The Susquehannock Settlement at Lemoyne, Pennsylvania

The current day Borough of Lemoyne is in eastern Cumberland County, Pennsylvania on the western shore of the broad Susquehanna River, across from the state capitol at Harrisburg. Lemoyne’s central location in the Susquehanna River Valley makes it an enticing place to live now. But the Lemoyne area was also prime territory four hundred years ago, when the Susquehannock Nation called the area home. That’s right: the American town of Lemoyne (which was originally settled as Bridgeport in 1835) is not the first settlement on that location.¹ There is sound archaeological evidence for an early seventeenth century Native American village at Lemoyne.²

In fact, it should be noted that the Lemoyne area was home to occasional Native campsites as early as 8,000 years ago, though little is known about the peoples who called this land home prior to the Susquehannock Nation. It was the Susquehannock who founded the first and only permanent settlement at this site.³ Yet, the existence of this Susquehannock village was not known to historians until very recently. Archaeological evidence of the settlement was only discovered in the early 2000s, when the Norfolk Southern Railway Company began work on a new rail line over what used to be part of Lemoyne Borough’s Memorial Park.⁴ The archeological work carried out under the funding of the Norfolk Southern Railway can tell us a lot about the lives of the Susquehannock Nation four centuries ago.

The people who lived in the area spoke an Iroquoian language. They were also practitioners of an Iroquoian culture and living style. This meant that they lived in a longhouse village. As the name implies, families lived in a bark covered longhouse. Oftentimes, two families would live in one longhouse and share the central hearths around which the building was structured. Of course the term “family” meant something much broader to the Susquehannocks than it does to the modern American. Families spanned generations and were centered around a matrilineal social pattern in which the husband would be integrated into his wife’s family. The number of people within a longhouse village varied, ranging from around 50 to thousands of inhabitants.⁵

The seventeenth century was a time of great violence in North America. This meant that Susquehannock villages had to protect themselves. Palisaded villages were an easy way to keep the inhabitants of a Susquehannock village safe. Palisades were wooden defensive walls that reached heights of thirty feet. Oftentimes there would be more than one palisade around a village for extra security.⁶ However, only one palisade ringed the Lemoyne settlement.⁷

Susquehannock villages were supported by agriculture and hunting. Maize was the primary Susquehannock crop, and their villages were usually ringed by cornfields. Beans and squash were also very important to the Susquehannock diet.⁸ The Susquehannock had no livestock to produce manure (which is used to replenish nutrients in the soil), so they would have to move locations every ten to twenty years.⁹ This agricultural limitation may partially explain why the Lemoyne area was only home to a Native population for such a short period. During the excavation of the Lemoyne site, many fish bones and scales were found, demonstrating fish to be a major part of the Susquhannock diet.¹⁰ White-tailed deer, elk, and black bear were also staples.¹¹

Little is known about the elements of the Susquehannock culture at Lemoyne, nor is anything known about their religion. This dearth of knowledge resulted from the lack of European integration into their society.¹² We must believe that the Susquehannock had a strong and distinctive culture–and a robust religious tradition–but nothing about either of these elements of their daily life was ever written down, so no sound conjectures can be made.

We can, however, determine a fair bit about Susquehannock life from the investigation of artifacts retrieved from excavations at the Lemoyne site. Glass beads found at the site show that the Susquehannock people here had contact with Europeans along the coast (probably the Dutch in what is now northern Delaware), and that they had traded with these Colonists.¹³ The fashion of these beads allow archaeologists to date the settlement to between 1610 and 1620.¹⁴ Beads made from shells indicate trade with coastal Indigenous groups.¹⁵ Postmolds (areas of decayed wood) prove the existence of at least two longhouses, though there may have been many more.¹⁶ The creation of bone ornaments shows that the Susquehannock were an artistic people.¹⁷ Children’s toys resembling a bear were also found. A human face effigy shows that the Susquehannock engaged in ritualistic burials while at Lemoyne.¹⁸

Questions arise as to why the Lemoyne Susquehannock village was located so far away from the political core in Lancaster County. One hypothesis is the proximity to the Allegheny Path, a locus of Indigenous trade.¹⁹ The large geographic distances between Susquehannock villages may also have been a Susquehannock attempt to corner the fur trade in the Susquehanna Valley.

It is not clear why the Lemoyne settlement was abandoned in the early seventeenth century. There is no evidence of a military struggle at Lemoyne, but the seventeenth century was a time of great upheaval in Indigenous America. The existence of the Lemoyne settlement should remind the modern reader that the Carlisle area was once in the heart of Native American country. The sudden disappearance of the Lemoyne settlement should serve as a reminder that, as colonization increased in the seventeenth century, Native Americans increasingly found themselves on the retreat. I am glad that the recent discovery of the Lemoyne settlement is now shedding light on an often forgotten era in local history.