Teedyuscung — “Indian King of 10 Nation”

By John L. Moore

New Year’s Day started out as just another workday for 19-year-old Henry Hess in 1756. But things went wrong quickly. When the Indians attacked, Henry was working on the Smithfield Township farm of his uncle, also known as Henry Hess, in what has since become Monroe County.

The French and Indian War had begun in western Pennsylvania six months earlier. Since then, the fighting had spread across the colony’s eastern region. It reached the Poconos in midmorning on Jan. 1 when 25 Indian warriors appeared at the uncle’s farm, killed several of the farm workers, took three horses as the spoils of war, and torched the stable. A while later, Henry watched as the Indians fatally stabbed his father, Peter Hess.

The warriors forced Henry to walk with them to present-day Wilkes-Barre along the Pechoquealin Path, a native trail that passed through the places known today as Stroudsburg, Tannersville, and Pocono Pines. Along the way he met another farm boy, Leonard Weeser, who on Dec. 31 had been captured on another farm.

They didn’t know it, but Henry Hess and Leonard Weeser would spend more than 10 months as Indian captives, living in native towns high up the Susquehanna River’s North Branch.

The leader of the war party that captured them was Teedyuscung, a Lenni Lenape Indian who had been born about 1705 near Trenton, N.J. His activities during and after the French and Indian War saw Teedyuscung become “one of the best-known Pennsylvania Indians,” according to the late Paul A. W. Wallace, author of “Indians of Pennsylvania.”

← Indian raiders killed four settlers in the Minisinks while Teedyuscung was meeting with Gov. Robert H. Morris in Easton in 1756. The killings occurred in the vicinity of Fort Hyndshaw. South of present-day Bushkill, the fort was along an old Indian trail that followed the Delaware River. This historical marker is along Route 209.

↑ Indian raiders often attacked colonial farmers out working in their fields.

As a young man, Teedyuscung was called “Honest John” and made brooms, which he sold to white colonists. At some point, he left New Jersey and moved into eastern Pennsylvania. In 1750 the Moravians converted him to Christianity and baptized him as Gideon. A few years later, he left the Moravians and moved to a Native American town in the Wyoming Valley.

Historians know some details of Teedyuscung’s activities during the war because he eventually took Henry Hess and Leonard Weeser back to the Pennsylvania settlements and set them free. Colonial authorities subsequently questioned them and wrote down details of their experiences.

Hess, for instance, reported that “Teedyuscung was frequently in conversation with a Negro man, a runaway, whose master lived somewhere above Samuel Dupui’s (at Shawnee on Delaware), and he overheard Teedyuscung advising him to go among the inhabitants, and talk with the Negroes, and persuade them to kill their masters. … He (Teedyuscung) would be in the woods ready to receive any Negroes (who) would murder their masters, and they might live well with the Indians.”

“If the January 1756 raid on the Poconos helped Teedyuscung establish his credentials as a warrior, his activities over the next few years helped him prove his skills as a negotiator, peacemaker, and ally.”

Monroe County history doesn’t report a slave revolt during this time.

For his part, Leonard Weeser recalled hearing Indians say that they had once owned all of the land. “They said that all the country was theirs, and they were never paid for it.”

Weeser also reported that he had heard his captors “say … they and the French would gather in a body together and come down to Pennsylvania and kill all the inhabitants, for it was their, meaning the Indians,’ country, and they would have it again.”

↑ As he negotiated a peace with Gov. Robert H. Hunter, Teedyuscung referred to Pennsylvania’s founder as “the good old man William Penn, who was a friend to the Indian.”

If the January 1756 raid on the Poconos helped Teedyuscung establish his credentials as a warrior, his activities over the next few years helped him prove his skills as a negotiator, peacemaker, and ally.

As 1756 progressed, Gov. Robert H. Morris proclaimed a 30-day ceasefire, then invited Teedyuscung to Easton to see if the two could negotiate a peace during a week-long conference.

Boasting that he was “the king of 10 nations,” Teedyuscung arrived in Easton in July 1756. Shortly before this, he and some other Delawares went to Fort Niagara on Lake Ontario to visit the French. Although the French officers there turned down his request for gunpowder, they “gave Teedyuscung a fine dark brown cloth coat laced with gold which he now wears,” Bethlehem magistrate Timothy Horsfield told Morris.

The residents of Easton quickly formed a poor impression of the Delawares who accompanied the chief. Teedyuscung “and his wild company were perpetually drunk, … and at times abusive to the Inhabitants, for they all spoke English more or less,” according to Major William Parsons.

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BEN FRANKLIN

By John L. Moore

Following Teedyuscung’s Jan. 1, 1756 raid on the Poconos in 1756, Benjamin Franklin appointed John Van Etten of Upper Smithfield Township to serve as captain of the Pennsylvania troops being raised to defend the region.

Responsible for coordinating the colony’s defense, Franklin was in Bethlehem when on Jan. 12, he gave Van Etten written orders that defined the captain’s tasks. A ↑ As Pennsylvania geared up to defend itself against Indian copy survives in the Pennsylvania attacks during the French and Archives.

Indian War, Benjamin Franklin appointed John Van Etten as “You are to proceed immediately a captain of a company of to raise a company of foot, soldiers to protect the Poconos. consisting of 30 able men, including two sergeants, with which you are to protect the inhabitants of Upper Smithfield, assisting them while they thresh out and secure their corn, and scouting from time to time as you judge necessary, on the outside of the settlements, with such of the inhabitants as may join you to discover the enemy's approaches, and repel their attacks.”

Van Etten’s rank-and-file soldiers were to be paid $6 a month.

Franklin added, “Every man is to be engaged for one month, and as the province cannot at present furnish arms or blankets to your company, you are to allow every man enlisting and bringing his own arms and blanket, a dollar for the use thereof over and above his pay.”

The soldiers would also be entitled to a bounty if they killed hostile natives.

“You are to acquaint the men,” Franklin said, “that if in their ranging they meet with, or are at any time attacked by the enemy, and kill any of them, $40 will be allowed and paid by the government for each scalp of an Indian enemy so killed; the same being produced with proper attestations.” The major added, “The townspeople observed that the shirts which the Indian women had on were made of Dutch tablecloths, which, it is supposed they took from the people they murdered on our frontiers.”

Parsons noted that “the King was full of himself, saying frequently that which side (French or English) … he took must stand, and the other fall.”

Gov. Morris told Teedyuscung he was willing to create a lasting peace that would “renew the ancient friendship that subsisted between William Penn and the Indians.” He invited all the Susquehanna Indians to a future treaty, but “you must bring here with you also all the prisoners you have taken during these disturbances. I must insist on this as evidence of your sincerity to make a lasting peace.”

“Gov. Morris told Teedyuscung he was willing to create a lasting peace that would ‘renew the ancient friendship that subsisted between William Penn and the Indians.’”

Teedyuscung emphasized that he, too, wanted to end the fighting. “I wish the same good that possessed the good old man William Penn, who was a friend to the Indian, may inspire the people of this province at this time.”

At dinner that evening, the governor told Teedyuscung that he had received a letter from Capt. John Van Etten, the commander at Fort Hyndshaw along the Delaware River near present-day Bushkill. “Some Indians had killed four of our white people at the Minisinks,” Van Etten reported. “… One of them was killed in endeavoring to make his escape.”

Teedyuscung said he had already heard about the episode and remarked that the raiders “must be the French Indians.”

The incident wouldn’t affect his own efforts to bring about a peace. Teedyuscung remarked, “If his people were so foolish as to come in our borders at this time and were killed anyhow, they must take the reward of their folly.”

↑ Pocono Creek flows through Stroudsburg. Its name comes from a Lenni Lenape word that means “a stream between mountains.”

↑ 19th century artist George Catlin came upon these Delaware Indians living west of the Mississippi River in 1831. He identified them as, from left, Ahwee, a Delaware woman; Nonondáygon, a warrior; and Bodasín, a chief. The painting is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

A new governor, William Denny, had taken office when Teedyuscung returned to Easton in November to continue the effort to secure peace. The governor traveled up from Philadelphia for the occasion.

In his "Pennsylvania—A History,” Dr. George P. Donehoo, reported that Teedyuscung told the governor, “I have gone among my people pleading for peace.”

Then the governor asked why the Delawares had gone to war.

As C. Hale Sipe reported in his classic “Indian Chiefs of Pennsylvania,” Teedyuscung stamped his foot upon the ground and replied heatedly: “I have not far to go for an instance. This very ground that is under me was my land and inheritance and is taken from me by fraud.”

The chief contended: “All the land extending from Tohickon (Creek in Bucks County), over the great mountain, to Wyoming, has been taken from me by fraud; for when I agreed to sell the land to the old proprietary, by the course of the (Delaware) River, the young proprietaries came and got it run by a straight course by the compass, and by that means took in double the quantity intended to be sold. I did not intend to speak thus, but I have done it at this time, at your request.”

“Teedyuscung stamped his foot upon the ground and replied heatedly: ‘I have not far to go for an instance. This very ground that is under me was my land and inheritance and is taken from me by fraud.’”

Teedyuscung was referring to the Walking Purchase of 1737. The Indians intended Tohickon Creek to be the northern boundary, but terms of the sale specified that the Lenape were selling land that went up the Delaware “as far as a man can walk in a day and a half.” The Indians were outraged when they saw that colonial authorities had athletes walk as fast as they could and to cover as much territory as possible. The walkers went more than 50 miles north of the creek, so that the land included much of the Poconos.

When the Lenape refused to vacate the territory, Pennsylvania’s proprietors had the Iroquois Indians evict them. The Lenape were then forced to move to the Susquehanna Valley. That’s where Teedyuscung and his people had been living when the war started. Many of the settlements attacked during the Indian raids had sprung up on land from which the Native Americans had been evicted.

The Lenape became known as the Delawares after they left their homeland along the Delaware River.

Teedyuscung’s negotiations with the Pennsylvania governors eventually culminated in a peace treaty during the summer of 1757. The chief and his people were then living along the North Branch near present-day Athens. When Teedyuscung requested it, the governor “agreed to build Teedyuscung a new town at Wyoming to replace the old town which had been burned,”

↑ Tishcohan (left) and Lappanwinsoe (right) were Lenni Lenape chiefs who lived in eastern Pennsylvania. They signed their marks on documents that permitted the proprietors of Pennsylvania to conduct the infamous Walking Purchase of 1737. The walkers moved at a rapid pace that let them cover 65 miles in a day and a half. Lappanwinsoe later complained that the men should

“not have kept up the run, run all day.” Lappanwinsoe’s name means “going away to gather food.” Tishcohan’s name means “he who never blackens himself.” Their portraits were painted by Gustavus Hesselius, a 18th century Swedish-American artist who spent much of his life in Philadelphia.

historian William A. Hunter said in his 1972 book, “Forts on the Pennsylvania Frontier, 1753-1758.”

Soldiers from the Pennsylvania Regiment erected log cabins in the village in late 1757 and early 1758.

Not only did Teedyuscung express friendship with the colony, but, as an ally, he also provided the colony’s military officials with information about the movement of enemy Indians from western Pennsylvania. On June 6, 1758, for example, the captain at Fort Allen on the Lehigh River at Weissport reported that "two Indians … came to the fort express from Teedyuscung, at Wyoming, to let them know that on Sunday last were seen a party of enemy Indians about 78 in number, directing their course towards the Minisinks."

Teedyuscung’s town flourished for about four years. Then settlers from Connecticut, thinking that they had obtained ownership of land in the Susquehanna Valley, attempted to move into the region.

Writing in “Indians of Pennsylvania,” Wallace said that in 1762, “prospecting parties arrived at Wyoming. Teedyuscung warned them off. He was offered pay if he would join them in surveying the land. He refused. They stole his horse. He threatened to arrest them and take them to the governor in Philadelphia. They

Teedyuscung got drunk one night in April 1763. His cabin caught fire, and “Teedyuscung was burned to death,” Wallace said.

The cause of the fire was never determined. Some speculated that the blaze was accidental. Others theorized that enemy Indians started it because Teedyuscung was too friendly with Pennsylvania authorities. Still others suspected that the Connecticut people were somehow responsible.

Whatever the cause, “two or three weeks after Teedyuscung’s death, Connecticut families took up residence in the valley,” Wallace said.

“In June,” Wallace said, the Indians “abandoned their town and removed to the West Branch of Susquehanna.”

The peace that Teedyuscung had helped bring about didn’t last much longer. In October 1763, one of Teedyuscung’s sons, Captain Bull, “swept through the (Wyoming) valley with a Delaware war party and left no white people alive in it. Some were tortured and killed,” Wallace said. “About 20 were led into captivity. Three or four escaped.”

There are no Lenape villages or towns in Pennsylvania today. They moved west during the late 1700s and 1800s, passing through Ohio, Indiana, Kansas and Missouri. There are descendants of the Minsi who once lived in the Minisinks region along the Delaware River now living in Wisconsin as members of the Stockbridge–Munsee Community. In Oklahoma, the Delaware Tribe of Indians has a reservation.

John L. Moore continues to pursue his lifelong interests in Pennsylvania’s colonial history and archaeology. The Northumberland writer has published 11 non-fiction books about Pennsylvania’s 16th and 17th century. John’s latest book, 1780: Year of Revenge, is currently available in book stores or from the online bookstore Sunbury Press Inc. This book is the 3rd volume in his Revolutionary Pennsylvania Series and tells the story of Indian raids all across the Pennsylvania Frontier — including the Poconos and Minisinks — in the year following General Sullivan’s 1779 invasion of the Iroquios homeland. Over the years John has participated in archaeological excavations of Native American sites along the Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers. A professional storyteller, he recently took part in the Heritage Festival at Frances Slocum State Park near Wilkes-Barre. He told the true story of Frances Slocum, a 5-year-old girl who lived as a Native American after being kidnapped by Indians during the American Revolution. The park was named for her.

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