Excerpt. . .
As already noted, a crucial goal of
William Penn, in regard to governing his colony, was to encourage peaceful
accord with the Amerindians who inhabited the land. To that end, he insisted that
treaties be ratified with the tribes who actually occupied the lands he wished
to purchase. Although not authenticated by written record, the acquisition of
land from the Amerindians by Penn as soon as he landed (as represented in Benjamin
West’s famous painting, Penn’s Treaty
With The Indians) is believed to have, in reality, occurred.37
Treaties for the transfer of lands
from the Amerindians to the Euro~Americans were negotiated in the years 1682,
1683, 1684, 1718, 1732, 1736, 1737, 1749, 1754, 1768 and 1784.38
Such negotiations were conducted by members of the Pennsylvania Provincial
Council with the assistance of Indian
traders who could speak the Algonquian and Iroquoian languages.
The fallacy of the treaties was that
the Amerindians held the belief that no individual could personally ‘own’ any
portion of the land; it was there for everyone to use (for hunting, fishing,
travel and so forth).39 They did not fully comprehend the Euro~American
concept that ownership implied being able to prohibit others from using the
land. The Amerindians assumed that despite the formality of signing the
treaties, the use of the land would still be available to them. They were understandably
upset when the Euro~Americans began to build permanent farmsteads (often
enclosed by fencing) upon those lands acquired by treaty.
Each successive treaty ‘legitimized’
the Euro~Americans’ claim to more land west and northward from the Delaware
River.40
As noted above, the treaty of 1682
was negotiated for a thin strip of land parallel to the Delaware.
In 1683, two treaties purchased the
land between the Neshaminy and Pennypack Creeks and between the Chester and Schuylkill
Rivers.
During the following year, 1684, a
treaty brought lands encompassed by the present-day counties of Bucks, Lehigh,
Berks and Montgomery into the province.
In 1718, a treaty purchased the
lands which make up York and Lancaster Counties today. This tract encompassed
valuable farming lands on either side of the Susquehannah River, which would be
put to good use by German farmers emigrating from the Rhineland region of
Germany and Switzerland.
The treaties of 1732, 1736 and 1737
acquired lands as far north and westward as the Blue Mountain range. The
acquisitions, along with those from the prior treaties, brought into the
control of the Euro~Americans the entire land area known today as the
Pennsylvania Piedmont. The tract acquired in 1737 was known as the Walking Purchase; it has the dubious
distinction of being one of the first instances of subterfuge being used to con
the Amerindians out of more land than originally agreed upon.41
On the 10th of May 1729, the county
of Lancaster was the fourth county to be erected in the province. It was
created primarily out of the lands acquired in the treaty of 1718, and extended
the western frontier of the province to the east side of the Susquehanna River.
Euro~American settlers were steadily
moving into the lands farther west ~ to those drained by the Juniata River.
Homesteads were springing up in the Big and Little Conolloways, the Great and
Little Coves, and through the Tuscarora Valley. The Euro~American families who
were encroaching on those lands, as yet unpurchased from the Amerindians, were
primarily Ulster-Scots (i.e.
immigrants from the Ulster Plantation in northern Ireland, and variously called
Scots-Irish).42 Whether inability or unwillingness to pay for the
land, or impatience with the land office, was their motivating force, the
settlers chose to ignore the laws of the province. Anger and revenge were,
understandably, the response of the Amerindians to the intrusion.43 The provincial authorities believed that if
they made an example of some of the intruding settlers, it would appease the Amerindians.
So to that end, they ordered the inhabitants of one such village, that had
grown to eleven families by 1750, to vacate their homes and move back east. All
of the buildings in that village (located west of the Susquehanna in the region
that would eventually become Bedford County, and later Fulton County), were
burned to the ground, giving the name Burnt
Cabins to the vicinity. Similar burnings were conducted at Path Valley,
Sherman’s Creek, Aughwick and the Big Cove.44
Lands defined by, and to the southeast
of the North Branch of the Susquehanna River were acquired in 1749. On July 1st
of that year sachems from the Seneca, Onontago, Tutato, Nantycoke and Conoy
tribes met with James Hamilton, then Lieutenant Governor, along with others at
Philadelphia.
The Amerindians brought complaints
that the Euro~Americans were settling on lands not yet purchased. They noted: “As our Boundaries are so well known, &
so remarkably distinguish’d by a range of high Mountains, we could not suppose
this could be done by mistake…” By
the 16th of August, an agreement was achieved. The tribal leaders announced
that they were “willing to give up the
Land on the East side of Sasquehanna from the Blue Hills or Chambers’ Mill to
where Thomas M’Gee the Indian Trader lives…”45
New treaties were conducted, and new
counties continued to be erected. On 19 August 1749, the county of York was
erected out of Lancaster from lands acquired in the treaties of 1718 and 1736.
Soon after, on 27 January 1750, the county of Cumberland was erected. The lands
from which the sixth county was created came partially from the land acquired
in the treaty of 1736, with the bulk coming from as-yet-unacquired lands to the
north and west.
During June 1754, in response to the
maneuverings of the French in the western frontier of the Province of New York
and southward into the Ohio Valley, New York governor, James DeLancey called for
a congress to be held at Albany.46 The French were constructing a
series of fortifications along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and the English
colonies needed to neutralize the threat they implied. Delegates from the
various English colonies were invited to the conference. Seven responded. In
addition to delegates from Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New
Hampshire, New York and Maryland, five members of the Pennsylvania Provincial
Assembly and Supreme Executive Council attended the congress. Sachems from the
Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy were invited also, and 150 of them
attended the conference. The colonial delegates and the Iroquois sachems met in
council from 19 June to 11 July 1754. One outcome of that conference was that
the Six Nations sold another large tract of land to the Province of
Pennsylvania.47
It stretched between the summits of
the Blue and Allegheny Mountain ranges from east to west, and from Penn’s Creek
(known by the Iroquois name, Kayarondinhagh), just south of the forty-first
latitude to the southern boundary line of the province (which, until the
Mason-Dixon Line was completed in 1768, was in dispute between Pennsylvania and
Maryland). The actual tract of land was described as follows:
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Beginning at the Kittochtinny or Blue Hills
on the West Bank of the Sasquehannah River, and thence by the said River to a
mile above the Mouth of a certain Creek called Kayarondinhagh; thence
North-West and by West as far as the said Province of Pennsilvania extends to
its Western Line or Boundary; thence along the said Western Line to the South
Line or Boundary of the said Province; thence by the said South Line or
Boundary to the South Side of the said Kittochtinny Hills; thence by the
South Side of the said Hills along the said Hills to the Place of Beginning.
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The newly acquired territory
included a large portion of the region that would, nearly twenty years later in
1771, be erected into the county of Bedford. The present-day counties of Blair,
Huntingdon, and Fulton, which were erected out of Bedford, along with
present-day Bedford County itself, trace their genealogy directly back to this purchase
of land in the year 1754. Therefore, the year 1754 could be considered the
‘legitimate’ beginning of the Euro~American occupation of present-day Bedford
County.
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