Local Indian historian lectures Washington society
WASHINGTON – The Native American struggle for Western Pennsylvania and how that effort emulates what many Americans experienced on the Sept. 11 anniversary was the topic at a recent lecture. On the one year anniversary of Sept. 11, Charles McCollester, president of the Pennsylvania Labor History Society and Pittsburgh History professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, lectured members of the Washington County Historical Society’s, Frontier Round Table on the pointed out some similarities.
“With the European invasion of the Western Pennsylvania some 350 years ago, there was a clash of cultures and civil relations,” said McCollester, a graduate of Louvain University in Belgium, the oldest university in Europe. “It is kind of what we have experienced this past year with the terrorist attacks.”
Unfortunately for the Native Americans, they were not familiar with the technology of that time and were unable to fend off the white man’s invasion and to improve their ways of life.
“With agriculture spreading east to west, not north to south, some 14,000 years ago,” McCollester said, “it was pretty late in the game when corn moved up the ladder in North and South American continents. So, it was difficult for Native Americans to support their village with corn.”
Adds McCollester, this is when the Native Americans turned to the Europeans for assistance.
“And in doing so, came into contact with many diseases for the first time, that many Europeans were already immune to,” noted McCollester. “The Native American resistance to the diseases was non-existent, causing thousands of Native Americans to die off. With disease, the Native Americans were ‘under assault’ once the Europeans landed in North America.”
During the mid-1600s when Native Americans were being introduced to steel and taught how to make iron traps and tomahawks, the Europeans knew that the Native Americans were in need of such technology and would do just about anything to have steel in their possession.
“This (steel) linked the Native Americans to the rest of the world,” said McCollester. “In order to have steel and make their weapons, Native Americans would now have to kill animals that they held sacred and would only kill to survive.”
But with pelts being a hot commodity in Europe, the Native Americans now killed the animals for trade with the Europeans.
The dominant group of Indians of that time, made up of several tribes with a similar language, was the Iroquoians, and they were able to have 10,000 warriors at any given time ready to fend off other tribes who would attempt to trade pelts with the Europeans.
The Iroquoians would send out hunting parties on foot from Maine to Georgia and became known as the fiercest warriors. This caused other Indian tribes to fear them.
By the late 1600s and early 1700s, once guns were introduced to the Iroquoians, the Europeans then asked for more in return.
Unable to communicate with the Europeans, the Iroquoians set out for a meeting with the Delaware Indians, the elder of the Algonquin Tribe, who were known as peacemakers.
The Delaware Indians, who settled in our local area, “were good at dealing with white people,” noted McCollester.
Over the course of several years, the Iroquoians struck a deal with the Delaware in acquiring steel and guns for them if they would help in dealing with the Europeans.
The Delaware agreed to do so, but the Iroquoians double-crossed them and told the British that the Delaware, “were of women” to them, which meant that just as women were property to the Iroquoians, so were the Delaware.
The British took the Iroquoians word on the matter and accepted the Delaware as subservient. According to McCollester, this incident in our local history is what pushed the Delaware to the West and allowed the Iroquoians more freedom in the hunting grounds of Pennsylvania. McCollester pointed out that shortly after this incident, the French and Indian War would begin.
McCollester’s presentation is a program of the Pennsylvania Humanities Council and is supported by a grant from the Pennsylvania Historical Society and Museum Commission.
McCollester is currently working on a book about Native Americans of Pennsylvania, entitled “Point of Pittsburgh.” A release date is not yet determined.