TUSCARORA VALLEY--ITS EARLY SETTLERS--ITS MOUNDS AND ITS FORTS--
MASSACRES, ETC.
Tuscarora Path Valley, as it was formerly called, is one of the most
fertile and beautiful within the Juniata range. It embraces an extent
of probably thirty miles in length, beginning in Franklin county, and
ending at the river at Perrysville, in Juniata county. The name of
"Path" was given to it in consequence of the old western Indian path
running through it nearly its entire length.
Tuscarora, in its day, must have been a famous place for the Indians.
Its great natural advantages, and the abundance of game it contained,
must alone have rendered it an attractive place, independent of the
fact that it was the regular highway between the East and the West,
where the warrior, the politician, and the loafer, could lie in the
"Umbrageous grots and caves of cool recess,"
before the wigwam door, and hear from travellers all the news astir
worthy of their profound attention.
Tradition, however, speaks of battles among them; for they would fight
among themselves, and that, too, with all the relentless fury that
characterized their warfare with the whites. But of these battles said
to be fought in the valley the tradition is so vague and unsatisfactory
that we omit any further mention of them.
There are two mounds in the valley,--one of them near its head, the
other some twelve or fourteen miles from its mouth, at or near a place,
we believe, now called Academia. Some persons who examined this mound
about twenty years ago tried to make it appear that it had been
enclosed in a fortification, as they averred that they had discovered
fragments of a wall. This was probably a wrong conclusion, as a
burial-place would not likely be within a fortification. If the mound
was once enclosed within a wall for protection, it was an act that
stands without a parallel in Indian history.
Near the lower mound is an academy; and during the last ten years the
students used their leisure hours in exhuming the bones and searching
for relics, so that by this time, probably, but a mere visible trace of
it is left.
The first settlers in Tuscarora were Samuel Bigham, Robert Hagg, and
James and John Grey,--all Scotch. They came from Cumberland county
about the year 1749, or probably 1750. They were in search of a
location for permanent settlement. The valley pleased them so well that
they immediately staked out farms; and, notwithstanding the Indians of
the valley treated them with apparent hospitality, they took the
precaution to build themselves a fort for defence, which was named
Bigham's Fort. By the year 1754 several other persons had settled in
Tuscarora, among them George Woods and a man named Innis.
Some time in the spring of 1756, John Grey and Innis went to Carlisle
with pack-horses, for the purpose of procuring groceries. On their
return, while descending the mountain, in a very narrow defile, Grey's
horse, frightened at a bear which crossed the road, became unmanageable
and threw him off. Innis, anxious to see his wife and family, went on;
but Grey was detained for nearly two hours in righting his pack. As far
as his own personal safety was concerned, the detention was a
providential one, for he just reached the fort in time to see the last
of it consumed. Every person in it had either been massacred or taken
prisoners by the Indians. He examined the charred remains of the bodies
inside of the fort, but he could find none that he could bring himself
to believe were those of his family. It subsequently appeared that his
wife and his only daughter, three years of age, George Woods, Innis's
wife and three children, and a number of others, had been carried into
captivity. They were taken across the Alleghany to the old Indian town
of Kittaning, and from thence to Fort Duquesne, where they were
delivered over to the French.
Woods was a remarkable man, and lived to a good old age, and figured
somewhat extensively afterward in the history of both Bedford and
Alleghany counties. He took his captivity very little to heart, and
even went so far as to propose marriage to Mrs. Grey while they were
both prisoners in the fort.
The French commander, in apportioning out the prisoners, gave Woods to
an old Indian named John Hutson, who removed him to his own wigwam. But
George proving neither useful nor ornamental to Hutson's establishment,
and as there was no probability of any of his friends paying a ransom
for him--inasmuch as he had neither kith nor kin,--he opened
negotiations with George to let him off. The conditions made and
entered into between the two were that the aforesaid George Woods
should give to the aforesaid John Hutson an annuity of ten pounds of
tobacco, until death should terminate the existence of either of the
parties named. This contract was fulfilled until the massacre of the
Bedford scout, when Harry Woods, a lieutenant of the scout, and son of
George Woods, recognised among the most active of the savages the son
of John Hutson, who used to accompany his father to Bedford, where
Harry Woods had often seen him. It is hardly necessary to add that old
Hutson never called upon Woods after that for his ransom annuity.
Woods was a surveyor by profession, and assisted in laying out the city
of Pittsburg, one of the principal streets of which bears his name, or,
at least, was named after him, notwithstanding it is called "Wood"
instead of Woods street.
Mr. Woods, after he removed to Bedford, became a useful and influential
citizen. He followed his profession, and most of the original surveys
in the upper end of the Juniata Valley were made by him. He reared a
large family, and his descendants are still living. One of his
daughters was married to Ross, who was once a candidate for the office
of governor of the State. He lived to a good old age, and died amid the
deep regrets of a most extended circle of acquaintances.
Mrs. Grey and her daughter were given to some Indians, who took them to
Canada. In the ensuing fall John Grey joined Colonel Armstrong's
expedition against Kittaning, in hopes of recapturing, or at least
gaining some intelligence of, his family. Failing to do this, he
returned home, broken in health and spirits, made his will, and died.
The will divided the farm between his wife and daughter, in case they
returned from captivity. If the daughter did not return, a sister was
to have her half.
About a year after the fort was burnt, Mrs. Grey, through the
connivance of some traders, managed to escape from bondage, and reached
her home in safety, but, unfortunately, was compelled to leave her
daughter behind her. She proved her husband's will and took charge of
the property. The treaty of 1764 brought a large number of captive
children to Philadelphia to be recognised and claimed by their friends.
Mrs. Grey attended, in hopes of finding her child; but she was
unsuccessful. There remained one child unclaimed, about the same age as
Mrs. Grey's; and some person, who evidently knew the provisions of the
will, hinted to her the propriety of taking the child to save the
property. She did so, and in the year 1789, the heirs of the sister,
having received some information as to the identity of the child,
brought suit for the land. The trial was a novel one, and lasted from
1789 to 1834, a period of forty-five years, when it was decided in
favor of the heirs and against the captive.
Innis remained among the Indians until the treaty. His wife escaped a
short time previous. Two of her children she recovered in Philadelphia,
but a third had been drowned by the savages on their way to some place
in Canada. By the exposure it became sick and very weak, and, to rid
themselves of any further trouble with it, they put it under the ice.
When the captive children were at Philadelphia, some person had taken
one of Innis's, and he had considerable difficulty to recover it. Had
it not been for a private mark by which he proved it, the person who
had it in charge would probably never have surrendered it.
The Indians of Tuscarora, before the French war, were on terms of great
intimacy with the whites. They used to meet at the fort, and shoot
mark, and, when out of lead, would go to the mouth of the valley, and
return with lead ore, almost pure. Lead was a valuable article, and
difficult to transport; hence the settlers were anxious to discover the
location of the mine. Many a warrior was feasted and liquored until he
was blind drunk, under a promise of divulging the precise whereabouts
of the lead mine. Its discovery, if it contained any quantity of ore,
would have realized any man a speedy fortune in those days; but, in
spite of Indian promises and the most thorough search for years, the
lead mines of Tuscarora were never found, and probably never will be
until it is occupied by another race of cunning Indians.
The fort burnt down in 1756 was rebuilt some four years afterward,
through the exertions of Ralph Sterrit, an old Indian trader. His son
William was born in Bigham's Fort, and was the first white child born
in Tuscarora Valley. At the time of burning the first fort, Sterrit was
absent with his family.
It is related of Ralph Sterrit, that, one day, while sitting outside of
the second fort, a wayworn Indian came along, who was hungry, thirsty,
and fatigued. Sterrit was a humane man, and called the savage in, gave
him bread and meat, a drink of rum, and some tobacco, and sent him on
his way rejoicing.
The circumstance had entirely passed out of Sterrit's mind, when, one
night in the spring of 1763, when the Indians had again commenced
hostilities, the inmates of the fort were alarmed by a noise at the
gate. Sterrit looked out, and by the light of the moon discovered that
it was an Indian. The alarm was spread, and some of the more impetuous
were for shooting him down as a spy. Sterrit, more cool than the
others, demanded of the Indian his business. The Indian, in few words,
reminded him of the circumstance above narrated, and for the
hospitality extended to him he had come to warn the white man of
impending danger. He said that the Indians were as "plenty as pigeons
in the woods," and that even then they had entered the valley, and,
before another moon, would be at the fort, carrying with them the firm
determination to murder, scalp, and burn, all the whites in their path.
The alarm was sounded, and it was soon determined, in consequence of
the weakness of the fort, to abandon it. Nearly all the settlers of the
valley were in it; but the number stated by the savage completely
overawed them, so that they set to work immediately packing upon horses
their most valuable effects, and long before daylight were on their way
to Cumberland county.
The Indians came next night, and, after reconnoitering for a long time,
approached the fort, which, much to their astonishment, they found
evacuated. However, to show the settlers that they had been there, they
burnt down the fort, and, on a cleared piece of ground in front of it,
they laid across the path a war-club painted red--a declaration of war
to the death against the whites.
The benevolent act of Sterrit, in relieving the weary and hungry
Indian, was the means of saving the lives of eighty persons.