Part 46

Dr. Knight who witnessed all of this horrible execution, related that Colonel Crawford at this stage of his sufferings, prayed to the Almighty to have mercy on his soul. He bore his torments with the most manly fortitude. He suffered these extremities of pain nearly two hours, when, exhausted, he fell over. They then scalped him and repeatedly slapped the bleeding scalp in the doctor’s face, remarking, “That was your great captain.” An old squaw laid a pile of coals upon his back and head where his scalp had been removed, the Colonel raised himself upon his feet and began to walk around the post, but he soon expired. His body was entirely consumed.

Colonel Crawford was about fifty years old, was a patriot and hero. He had been an intimate of General Washington and shared to an unusual degree the confidence of that great man and soldier.

Soon as brave Colonel Crawford had expired Girty went to Dr. Knight and bade him prepare for death. He told him he was to be burned in the Shawnee town. He was led away during that night.

The Indian who had Dr. Knight in custody rode on horseback and drove his captive before him. During the march the doctor pleaded ignorance of the fate which was to befall him and assumed a cheerful countenance and asked him if it was true they were to live together as brothers in one house. This pleased the Indian, who replied yes. They traveled about twenty-five miles that day.

At daybreak, June 12, the Indian untied Knight and began to make a fire. Knight took the heaviest dogwood stick he could find and in an unguarded moment struck the Indian a terrible blow on the head, which so stunned him that he fell forward into the fire. Knight seized his gun, blanket, powder horn, bullet bag and made off through the woods. He had a fatiguing tramp, many days without food or shelter. He reached the Ohio River, five miles below Fort McIntosh, twenty-one days after his escape, and at 7 o’clock in the morning of July 4, arrived safely at the fort.

He lived many years afterward and gave a thrilling narrative of the defeat and cruel death of Colonel Crawford and his own miraculous escape.

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Conrad Weiser and Family Arrive in America June 13, 1710

During the early days of the eighteenth century many Germans, or “Palatines” as they were called, came to America. Many of them settled near Albany, New York.

Among these Germans were John Conrad Weiser and his son Conrad, who arrived in New York June 13, 1710, and settled on Livingston Manor, in Columbia County, N. Y. Conrad was then a lad of fourteen, being born November 2, 1696, near Wurtemberg, Germany.

The company of which the Weisers were members did not prosper in their new home; many of them starved. So in 1714 the Weisers removed to Schoharie, in the Mohawk Valley.

The removal made matters worse. The family had almost nothing to eat. The friendly Mohawk chief, Quagnant, offered to take Conrad into his wigwam for the winter, and his father consented. The lad learned the Mohawk language, but often wished himself back in his own poor home. “I endured a great deal of cold,” he said, “but by spring my hunger much surpassed the cold.” Conrad did not then foresee how valuable his knowledge of Indian language and customs would become.

Conrad did not long remain at home after his return from the Mohawk camp, but acted as an interpreter between the Dutch traders and the Indians.

The son may have been headstrong and the sire harsh, at any rate the youth left home and built himself a cabin in the neighborhood, earned a good income by selling furs, and spent the greater part of the next fifteen years among the Indians. Evidently, however, he retained a respect for the teachings of his ancestors, for he says: “I married my Anna Eve, and was given in marriage by Rev. John L. Haeger, Reformed clergyman, on 22d of November (1720), in my father’s house at Schoharie.” Weiser, the elder, was at that time in Europe.

When Governor Keith, of Pennsylvania, heard of the plight of the Germans at Schoharie, he invited them to come to his colony, and promised them good land. John Weiser, a leader of the colony, set out at the head of a company and cut a road through the woods to the Susquehanna. In rough boats they floated down stream to the mouth of Swatara Creek, which they followed up to the beautiful Lebanon Valley, where they settled along Tulpehocken Creek.

Conrad Weiser and his young wife followed the elder Weisers, and settled near Womelsdorf, where he continued to reside until a few years before his death, when he removed to Reading.

It is said of Weiser that while on a hunting trip he met the great Shikellamy, and that the vicegerent was well pleased with him, and

## particularly so when he learned that Weiser could speak Mohawk. They

became great friends.

In 1732 by special request of certain deputies of the Six Nations, Weiser was appointed by Lieutenant Governor Patrick Gordon, of Pennsylvania, interpreter for the Iroquois Confederacy. His Indian name was “Tharachiawakon.” From this time until his death he was identified with the history of the Province in all its relations with the Indians. His popularity and influence never waned, for he was honest in all his dealings.

In 1734 he was appointed a justice of the peace by the Pennsylvania Government and in the old French War was commissioned colonel and appointed to the command of all the forces that were raised west of the Susquehanna.

When Shikellamy complained to the Governor of Pennsylvania that the trade in liquor was causing the ruin of the Delaware and Shawnee, the Governor asked him to come to Philadelphia to discuss the matter. Shikellamy took with him Weiser, as interpreter, who he called “an adopted son of the Mohawk nation.”

James Logan saw the value an honest man like Weiser could render the Province, and he was made an agent for Pennsylvania in dealing with the Six Nations. Weiser thus represented both the Indians and the whites. The Iroquois declared that “Conrad Weiser is a good, true man, who will speak our words and not his own.”

Weiser entered also into the Indian affairs of Virginia and Maryland, and prevented those colonies from becoming involved in an Indian war. This was done at a great Indian council at Lancaster, in 1744.

Weiser was able, through his Indian friends to be kept informed of the French movements in the Ohio Valley. He early realized the importance of the English country “at the forks of the Ohio.” He made a journey to the western tribes and concluded a most important treaty at Logstown in 1748.

Squatters encroached upon lands in the Juniata Valley, which incensed the Indians so much that Conrad Weiser was sent to order them off the Indian lands. He succeeded in moving them off and then burned their cabins.

Following Braddock’s defeat, Conrad Weiser led many delegations of Indians to Philadelphia, and they always were entertained at his home en route. This hospitality was misunderstood by his neighbors, but his well-known integrity saved him in the hour of his greatest peril.

When the Indians committed so many murders in Penns Valley, at Mahanoy Creek and elsewhere, Weiser warned his neighbors at Tulpehocken, and when they gathered at his house for defense Weiser was made their commander.

An ungrateful Pennsylvania Assembly failed to pay Weiser’s bills, and for three years his accounts were unsettled. He refused to do further service until his bills were paid, and as Weiser was in demand his expense accounts were satisfied.

At the great Indian treaties at Easton Weiser was a prominent personage, and the final peace was due principally to his influence.

Weiser was now past sixty years of age. His work was almost done. While visiting near Womelsdorf he died July 13, 1760.

When he died one of his associates remarked: “He has left no one to fill his place.” An Iroquois orator declared: “We are at a great loss and sit in darkness.”

If all white men had been as just and friendly to the Indians as was this Pennsylvania German, the history of our westward advance might have been spared some bloody chapters.

It is said that President Washington, standing at the grave of Weiser, in 1794, remarked that the services of the latter to the Government had been of great importance and had been rendered in a difficult period and posterity would not forget him.

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United States Flag Adopted by Act of Congress June 14, 1777

On June 14, 1777, Continental Congress resolved “that the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white, in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”

The flag was a modification of the so-called “Great Union Flag,” used since January 2, 1776, when it was raised in the camp on Prospect Hill. Before that time different flags had been used under authority of the several provinces.

In autumn, 1775, Philadelphia floating batteries used a white flag, tree in the field, motto “An Appeal to Heaven.” The “Great Union” flag had the thirteen alternate stripes of red and white, with the union of the British Union Jack. The Philadelphia Light Horse, which escorted Washington on his way out of the city on the morning of June 21, 1775, to his command of the American forces at Cambridge, carried a flag of alternate stripes.

The popular idea was a flag of thirteen stripes, alternate red and white, emblematic of the thirteen original colonies. The field of blue with the King’s colors acknowledged fealty to the King, but though the Americans were in arms against the mother country, they still hoped that the English Parliament would repeal the obnoxious laws and restore to the colonists those English rights that were theirs by inheritance and by royal colonial charters.

Up to January 1, 1776, the Americans had no red, white and blue flag. This popular design of a flag was called “Washington’s Grand Union” flag, and it was first unfurled by Washington over the camps at Cambridge, Mass., January 2, 1776, when it was saluted with thirteen guns and thirteen cheers.

When the committee appointed by Congress to prepare a design for a new flag, consisting of General George Washington, Robert Morris and Colonel George Ross, called upon Mrs. Elizabeth (Betsy) Ross, at her home, 239 Arch street, Philadelphia, there was not much change in the popular ensign, only the displacement of the British union by thirteen white stars.

As the act of Congress did not specify the number of points of the stars or their arrangement, Mrs. Ross suggested that a star of five points would be more distinct, pleasing and appropriate than the six-pointed star which the committee had designed. Folding a piece of paper, she cut, with a single clip of her scissors, a five-pointed star, and, placing it on a blue field, delighted the committee with her taste, ingenuity and judgment. The committee decided the thirteen stars should be arranged in a circle, typifying eternity.

Betsy Ross had been making colonial flags for the army and navy, and was skilled in needlework. The committee was well pleased with the flag which she made, and authorized her, in the name of Congress, to make United States flags. She continued in that occupation for many years.

The first display of the “Stars and Stripes” as the flag soon became known, was August 3, 1777, over Fort Stanwix, now Rome, N. Y.

The first time the American flag was baptized in blood was at the Battle of Brandywine, September 11, 1777, which was only eight days after it was officially adopted by Congress, September 3, 1777.

The first appearance on a foreign stronghold was at Nassau, Bahama Islands, January 22, 1778, when the Americans captured Fort Nassau from the British.

On April 24, 1778, John Paul Jones achieved the honor of being the first officer of the American navy to compel a British man-of-war to strike her colors to the new flag.

John Singleton Copley, the American-born artist, in London, claimed to be the first to display the Stars and Stripes in Great Britain. On the day when George III acknowledged the independence of the United States, December 5, 1782, he painted the flag of the United States in the background of a portrait which he was painting in his London studio.

January 13, 1794, the flag was changed by act of Congress owing to the new States of Vermont and Kentucky being admitted to the Union. The flag now had two stars and two stripes added to it. The act went into effect May 1, 1795. This was the “Star Spangled Banner,” and under this flag our country fought and won three wars to maintain her existence; the so-called naval war with France, in 1798; that with the Barbary States in 1801–05, and that with England in 1812–15.

On April 4, 1818, Congress by act, decreed a return to the original thirteen stripes, and a star for every State in the Union to be added to the flag on July 4, following a State’s admission to the Union. This is the present law.

The arrangement of the stars on the flag is regulated by law and executive order. An executive order, issued October 26, 1912, provided for forty-eight stars to be arranged in six horizontal rows of eight stars each.

Starting in the upper left hand corner and reading each row from left to right gives the stars of each State’s ratification of the Constitution and admission to the Union, as follows:

First row—Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, South Carolina.

Second row—New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee.

Third row—Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama, Maine, Missouri.

Fourth row—Arkansas, Michigan, Florida, Texas, Iowa, Wisconsin, California, Minnesota.

Fifth row—Oregon, Kansas, West Virginia, Nevada, Nebraska, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota.

Sixth row—Montana, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona.

Today the flags float over nearly every school house in the land. The custom of having a flag displayed on all public buildings in the United States was inaugurated by President Benjamin Harrison.

June 14 is now generally observed as Flag Day wherever floats the Stars and Stripes.

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French Plant Leaden Plates to Prove Possession on June 15, 1749

The treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which was concluded October 1, 1748, secured peace between Great Britain and France, and should have put an end to all hostile encounters between their representatives on the American continent.

This treaty was supposed to have settled all difficulties between the two courts, but the French were determined to occupy the whole territory drained by the Mississippi, which they claimed by priority of discovery by La Salle. The British complained to the French Government about encroachments being made by the French upon English soil in America.

The French deemed it necessary, in order to establish legal claim to the country which they believed to be theirs, to take formal possession of it. Accordingly, the Marquis de la Galissoniere, who was at that time Governor General of Canada, dispatched Captain Bienville de Celeron with a party of two hundred and fifteen French and fifty-five Indians to publicly proclaim possession and bury at prominent points plates of lead, bearing inscriptions declaring occupation in the name of the French King.

Celeron started on June 15, 1749, following the southern shore of Lakes Ontario and Erie, until he reached a point opposite Lake Chautauqua, when the boats were drawn up and carried over the dividing ridge, a distance of ten miles. They followed down the lake and the Conewago Creek, where they arrived at what is now Warren, near the confluence of the creek with the Allegheny River. Here the first plate was buried.

These plates were eleven inches long, seven and a half wide, and one-eighth of an inch thick. The inscription was in French, and in the following terms, as fairly translated into English:

“In the year, 1749, of the reign of Louis XIV, King of France, We Celeron, commander of a detachment sent by Monsieur the Marquis de la Galissoniere, Governor General of New France, to re-establish tranquillity in some Indian villages of these cantons, have buried this plate of lead at the confluence of the Ohio with the Chautauqua this 29th day of July, near the River Ohio, otherwise Belle Riviere, as a monument of the renewal of the possession we have taken of the said River Ohio, and of all those which empty into it, and of all the lands on both sides as far as the sources of the said river, as enjoyed or ought to have been enjoyed by the King of France preceding, and as they have there maintained themselves by arms and by treaties, especially those of Ryswick, Utrecht and Aix-la-Chapelle.”

The burying of this plate was attended with much form and ceremony. All the men were drawn up in battle array, when the commander, Celeron, proclaimed in a loud voice, “Vive le Roi!” and declared that possession of the country was now taken in the name of the King. A plate on which was inscribed the arms of France was affixed to the nearest tree.

The same formality was observed in planting each of the other plates, the second at the rock known as “Indian God,” on which are ancient inscriptions, a few miles below the present Franklin; a third, at the mouth of the Wheeling Creek; a fourth at the mouth of the Muskingum; the fifth and sixth, at the mouths of the Great Kanawha and the Great Miami.

At the last point, the party burned their canoes, and obtained ponies for the return trip to the portage, when they returned to Fort Frontenac, arriving on November 6.

The Indians through whose territory this expedition passed viewed this planting with great suspicion. By some means they got possession of one of the plates, generally supposed to have been planted at the very commencement of their journey near the mouth of the Chautauqua Creek. An account of this stolen plate, taken from the original manuscript journal of Celeron and the diary of Father Bonnecamps in Paris secured by Mr. O. H. Marshall, is interesting:

“The first of the leaden plates was brought to the attention of the public by Governor George Clinton to the Lords of Trade in London dated New York, December 19, 1750, in which he states that he would send to their Lordships in two or three weeks a plate of lead full of writing, which some of the upper nations of Indians stole from Jean Coeur, the French interpreter at Niagara, on his way to the Ohio River, which river, and all the lands thereabouts, the French claim, as will appear by said writing. He further states that the lead plates gave the Indians so much uneasiness that they immediately dispatched some of the Cayuga chiefs to him with it, saying that their only reliance was on him, and earnestly begged he would communicate the contents to them, which he had done, much to their satisfaction and the interests of the English. The Governor concludes by saying that ‘the contents of the plate may be of great importance in clearing up the encroachment which the French have made on the British Empire in America.’ The plate was delivered to Colonel, afterwards Sir William Johnson, on December 4, 1750, at his residence on the Mohawk, by a Cayuga sachem who accompanied it by the following speech:

“‘Brother Corlear and War-ragh-i-ya-ghey: I am sent here by the Five Nations with a piece of writing which the Seneca, our brethren, got by some artifice from Jean Coeur, earnestly beseeching you will let us know what it means and as we put all confidence in you, we hope you will explain it ingeniously to us.’

“Colonel Johnson replied to the sachem and through him to the Five Nations, returning a belt of wampum, and explaining the inscription on the plate. He told them that, ‘it was a matter of the greatest consequence, involving the possession of their lands and hunting grounds and that Jean Coeur and the French ought immediately to be expelled from the Ohio and Niagara.’ In reply, the sachem said that ‘he heard with great attention and surprise the substance of the devilish writing he had brought, and that Colonel Johnson’s remarks were fully approved.’ He promised that belts from each of the Five Nations should be sent from the Seneca’s castle to the Indians at the Ohio, to warn and strengthen them against the French encroachments in that direction.”

On January 29, 1751, Governor Clinton sent a copy of this inscription to Governor Hamilton, of Pennsylvania.

The French followed up this formal act of possession by laying out a line of military posts, on substantially the same line as that pursued by the Celeron expedition, but instead of crossing over to Lake Chautauqua, they kept on down to Presqu’ Isle, now Erie, where there was a good harbor, with a fort established, and then up to Le Boeuf, now Waterford, where another post was placed; thence down the Venango River, now called French Creek, to its mouth at Franklin, establishing Fort Venango there; thence by the Allegheny to Pittsburgh, where Fort Duquesne was seated, and so on down the Ohio.

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Penns Secure First Manor West of Susquehanna June 16, 1722

Governor Sir William Keith’s visit to the Indians at Conestoga in June, 1721, produced a strong impression upon the minds of the aborigines whom he met. The chiefs of the Six Nations who had been present at this conference, told of its success to their people.

The Conestoga and other tribes of Indians along the Susquehanna River seemed to look upon Lieutenant-Governor Keith with almost the same favor and regard which they entertained for William Penn.

Keith determined to secure a right and title to the lands in Pennsylvania upon which Maryland settlers had encroached. He laid his plan for this purpose before he went to attend the conference at Albany, N. Y. where he was to meet Cayuga chiefs, who had offered some objection to the conclusion of the conference he had held with the Indians at Conestoga in 1721.

The trouble along the border line between Maryland and Pennsylvania had begun in Chester County, soon after the earliest settlements. The boundary continued to be a bone of contention until a temporary line was run in 1739, and even this did not fully settle the difficulty, for there was dispute until Mason and Dixon’s line was run 1767–8.

Governor Keith had frequent controversies with Governor Ogle, of Maryland, concerning encroachments in the southern part of Lancaster County.

The Marylanders were attempting to make settlements west of the Susquehanna, in the present York County.

Governor Keith conceived the idea of obtaining permission of the Indians along the Susquehanna to lay off a large manor, as the proprietor’s one-tenth, and he proceeded to Conestoga, early in June, 1722, for this purpose.

Here he called together the Conestoga, Shawnee, who lived farther up the river, and the Ganawese, afterwards known as the Canoy, who lived at the present site of Columbia.

Keith had authority from the heirs of William Penn to lay off a manor west of the river for the benefit of Springett Penn, the favorite grandson of the founder of Pennsylvania and son of Richard Penn.