for they were the masters. Again recourse to Parkman. He tells us in this regard :
Foremost in war, foremost in eloquence, foremost in the savage arts of policy, stood the first people called by themselves the Hodenosaunee, and by the French the Iroquois, which has since been applied to the entire family of which they formed the dominant number. They extended their conquests and their depredations from Quebec to the Carolinas, and from the western prairies to the forests of Maine. On the south
^''Conspiracy of Pontiac," Francis Parkman, Vol. I, Chap, z ; also quotations post.
Digitized by
62 HISTORY OF PITTSBURGH
they forced tribute from the subjugated Delawares, and pierced the mountain fastneflset of the Cherokees with incessant forays. On' the north they uprooted the ancient settle- ments of the Wyandots; on the west they exterminated the Eries and the Andastes and spread havoc and dismay among the tribes of the Illinois ; and on the east, the Indians of New England fled at the first peal of the Mohawk war-cry. Nor was it the Indian race alone who quailed before their ferocious valor. All Canada shook with the fury of their onset; the people fled to the forts for refuge; the bloodsmeared conquerors roamed like wolves among the burning settlements, and the colony trembled on the brink of ruin.
From the hour when the fire-spitting arquebusiers of Champlain astounded and decimated the Mohawk hordes at famous Ticonderoga on Lake George in 1609, the entire Confederacy hated the French with that intensity of hatred characteristically Indian. Hence there came a day when the Six Nations, as the English called the reinforced Con- federacy, stood a blazing wall between the French in Canada and the feeble colonies of New York and Pennsylvania with hundreds of miles of unprotected wilderness frontiers. This alliance with the English will be most forcefully apparent in the recital of Braddock's campaign, in the story of the few Iroquois allies of the colonial forces whose well- meant efforts were spurned by the haughty British general, and the Iroquois chieftain and warriors were insulted by his bitterly disdainful words. By reason of Braddock's defeat, the region of Western Penn- sylvania, not alone the trans-Allegheny region but all the country from the Appalachian chain to the Mississippi, became unmistakably French soil, a large part of New France in America. The French were in control, and the fleur-de-lis, their beautiful emblem of sovereignty, flew triumphantly to the forest breezes not alone at Fort Du Quesne, at the Forks of the Ohio, but from the forts at Venango, Le Boeuf. Presque Isle and on the Wabash. Well then for the English colonists the Iroquois friendship ! Well, indeed, the Iroquoian domination of the French allied tribes! Better had it continued, but the Iroquoian yoke becoming bur- densome, with Indian pride and Indian racial hatred undying, and strong at all times, there was needed only the stimulation of the crafty French to arouse the spirit of the fighting ancestors of the Delawares, Shawanese and Wyandots, and cause these by no means despicable war- riors to toss the galling yoke lightly aside, and bid defiance to their masters and drive the Iroquoian overlords from the Algonquian villages along the Upper Ohio and its tributaries. The Delawares were no longer "Petticoat Indians ;" the Shawanese no longer "Bedouins." They were henceforth fighting savages in every sense, and in consequence of their new-found freedom, from every page of Pennsylvania's history of the twenty succeeding years there arises more than one shudder in its perusal, for much of this history is a shocking record.
The story of the Iroquois dominancy of the Algonquian tribes, the open alliance of the latter with the French and the allegiance of the Iroquois to the English, must ever find place in the history of Pittsburgh
Digitized by
IN THE DAYS OF THE IROQUOIS 63
and Western Pennsylvania, for in this region there occurred startling events in consequence. Woe, indeed, to the Colony of the Penns and the frontiers of Maryland and Virginia when the hitherto easy-going Delawares, the submissive Shawanese, and the compliant Wyandots, and all the Western tribes in sympathy with them, dug up the tomahawk and went on the warpath. Then entered on the stage of our history in tragic array that great conspirator Pontiac, the Ottawa, and his myrmidons, and the chief warriors acknowledging fealty to him and following his leadership; — Guyasutha, the renegade Seneca, and the White Mingo, his tribesman; Shingiss and Custaloga, and the Beaver Captain Jacobs and White Eyes, and a long line of chiefs and chief warriors of the Delawares; Kissinautcha, Nymwha and Red Hawk, Shawanese chiefs; and in the perilous days of the Revolution, Simon Girty, the white savage, and his equally savage brothers, all three steeped in the blood of the innocent and helpless of their own race.
These red actors in the great