The rolling hills and wooded valleys of Central Pennsylvania, now so tranquil, were, a mere 240 years ago, the scene of dramatic, violent, and sometimes heartrending confrontations between the Native Americans and the incoming white European settlers. Cumberland County at that time comprised the western frontier, and Scots-Irish settlers were rapidly establishing a presence in lands that had long been home to the Delaware Indians. In 1758, during the French and Indian War, the British negotiated the Treaty of Easton with the Native Americans of the Ohio Valley. In it, the British promised not to settle the land west of the Allegheny Mountains and to abandon all forts in "Indian Territory" at the conclusion of the war. However, after the British victory over the French in 1763, it became clear that the provisions of the treaty would not be honored. Realizing that their only options were to either resist the incursions of the white settlers or lose their lands and culture to the newcomers, the Native Americans formed a confederation under the leadership of the Ottawa chief Pontiac, aiming to drive the whites out of the frontier lands. During both the French and Indian War (1754-1763), and the period now known as Pontiac's War (1763- 1764), many white settlements in the Cumberland Valley were attacked and destroyed, and settlers lived in constant fear of violent Indian raids. The fearfulness of this period is expressed in a 1755 letter from John Potter, Sheriff of Cumberland County, to Richard Peters, Esq., in which he describes the condition of the county after a horrific Indian raid. He wrote:
"There is two-thirds of the Inhabitants of this Valley who hath already fled, leaving their Plantations ... Last night I had a Family of upwards of a hundred of Women and Children who fled for Succor. You cannot form no just Idea of the Distressed and Distracted Condition of Our Inhabitants unless your Eyes seen and your Ears heard their Crys".
Other accounts were more graphic. In February of 1756, Thomas Barton, the rector of St. James Church in Lancaster, described the following in a letter to Richard Peters, secretary of the Provincial Land Office, concerning an Indian attack in Cumberland County:
"Within three miles ... was found Adam Nicolson and his wife, dead and scalp'd, his two Sons & a Daughter are carried off. .. The same Day, one Sherridan, a Quaker, his wife, three Children & a Servant, were killed and scalp'd, together with one Wm. Hamilton, & his wife ... within Ten Miles of Carlisle, a little beyond Stephen's Gap. It is dismal, Sir, to see the Distresses of the People ... For God's Sake make our Condition known."
These views of the raids, however, display only one facet of the story. Although many of the white settlers who were attacked in these violent encounters with the natives were indeed killed, a sizable number, mostly women and children, were instead taken captive, or "carried off", as Rev. Barton describes the Nicolson children. In accounts of the time, the lives of white people in Indian captivity were depicted as horror stories, with the eventual return of the captives to "civilization" seen as indisputably positive. However, a deeper reading of the historical record demonstrates that, although their encounters with the native culture were initially coerced, many of the captives came to wholeheartedly adopt the Native American style of life and discovered that they preferred it to that of their original culture. Having exchanged their white identities and social norms for those of the natives, many captives later resisted the opportunity to return to white society, a reluctance incomprehensible to European colonials, who regarded the natives as godless savages. The early history of Cumberland County is replete with dramatic illustrations of this phenomenon.
Alexandria, [District of Columbia], 25 February 1810. Thomas Cruse sat down, opened his desk, took out a clean sheet of paper, dipped his pen in the bottle of ink and wrote “Dear Sir.” He was writing to his brother-in-law, Judge James Hamilton of Carlisle, Pennsylvania.