Note 19 — CHAPTER ONE

Dr. Bertin, former associate secretary of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, adds nothing to the Meginness and Linn accounts, his probable sources. He speaks of settlements as early as 1772, whereas it is a matter of record that Cleary Campbell squatted in what is now north Lock Haven sometime shortly after 1769. He refers to the establishment of homes, properly, but then goes on to add churches and schools. The source for his "Children and elders met together periodically to recite catechism to the preacher, who was a travelling missionary, one being Phillip Fithian," was J. B. Linn. But Fithian, an extremely accurate diarist, fails to mention the occasion during his one-week visit to this area in the summer of 1775. However, the real value of this article is the editorial note by T. Kenneth Wood on the Tiadaghton question. In it he refers to John Bartram's journal of 1743, twenty-five years before the Stanwix Treaty at Rome, N. Y., with the Iroquois, which recounts his travels with the Oneida Chief Shickellamy and Conrad Weiser. Lewis Evans was also in the party, making notes for his map of 1749. The party, on its way to Onondaga (Syracuse), was approaching Lycoming Creek at a point just south of Powys, via the Sheshequin Indian path. Bartram, the first American botanist, who wrote in his journal nightly after checking with his two guides, gives this account, T. Kenneth Wood (ed.), "Observations Made By John Bartram In His Travels from Pennsylvania to Onondaga, Oswego and the Lake Ontario in 1743," Now and Then, V (1936), 90: "Then down a hill to a run and over a rich neck of land lying between it and the Tiadaughton." No contact was made with Pine Creek. Dr. Wood contends in his note to the Bertin article, and this writer is inclined to agree, that the Indian of 1743 and the Indian of 1768 were telling the truth and that the white settlers of 1768, and for sixteen years thereafter, were wrong, either through guile and design or ignorance. He says, "The original Indian principals signing the treaty had retreated westward and sixteen years of fighting over the question (and possibly a few bribes) had settled it to the white man's satisfaction. The Indians always had to yield or get out." This is essentially the point which Dr. Wallace made to me in his letter of Feb. 16, 1961.