Table of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note: A Word on Words
Introduction
PART I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
PART II
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
PART III
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Footnotes
Copyright © 2012 by Scott Weidensaul
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
www.hmhbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Weidensaul, Scott. The first frontier : the forgotten history of struggle, savagery, and endurance in early America / Scott Weidensaul. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-15-101515-3 1. Frontier and pioneer life — East (U. S.) 2. East (U. S.) — History. 3. East (U. S.) — Race relations — History. 4. North America — History — Colonial period, ca. 1600–1775. 5. North America — History, Military. 6. Indians, Treatment of — East (U. S.) — History. 7. Whites — East (U. S.) — Relations with Indians — History. 8. Indians of North America — East (U. S.) — History. I. Title. f106.w45 2011 974 — dc23 2011030600
Book design by Brian Moore
Printed in the United States of America
DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Amy, patience personified
Acknowledgments
I am, even more than usual, indebted to my agent, Peter Matson, to whom this subject was of keen interest and whose insight and enthusiasm were mainstays. I was also fortunate to have worked with two peerless editors during the years in which this book was being researched and written—Rebecca Saletan, whose guidance during its formative stages was essential, and Lisa White, who did the heavy lifting as the book came together and moved through editing and production. Lisa’s deft editing was a joy.
Any writer owes more than he can express to a good copy editor, and I was especially fortunate to have Barbara Jatkola’s critical eye on this manuscript. Copyediting is an unsung but crucial process, and Barb saved me from errors of commission and omission, all with good humor and astonishing attention to detail.
Particular thanks to Pete Seward and Jen Johnson, without whom much would have been impossible, and to Ron Freed for his thoughtful first readings, which helped me enormously. A special tip of the hat to Allister Timms at Down East magazine for research assistance on the subject of the “Abenaki navy,” and to Professor Earl C. Haag for his expertise in early German / Swiss culture in Pennsylvania.
My wife, Amy, to whom this is dedicated, put up with a lot over the past five years. Thanks, sweetheart.
Author’s Note: A Word on Words
When quoting original sources, a writer faces a choice between historical accuracy and readability. In general, I have left the original spelling, capitalization, and punctuation intact, although I have made a few exceptions. I modernized the use of u and v, which in the sixteenth century were often reversed (“discouered” instead of “discovered”; “vse” instead of “use”), as well as the use of i instead of j (“iudged” instead of “judged”). Likewise, I modernized the use of fs for the double s in words such as “addrefs.” In rare cases where more extensive editing was necessary to improve understanding, such changes are bracketed in the text or noted in the citation.
Selected Pronunciation Guide
Kəlóskαpe: KLOOS-geh-bah
Ktə̀hαnəto: kTEN-uhn-et-to
Miantonomi: mee-ahn-to-NO-mee
Mol8demak: moh-LAH-de-mahk
Opechancanough: oh-pa-CAN-can-oh
Sattelihu: SAT-a-lee-hyoo
Scarouady: SCAR-roh-ah-dee
Tanaghrisson: tan-ah-GRIS-son
Tsenacommacah: sen-ah-COM-ah-cah
Introduction
On the Hochstetler farm, which in September 1757 sat like an oasis of orchards and fields below the dark forests of the Kittochtinny Hills in eastern Pennsylvania, there was a rhythm to the seasons, and for the young people of the surrounding German community, ebbelschnitz time was one of the highlights of autumn.
The apple trees, planted almost twenty years earlier, hung ripe with fruit—a testimony to God’s mercy, which, having brought these followers of the Mennonite elder Jakob Ammann out of persecution in Germany and Switzerland, led them to this new land of Pennsylvania, William Penn’s “holy experiment” of religious tolerance. Never mind that their neighbors—English, Welsh, Scots-Irish, even their fellow Germans, the Lutherans and Reformeds who worshipped together at the union church down the Tulpehocken Valley—were not always the most welcoming, calling them “Amish” or looking askance at their pacifist ways in these troubled times of war. The Amish community along Northkill Creek—the first of its kind in the New World—was strong and growing. Jacob Hochstetler knew they were blessed every time he looked at his wife, his children, and their prosperous farms.
It was harvest time in the orchards. The best apples would be picked with gloved hands—never letting skin touch skin, which would cause the fruit to spoil—then be carefully packed in boxes of straw to be stored away in the cool, dry root cellar, alongside the potatoes and carrots. In the middle of winter, the fruit would be portioned out, like treasures, crisp and dripping juice as though straight from the tree. The other, lesser apples would be ground into sauce or boiled in great iron kettles to make creamy apple butter, while the tartest (along with the windfalls) would be home-milled and pressed for cider, stored in casks that went into the root cellar, too.
But enormous piles of apples lay ready this day for gedaddeschnitz, dried apples that, when soaked in water, would plump up to make fillings for pies and tarts. In the morning, all the children and teens from the surrounding farms—the Yoders, Hertzlers, Nues, Glicks, Zoogs, and other Amish families—gathered at the Hochstetlers’ to help with the chore, as did the Hochstetlers’ grown children, John and Barbara, who lived on neighboring farms. Working steadily but happily—with a lot of joking and, among the older ones, whatever discreet flirting they could manage—the kids pared and sliced the apples with sweet-sticky fingers, cutting them into translucent half-moons that Frau Hochstetler and the women laid out on clean sheets to dry in the warm September sun. The smallest children, too young to be trusted with knives, waved switches to chase away the flies. By dusk, the once immense heaps of red, green, and yellow apples had dwindled to nothing but cores. A feast of a meal had been served, and the older folks kept a cautious but sympathetic eye on the happily chatting teens. A “frolic” was part of the bargain at ebbelschnitz time, and they had been young once, too.
The conversation that flowed through the darkening evening was almost entirely in German. If Jacob Hochstetler closed his eyes, he could almost imagine he was back in the old country. One tongue he had probably heard only rarely, however, was the swift-tumbling syllables of Lenape, the Algonquian language of the Natives he and the other settlers knew as Delaware Indians. In Lenape, the hills that began just a couple of miles to the north of the Amish farms were keekachtanemin, “the endless mountains.” The valley itself was tülpewihacki, “the land abounding with turtles,” and it had been especially beloved by th
e Lenape. But they’d lost it, just as they’d been forced from the bottomlands along the Delaware River; then from the lower Schuylkill as English Quaker, Irish, and Welsh settlers crowded in; and at last from tülpewihacki itself. Now the anger that had been growing among the Lenape for decades had finally led to war.
Like all the inhabitants of the “back parts” of the province, as the frontier was known, the Hochstetlers and their neighbors were nervous. The Delaware, Shawnee, and other tribes of the far Ohio country—refugees from lands in the east, including the Tulpehocken Valley—had renounced their alliances with the British and lifted the hatchet on behalf of the French. Throughout the previous year, the Endless Mountains had not been merely a boundary between settled lands and the wolf-haunted wilderness; they had been a menacing presence, out of which could come an attack at any time. The militia stationed at small frontier blockhouses such as Fort Northkill—a slapdash stockade of ill-fitting logs surrounding a small cabin not far from the Hochstetler farm—hadn’t prevented a spate of killings and kidnappings the previous winter and spring. The summer of 1757 had been fairly quiet, though, so perhaps, everyone hoped, the worst was over.
It was long after midnight when the last of the crowd left—a rare reprieve from the to-bed-with-the-sun schedule of a farm family, and the Hochstetlers slept happily but heavily. Toward dawn, one of their dogs began to fuss, and one of the Hochstetler boys, Jacob Jr., sleepily opened the door to investigate.
In the predawn darkness, there was a brilliant orange flash from a musket and a ripping pain in the boy’s leg as the round lead ball slammed into it. Somehow he pushed the door closed, dropping the bar, as the family fell from their beds in confusion and fear. Peering outside, they could see eight or ten Indians near the round dome of the bake oven. The two older sons, Joseph and Christian, snatched up their hunting rifles, powder horns, and shot pouches. But their father had not given up his old life in Europe and come halfway around the world to abandon his principles. The Bible said, “Thou shalt not kill,” and he forbade his sons—who were skilled hunters and excellent shots—to fire on their attackers.
By now, the house was burning, so Hochstetler herded the family into the cellar. As the fire began to eat through the floorboards, they desperately splashed cider onto the wood to slow the flames. Daylight was coming, and the attackers, worried that they would be caught, began to slip off into the woods. One, a young Indian known by the English name Tom Lions, stopped to pick up a few peaches. He saw the Hochstetlers, choking from smoke, crawl out a small ground-level window, having thought the Indians were gone. Mrs. Hochstetler, “a fleshy woman,” was stuck partway out.
Within minutes, it was over. Mrs. Hochstetler was stabbed and scalped, and young Jacob and his sister were killed with tomahawk blows; their father and brothers Joseph and Christian were taken captive. As they were herded away from their burning home, Herr Hochstetler told his sons to fill their pockets with peaches, of all things. Then the raiders uncoiled ropes of braided rawhide or buffalo hair, their ends brightly decorated with tassels and dyed quillwork. Tying these “slave cords” around the necks of the three captives, they marched the men into keekachtanemin.
I see keekachtanemin every morning when I look out my window. The Kittatinny Ridge, or Blue Mountain, is the first range of the old Kittochtinny Hills, which slant across Pennsylvania from northeast to southwest. There may be no more placid countryside in America than this quiet, Pennsylvania Dutch farmland—a long valley of cornfields and woodlots, bank barns and Holsteins—hemmed in by low-slung Appalachian ridges that fade to blue in the distance. It is the very image of settled, domestic peace.
But the story of Jacob Hochstetler is a reminder of a wilder, darker history here, hiding in plain sight. It is one that harks back to the days when the East was contested ground—fought over by empires and bled for by people who, regardless of their language, color, or birthplace, saw it as their own and worth dying for.
The Indians led the Hochstetlers north into the mountains, avoiding the line of militia forts, such as Northkill and Henry, that had been hurriedly built under the frantic eye of Benjamin Franklin two years earlier, as well as the mountaintop lookout at Fort Dietrich Snyder, on the ridge just a few miles south of where I now sit. They avoided, too, the main footpaths, such as the Tulpehocken Trail, which linked the settlements of Pennsylvania with the council fires of the Six Nations of the Iroquois in New York, and along which the province’s Indian diplomat, Conrad Weiser, often traveled. They may have rested their first night in what the locals called the Red Hole, an isolated valley just north of here, accessible through a high notch in the ridge and from which French, Lenape, and Shawnee parties could make lightning raids.
Those warriors crept beneath tall stands of hemlock, pine, and chestnut, their passage observed by bull elk moving like pale ghosts through the shadows, by wolves and mountain lions, lynx and fishers. It was autumn, when sun-blotting flocks of passenger pigeons roared through by the billions, shattering tree limbs with their aggregate weight when they settled down for the night and thickly carpeting the ground with their droppings like snow.
This valley, where in the autumn the sound of passenger pigeons has been replaced by the rumbling of combines, is not unique in the East. Wherever you set foot—on a street in Manhattan as you dodge traffic; on the soft, freshly turned earth of a Hudson Valley farm; on the kelpy tide line below a Maine cottage; or in the pine woods and palmetto thickets of the Carolina Low Country—do not forget that this was once frontier.
Frontier. The word carries the inevitable scent of the West, of sagebrush and vast prairie skies, of buffalo beyond number and a peaceful sheet of smoke hanging low over skin tipis. But before Custer, before the first Conestoga wagon creaked across the muddy Platte, before the first trappers pushed up the beaver streams of the Rockies, before Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery ascended the Missouri, there was another frontier—one that stretched from the Atlantic coast inland to the high, rugged ranges of the Appalachians, and from the Maritimes to Florida. This was the First Frontier.
In the West, the frontier still seems close to the surface. In the East, the old backcountry is buried beneath roads and strip malls, subdivisions and farms. But even here, if you know where to scratch, you can uncover the terrain of that lost world where Europeans and Native Americans were creating a new society, and a new landscape, along the tidewater and among the forests and mountains—one by turns peaceful and violent, linked by trade, intermarriage, religion, suspicion, disease, mutual dependence, and acts of both unimaginable barbarism and extraordinary tolerance and charity.
That this hybrid society was eventually washed away by the rising tide of European immigration and conquest, to be replaced by an English colonial system that gave birth, in part of the frontier, to national unity and independence, may today seem inevitable. But for two and a half centuries, beginning with the first regular contacts between Old World and New, the future was anything but preordained.
For two hundred years, Spain was the colonial heavyweight, conquering complex, urban-based chiefdoms in the Southeast and replacing them with a mission system of Indian laborers under the watchful eyes of soldiers and friars. Those missions later collapsed under the predations of Indian slave raiders working with the English colonists, who in turn were all but annihilated by a powerful alliance of tribes that rose up when the English started enslaving them. In Pennsylvania, William Penn’s fair-minded Quaker principles forged the Long Peace between colonists and Indians, showing what might have been possible—and yet Penn’s sons, who surrendered to avarice and fraud, helped bring on the backwoods war that swept up the Hochstetlers. This and other frontier wars did not break out along predictable cultural or racial fault lines; they were, in the words of one historian, violence “not between strangers [but] between people who had become neighbors, if not kin.”
It is a complex story—two and a half centuries of history about which most Americans know virtually nothing. Th
e Seven Years’ War, the conflict in which the Hochstetlers were ensnared, may seem impossibly ancient to us, but by the time Jacob’s family immigrated to Pennsylvania in the 1730s, Indians and Europeans had been regularly interacting along the eastern seaboard for almost 250 years—the same amount of time that has passed between the Hochstetlers and us.
And in truth, the first tentative engagements occurred well before that—at least a thousand years ago, when the Vikings tried to colonize eastern Canada, and the Basques surreptitiously discovered, as early as the fifteenth century, the great cod and whale fisheries off eastern Canada and New England. It’s difficult to say exactly when the tightlipped Basques first arrived; by the time the French and English showed up around 1600, they found Mi’kmaq Indians who were fluent in the Basque trading language and who skillfully sailed Basque-made shallops. One stunned Frenchman saw a Mi’kmaq glide by with an immense red moose painted jauntily on his sail. The First Frontier: The Forgotten History of Struggle, Savagery, and Endurance in Early America looks at how these unimaginably different cultures grew steadily more similar through the centuries and yet remained stubbornly, and in the end tragically, estranged.
Part I, “So Many Nations, People, and Tongues,” explores how North America first became inhabited by humans, a story informed by groundbreaking new research and fresh discoveries, which suggest that people occupied the Western Hemisphere thousands of years earlier than anyone once believed. Instead of fur-clad mammoth hunters striding across the Bering Land Bridge, scientists using genetic testing, linguistic analysis, and other techniques are painting a picture of multiple waves of human migration into North America—perhaps by coastal mariners following the food-rich “kelp highway” east around the Pacific Rim, or, more controversially, Ice Age Europeans traveling west along the Pleistocene sea ice, hunting seals like modern Eskimos.
The First Frontier Page 1
