Volume 18 , Issue 30

Before The White Man Came

When the Valley of Virginia became known to the white people it was an almost uninhabited land. You could find on the South branch the Potomac as a clan of the Shawnees, 150 strong.

The Berkeley county were a few of the Tuscaroras. On the Susquehanna, a hundred miles to the Northeast, was the Mingo tribe. Much father to the south were east, was the Mingo tribe. Much farther to the south were the Catawbas, dwelling on the river in North Carolina which bears their name. Yet the long intervening distance did not keep these red men from warring upon one another. The Valley was made into a military highway, their trails taking advantage of its leading watercourses. The weak tribe of the Senedps, living near the forks of the Shenandoah, had lately been crushed between these upper and nether millstones. Westward of the Alleghenies was an unoccupied forest reaching to the very banks of the Ohio.

Did you know the whole Shawnee tribe, which committed so much havoc for half a century, counted only a thousand souls. To the red man in 1725 the valley of the Shenandoah and the intricate hills of West Virginia were little else than one immense game preserve. The lowlands of the Shenandoah, a region which takes naturally to a forest growth, were then an open prairie, the result of burning the grass at the end of each hunting season. The "Indian Old Friend" in Hardy was another of these prairies.

From Oren F. Morton's book, "The History of Pendleton County, West Virginia," published in 1910, we learn the above about the Valley of Virginia, the Shawnees, Mangos and the immense game preserve. And the word Shawanogi means "Southerners." In the mouth of the white man the word became Shawnees, or Shawnees. These Indians were of Algonquin stock and related to the tribes of New England and the Middle States. They were pushed southward from their early one in the far North, until turned back by the Catawbas and other tribes in the South Atlantic region. about three centuries ago, give or take a few years, they claimed ownership of the valleys of Pendleton. The Shawnees stood above the average of the Indian race in mental attributes and general ability. They have the world one of the ablest Indians known to history, Tecumseh. They conversed in several tongues, and before they left the South Branch they could generally talk with the pioneers. They were active, sensible, manly, and high spirited. They were cheerful and full of jokes and laughter, but in deceit and treachery they were not outclassed by any tribe. The Shawnees despised the process of other Indians, and it became their boast that they killed or carried into captivity ten white persons for every warrior that they lost. The Shawnees were generous livers and their women were superior housekeepers, according to the Indian standard. What was true of the Shawnees was in a very large sense true of the Indian race in general.

The Shawnee has a sense of inhabitiveness was strong. He would make a long and even dangerous journey to see the place where his tribe used to live and to gaze upon the graves of his forefathers. The roving of the Indian was only in response to pressure from without. Each tribe claimed a definite territory, and for another people to disregard the boundary line was a cause of war. They had no knowledge of territorial citizenship. He always thought of himself as a member of his tribe, wherever that tribe might chance to dwell. It never occurred to a Shawnee to speak of himself as a Virginian or an Ohian. As a neutral result there was no such thing as individual ownership of the soil. The land of the tribe belonged to the tribe as a people and could be sold only by the tribe.

The Indian neither did count the relationship as we do. The tribe was made up of clans, groups, each with its own distinctive name, and each living in a village by itself. The members of a clan counted themselves as brothers and sisters, and the Indian no more thought of marrying within his clan than of marrying his blood sister. The clan looked upon itself as a family, an injury to a member thereof was held as an injury to the family as a whole, and any warrior thought it his duty to avenge the hurt. If the injury came from another tribe, vengeance was inflicted upon any member of that tribe. There was no thought of punishing the innocent for the guilty, since the members of the offending clan were likewise brothers and sisters. And as the Indian meted out redress against people of his own race, so did he meet it out upon the white man.

the Shawnee thought the whites were brothers among themselves. They could not at first comprehend customs or thought which were unlike his own. The Shawnee judged the white man by his own measuring stick.

The families of a Shawnee clan never lived in isolated homes but always in a single village. A limited agriculture was carried on in an open space around the village. Subsistence however was mainly upon game and fish. A people living in this manner required a very large area from which to draw its support. As a neutral result the Indian never butchered game out of sheer wantonness, after the manner of some people who style themselves civilized.

Did you realize the Shawnee custom took the place of law and was rigidly enforced. An offense against custom was punished by a boycott. Government was nearly a pure democracy. The word democracy does not refer to a political party. It means the government of a community by itself, the members thereof being on a footing of equality with respect to civil rights. Democracy was thus distinguished from monarchy, which is government in a more or less arbitrary form by some privileged person, or from aristocracy, which is government by a privileged class.

Matters of public interest were settled in a council, where there was a general right to speak an to vote. The speeches were often eloquent, but the long winded orator was not tolerated. Men of address and daring were of course influential, and without uncommon ability no person might be a chief of military leader.

In his own way and to the extent of the light given him the Indian was religious. After death he believed the soul of the warrior took its flight to a happy hunting ground in the region beyond the setting sun. Here the departed one followed the chase without limit of days. But no coward and no deformed person might enter this abode of bliss. In mutilating a slain enemy he was simply following out this belief.

The Indian commonly had but one wife. Children were treated with kindness. They belonged to the clan of the mother, and were under the authority of the chief of that clan. The father had no particular authority over his own children, yet exercised control over the children of sisters. The braves spent many long and toilsome hours in making their weapons and in stalking game. To pursue wild animals and follow the warpath required supple limbs, and supple limbs do not go with hard labor.

Did you realize that the making marks on a stone, in crying a spoon, or in weaving a basket, there was always ornamentation, and this was never without a purpose. A given style of decoration conveyed a story of some other meaning.

The Indian had a large fund of folklore and of tribal history, this being passed from father to son in the form of oral tradition. They had a keen sense of humor, as his proverbs bear witness. No Indian ever sold his daughter for a name. A squaw's tongue runs faster than the wind's legs. The Indian scalps his enemy; the palace skins his friends. Before the paleface came, there was no poison in the Indian's corn. There would be hungry palefaces so long as there was any Indian land to swallow. There were three things it took a strong man to hold; a young warrior, a wild horse, and a handsome squaw.

We also learned that the colonials were increasing in number and needed more land. There was plenty of it in the wilderness. The thought of millions of good acres lying wild was insufferable to the pioneer. The emigrant pioneer believed the red man should live as he himself was doing, ravaging, and cultivating the land. The emigrant pioneer figured that the native would need only a little ground for his own use, and that he himself had a perfect right tot he vast remainder. The resistance of the Indian maddened the aggressive and resolute frontiersman.

When the settler took out a choice spot, blazed such boundaries as he saw it, and built his cabin. The Indian regarded the act as a high handed trespass.

We also learned that several families secured permission from the red men to settle and hunt on the Monongahela. In 1774 Governor Dunmore sent a messenger to warn them to return because of an impending Indian war. An Indian heard the message delivered and sent this reply, "Tell your king he damned liar. Indian no kill these men." Nor did they. These frontiersmen stayed where they were and lived in safety thought the Dunmore war.
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