The Delawares
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For years the hardy pioneers and their red brothers would live amicably together, fishing from the same streams, hunting through the same forests, and tilling contiguous fields of corn. Occasional broils would break out between the two races, in which the Indians were not always the aggressors. When savage ferocity was once roused, the work would be decisive and sanguinary. Without a moment's warning, in the silent, unguarded hours of slumber, the settler's home would be invaded with terrific war-whoop and murderous tomahawk, and the whole family massacred or carried away into captivity.
It is to be observed that the difficulties between the Delaware Indians and their white neighbors, which caused so much bloodshed on both sides originated mainly from misunderstandings in regard to lands. The natives claimed, and not without reason, that they were cheated in their transactions with the Dutch; that the latter assumed possession of more land than was sold to them; and that boundaries and lines were altered, and always in favor of the whites. It cannot be denied that the Indians were not always paid the full stipulated purchase price, and were overreached by their more wily pale faces in various reprehensible ways.
Lossing, in his “Field Book of the Revolution,” gives an instance in point. The natives had conveyed a territory to the “Proprietors of Pennsylvania” the boundaries of which were to extend a certain distance on the Delaware or “Great Fishkill” river, and as far back, in a northwest direction, as a man could travel in a day and a half. The Indians intended the depth of the tract should he about fifty miles, the distance a man would ordinarily walk in the specified time. But the purchasers employed the best pedestrians in the colonies, who did not stop by the way even to eat while running the line; the expiration of the day and a half found them eighty-five miles in the interior! The Indians boldly charged them with deception and dishonesty. The “Proprietors” claimed that they had become the owners of the lands within the Forks of the Delaware river, by a regular form of conveyance, and that the Indians had been fully paid for them. The Delawares, on the other hand, denied the validity of the sale, and asserted that they had never received a stipulated consideration. The case was, in 1742, laid before the Six Nations for arbitration, who, after hearing both sides, decided that the disputed territory could not be sold by the Delawares, as they were a conquered people, who had lost their right in the soil; that if the lands did not belong to the white people, it was the property of the Six Nations. With two such rivals for claimants, as the scheming whites and the dreaded Iroquois, the Delawares were fain obliged to forego their claim to the disputed territory. Some years ago a quantity of old spurious coin was dug up near Otisville, on the line of the Erie railroad. It was so clumsily executed as to preclude the supposition that it was the work of a gang of counterfeiters. The more reasonable theory is that it was intended to be used to cheat the Indians as they were not the best judges of money.
Such treatment ruffled the tempers of the Delawares, and predisposed them to make other complaints. They declared that the whites had spoiled their hunting-grounds; that they had destroyed the deer with iron traps; and that the traders of Minisink always made the Indians drunk when they took their peltries there, and cheated them while they were in that condition. The period of the French and Indian war was now approaching and had the settlers of the Shawangunk region adopted a different policy in their treatment of the Delawares, and so predisposed their dusky neighbors in their own behalf, many of the atrocities which thrilled and startled the people of that frontier would have been averted. While the Dutch and English were building up a wall of enmity between themselves and the Indians by adopting a course of treachery and artifice, the more wily French emissaries were making good use of that very circumstance to incite them against the English occupants of the territory, and so win them over to the interests of the French monarch. The results of the over-reaching policy of the Dutch and English recoiled with terrible effect on their own heads.
The defeat of Braddock, in July. 1755, on the banks of the Monongahela, was another of the causes that led the Indians of the whole territory of the
Delaware to take sides with the French. That defeat, so discreditable to the
military prestige of Great Britain, entirely destroyed the influence of the English with those tribes.
Once the murderous tomahawk was unburied, the whole frontier, from Virginia to the banks of the Hudson, at once felt the dire effects of savage ferocity. The following description does not overstate the reality: “The barbarous and bloody scene which is now open, is the most lamentable that has ever appeared. There may be seen horror and desolation; populous settlements deserted, villages laid in ashes, men, women and children cruelly mangled and murdered, some found in the woods, very nauseous, for want of interment, and some hacked, and covered all over with wounds.''
During the winter ensuing, the enemy continued to hang on the frontiers. A chain of forts and block-houses was erected along the base of the Kittanning mountains, from the Neversink river to the Maryland line, and garrisoned by fifteen hundred volunteers and militiamen under Washington. It may not be generally known that Benjamin Franklin once engaged in a military campaign. He received the appointment of Colonel, and in the service of defending this chain of forts, he began and completed his military career, being convinced that war was not his chosen calling.
Benjamin Franklin once engaged in a military campaign. He received the appointment of Colonel, and in the service of defending this chain of forts, he began and completed his military career, being convinced that war was not his chosen calling. By September of 1756 it was estimated that one thousand men, women and children had been slain by the Indians, or carried into captivity. Property to an immense amount had been destroyed, and the peaceful pursuits of civilized life were suspended along the whole frontier. Although Colonel John Armstrong subsequently administered a severe chastisement upon the savages in their den at Kittanning, killing their chiefs, slaughtering their families, and reducing their towns and crops to ashes, yet scalping parties continued to penetrate into the Mamakating and Rondout Kill valleys, some of them venturing into settlements east of the Shawangunk mountains. Under these circumstances, for the settlers to remain on their farms was to court death in a hideous form. The majority of the women and children were removed to Rochester, Wawarsing, New Paltz, and other localities for protection.
Colonel John Armstrong subsequently administered a severe chastisement upon the savages in their den at Kittanning, killing their chiefs, slaughtering their families, and reducing their towns and crops to ashes, yet scalping parties continued to penetrate into the Mamakating and Rondout Kill valleys, some of them venturing into settlements east of the Shawangunk mountains. Under these circumstances, for the settlers to remain on their farms was to court death in a hideous form. The majority of the women and children were removed to Rochester, Wawarsing, New Paltz, and other localities for protection.Table of Contents