Research in the Region 'New light on Pennsylvania history': UPJ history professor studies movements, political approaches of state's Native American tribes

Sep. 6—When Paul Douglas Newman, a history professor at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, offered to write a term paper alongside his students, he never expected to uncover how Native Americans arrived in the Johnstown region and were drawn into the French and Indian War.

Now, the educator has written two papers on the subject — the more recent being published this summer — and has a vast collection of material that he has gathered over 14 years of research.

"I had no idea it was going to lead to this," Newman said.

He stumbled into the project after he instructed the students in his colonial history class to search the bound Pennsylvania Archives on the UPJ campus and find something that interested them. The books include historic papers, reports, government information and court documents and other correspondence.

When Newman picked up the third volume in the Colonial Records series, he opened to a section about Sawantaeny, a Seneca hunter and warrior who was murdered in 1722 by Pennsylvania traders John and Edmund Cartlidge.

Newman referred to the incident on the upper portion of the Monocacy River, west of the Susquehanna, as the first interracial violence in the state — and said it represented a model of handling conflict that would continue with tribal leaders for the rest of that century.

The attack — "the first murder of an Indian by two Pennsylvania colonists," Newman writes — occurred when Sawantaeny confronted the Cartlidges about what he believed was a bad trade. It had to be dealt with diplomatically in order to keep the peace, Newman learned.

It was for this very reason that the "Four Nations of Indians Upon the Susquehanna," comprised of the Conestogas (Susquehannock), Lenapes (Delaware), Shawnees and Conoys (the Piscataways formerly of Maryland), had been formed within the previous 20 years.

The Conestogas had returned to their ancestral land in 1697, Newman said. Between 1701 and 1722, "especially since European settlers began pressing into the valley, the Susquehanna Indians employed a novel political and diplomatic strategy to assert their independence and sovereignty over their land. They engaged in 'politico-genesis,' " according to Newman's paper, titled "The 'Four Nations of Indians Upon the Susquehanna': Mid-Atlantic Murder, Diplomacy, and Political Identity, 1717 — 1723."

'Political and diplomatic matters'

The Four Nations were a rare multi-ethnic and multi-lingual group, and they maintained their tribal independence, but utilized what the professor called the "politico-genesis" method — joining together when conflicts arose "to present a single diplomatic voice to the English government and the Iroquois League who sought to control them," Newman wrote.

Newman said these tribes built towns up and down the Susquehanna River valley from modern-day Sunbury to the Chesapeake Bay.

"The things they do in their political and diplomatic matters to maintain their independence ... is mind-boggling," Newman said.

They picked representatives to speak for the group, and it was these individuals who worked with Pennsylvania colony founder William Penn for land deals, which was unheard of at the time.

"Pennsylvania was a completely different place," Newman said. He described this as "playing the European game of empires."

But that didn't mean there wasn't conflict.

The state government was interested in bringing in more settlers and selling land. To do that, representatives went north to New York to the Iroquois League of Five Nations, which falsely claimed Pennsylvania as its own. Selling off borderland allowed the Iroquois to keep other tribes from getting too close while also ensuring they wouldn't lose their own land, Newman said.

Around the time Sawantaeny was murdered, pressure and confusion about who owned the land in the Susquehanna Valley was building, and a few years later the leaders of tribes that comprised the Four Nations moved west.

It was the Shawnee who suggested a safe, uninhabited land to which they could relocate, Newman said — an area in western Pennsylvania once settled by the splintered Seneca and likely by descendants of Erie and Monongahela captives now known as "Mingos." They reorganized into the 11 Nations on the West of the Allegheny.

Conemaugh mound-builders

The tribes created 11 towns in the valleys that drained into the Allegheny River, one of which was the valley of the Conemaugh — named as such by the Delaware and translating to "Otter Creek." The other towns were Kishocoquilla's Town, Quemahoning, Keckenpaulin's Town, Kittanning, Chartier's Town, Sewickley Town, Logstown, Sacunk, Kuskusky and Shenango.

This area was chosen because the Shawnee had ancestral land here dating back 1,000 years, Newman said. Those ancestors are related to the Mayan empire of Mexico and modern Central America.

Newman said the Shawnee ancestors were mound-builders and the furthest reaches of the Maya were the western portion of Pennsylvania. They would create stepped pyramids with flat tops out of clay, and local evidence of this practice is a popular landmark that's still around — the Mound in Westmont Borough.

Another mound is still in place just two blocks away, across Tioga Street, the professor said. However, it's covered in trees and vegetation. The second mound is visible on a topographical map of that area.

French and Indian War

Throughout the next two decades following the move west, the 11 Nations continued the diplomatic approach. But in 1755, the French and Indian War erupted — and that conflict became a battle for independence for the Native Americans of Pennsylvania.

The war persisted for three years, and Newman said there were fights from modern-day Berks County to Lancaster, south to Winchester, Virginia, and west to parts of what is now West Virginia.

"The thing nobody recognizes is the Indians win," Newman said. "They won their war of independence."

Newman said that that was followed by the Treaty of Easton, which set the Allegheny Mountains as the western border for the settlers.

It was then that Gen. John Forbes and his British and colonial army brokered a deal to travel through the 11 Nations in order to attack Fort Duquesne in modern-day Pittsburgh and push the French out of the country. The colonists swore that, after this was done, the Native Americans would be left alone and their nation recognized by the settlers, Newman said.

"In 1763, they again bound together to fight another war for independence against Pennsylvanians," Newman wrote in his paper. "They would fail once more and began moving west again to the Muskingum and Scioto valleys (in what became Ohio) and beyond."

The 11 Nations began to fracture, and when the American Revolution began, deeper cracks formed. Newman said some Native Americans were pacifists and would not pick a side, while others aligned with the British because they wanted to stop western expansion.

While the colonists fought for freedom from the British, the 11 Nations continued to fall apart, Newman said. The nation's first people petitioned the Continental Congress to be recognized as a sovereign nation, as they were promised, but were turned down.

By the time Joseph Schantz (Johns) arrived in the Conemaugh River valley in the 1790s to establish what would become the city of Johnstown, nearly all of the Native Americans in the western portion of Pennsylvania had been pushed further west.

Despite that, their practice of "politico-genesis" carried on.

"Indians today continue to act multi-nationally, in order to protect their own sovereignty," Newman said.

The educator has used a number of sources to piece together this story, including the American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, New York Public Library, Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania and many more.

"What Paul's work does ... he really sheds new light on Pennsylvania history," said Patrick Spero, the philosophical society's library director and librarian.

Spero has become familiar with Newman's work throughout the past 10 years and considers the professor an important scholarly figure.

"His knowledge of that history is vast and goes up to the 20th century and beyond," Spero said. "He's an incredible expert."

In regards to the educator's current research, the library director considers it "a really fresh and interesting take."

Newman said he wants to share his studies with as many people as possible and is happy to speak with groups.

"I want to teach people about who was here first," he said.

In the coming years, Newman plans to publish a book detailing his research, the story of the Native Americans who lived in the state and their revolutionary approach to diplomacy.