History of the Early Settlement of the Juniata Valley: Embracing an Account of the Early Pioneers, and the Trials and Privations Incident to the Settlement of the Valley, Predatory Incursions, Massacres, and Abductions by the Indians During the French and Indian Wars, and the War of the Revolution, &c.Jones, U. J. (Uriah James)
History
History of the Early Settlement of the Juniata Valley: Embracing an Account of the Early Pioneers, and the Trials and Privations Incident to the Settlement of the Valley, Predatory Incursions, Massacres, and Abductions by the Indians During the French and Indian Wars, and the War of the Revolution, &c.
Jones, U. J. (Uriah James)
Frontier and pioneer life -- Pennsylvania -- Juniata River Valley; Indians of North America -- Pennsylvania -- Juniata River Valley; Juniata River Valley (Pa.) -- Genealogy; Juniata River Valley (Pa.) -- History
The Conoy Indians settled in the valley in 1748. They left the
Delaware on the strength of a promise made them by the proprietary
government that they should be remunerated. The debt, however, we
presume, must have been repudiated, for we find that an Indian orator
named _Arruehquay_, of the Six Nations, made application to Governor
Hamilton, during a "talk" in Philadelphia on the 1st of July, 1749,
for something for them. The governor, quite as much of an adept at
wheedling the savages as the proprietors themselves, returned the
Conoy wampum, and "talked" the Seneca orator out of the belief that
they owed the Conoys a single farthing, in consequence of their having
left their land and settled among the nations of the Juniata of their
own free will and accord. He ruled out the Conoy claim, and confirmed
his opinion by sending them a string of government wampum. Whether
this satisfied the Conoys or not does not appear upon the record. We
think not--at least we should not suppose that they were half as well
satisfied as the Six Nation deputies, who carried away, among other
plunder, a quantity of tobacco and pipes, fifty ruffled shirts, and a
gross and a half of brass jewsharps!
The Nanticokes settled about the mouth of the Juniata in 1748 or 1749,
and in after years spread westward toward the Ohio. This portion of the
tribe, when it first came to the Juniata, was not very formidable; but
it increased and became powerful.
A number of Mengues, Mingoes, or Iroquois, of the Six Nations, settled
a few years afterward in Kishacoquillas Valley, now Mifflin county.
Of all the savages in the valley, the Mingoes were probably the most
peaceably disposed, although it is a well-attested fact that they were
a brave and warlike band. The fathers of the principal chiefs of the
Mingoes, settled in the Juniata Valley, had been _partially_ (if we
may use the term) Christianized by the teachings of the Moravian
missionaries, Heckwelder, Zinzendorf, and Loskiel; and this may account
for their desire to live on terms of amity and friendship with their
pale-faced brethren.
As the Delawares, or Lenapes, claimed to be the original people, we
must come to the conclusion that they came toward the east before the
Iroquois. They probably came from a northern direction, while the
united people worked their way from the northwest to the northeast. To
call these men original people, in the sense in which they applied it,
may have been right enough; but to apply the term to them of
_original_, as occupants of the country, is a misnomer, not only
according to their own oral traditions, but according to the most
indubitable evidence of antiquarians and geologists.
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