7 - Clpdigital.org

INDIAN ORIGIN OF LOCAL NAMES 315
Old Shawnee Town, on the Potomac (Opessa's Town), where Captain
Thomas Cresap had settled, perhaps as early as 1742...The Shawnees
who emigrated from Opessa's Town on the Potomac to the Allegheny
before 1732 were probably the first of whom there is any record in
history to use this Path westward. Christopher Gist, who travelled
from Cresap's house to the Forks of the Ohio in 1750. went over the
same Path, and has left us a detailed account of the route. An intersecting
path from Harris's Ferry through the Cumberland Valley,
westward, joined the Warriors' Path at some point near the crossing
of the Raystown Branch of Juniata. That this Lower Path from the
Susquehanna to the Allegheny was used by the Traders at a comparatively
early date seems evident from the fact that one of the noted
landmarks along the Path, after it crossed the Alleghany Mountain,
was called "Edmund's Swamp," after Edmund Cartlidge, one of the
first of the Conestoga Traders to venture westward of the Mountains.
Nevertheless, it is probable that the earliest "main road" to Allegheny
was the more central Frankstown Path; as it was more direct and
easier to travel over. It is now followed for most of the way by the
Pennsylvania Railroad.
The first definite reference by the English authorities to the Indian
settlements and trade at Kittanning, and the adjacent villages on
the Allegheny, to be found in the Colonial Records of Pennsylvania,
appears under date of July 4, 1727. In a Council held that day at Philadelphia
between Governor Patrick Gordon and some chiefs of the
Five Nations and the Susquehannocks, Madame Montour, "a French
woman, who had lived long among these people, and is now interpretress,"
acted in that capacity. At this conference, the Indians "desire
there may be no settlements made up Susquehanna higher than Pextan
[now Harrisburg], and that none of the settlers thereabouts be suffered
to sell or keep any rum there, for that being the road by which their
people go out to war [with the Southern Indians], they are apprehensive
of mischief if they meet with liquor in these parts. They desire also,
for the same reasons, that none of the Traders be allowed to carry
any rum to the remoter parts where James Le Tort trades (that is,
Allegheny, on the branches of the Ohio)." The Governor promised
them that the sale of rum should be prohibited, both at Pextan and at
Allegheny; and Secretary Logan issued letters of instruction to that
effect, addressed "To the several Traders of Pennsylvania with the
Indians at Allegheny, and the other remote parts in or near to the said
Province."
An earlier reference than this, however, to the Allegheny settlement
is to be found in the Minutes of the New York Provincial Council,
under date of September 7, 1726. On that day Governor Burnet attended
an Indian Council at Albany, where he met twelve chiefs of the
Iroquois, two from each of the Six Nations.
The Governor asked the chiefs whether they knew of a war hatchet
having been given by the French against the Six Nations. The Indians