Legends of Loudoun: An account of the history and homes of a border county of Virginia's Northern NeckWilliams, Harrison
History
Legends of Loudoun: An account of the history and homes of a border county of Virginia's Northern Neck
Williams, Harrison
Historic buildings -- Virginia -- Loudoun County; Loudoun County (Va.) -- History
We understand theire is in the Inhabitance a bout sixteene. They
informed us there was sume outt a hunting, butt we Judge by theire
Cabbins theire cannot be above Eighty or ninety bowmen in all. This is
all we Can Report, who subscribes ourselves
"Yo'r Ex'lly Most Dutifull Servants
GILES VANDERASTEAL
BUR HARRISON."
This "Sugar land" where our emissaries spent the first night of their
journey, and the Sugarland Run passing through and named from it, are
frequently referred to in the early records and the mouth of the Run
became in 1798 the starting point of Loudoun's corrected southern
boundary line with Fairfax. They derived their name from the groves of
sugar maples found growing there which, with the use of their sap, were
well known to the Indians from earliest times. In 1692 David Strahane
"Lieut. of the Rangers of Pottomack" tells in his journal that while
patrolling the upper woods, he and his men on the 22nd September "Ranged
due North till we came to a great Runn that made into the sugar land, &
we marcht down it about 6 miles & ther we lay that night." The wording
quite clearly shows that the sugar land was then well known to the
whites.
Although, as their report shews, Vandercastel and Harrison reached their
goal and duly delivered their message, the Piscataways did not then or
later comply with the Governor's pressing invitation. That their
attitude was not prompted by defiance but rather by worried caution
based on their appreciation of the manifold difficulties of their then
relations with the whites, is indicated by the report of two other
English envoys who, later in the same year, were sent by the authorities
to Conoy. These men, Giles Tillett and David Straughan, kept a journal
from which we learn that in November, 1699, they in their turn reached
the fort and found that "one Siniker" (i.e. Seneca or Iroquois) was
among the Piscataways who had had trouble with "strange Indians" who
they called Wittowees and that the "Suscahannes" had captured and
brought two of these Wittowees to the fort. The "Emperor" received the
Englishmen very kindly and told them that he was then willing to "come
to live amongst the English againe but he was afeared the sstrange
Indians would follow them and due mischief amongst the English, and he
should be blamed for it, soe he must content himselfe to live there." He
accused the French of stirring up these "strange Indians" and "presents
his services to the Gove'n'r, and thanks him for his Kindness to send
men to see him to know how he did."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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