Kittanning (Lenape Kithanink; ) was an 18th-century Native American village in the Ohio Country, located on the Allegheny River at present-day Kittanning, Pennsylvania. The village was at the western terminus of the Kittanning Path, an Indian trail that provided a route across the Alleghenies between the Ohio and Susquehanna river basins.Charles Augustus Hanna, The Wilderness Trail: Or, The Ventures and Adventures of the Pennsylvania Traders on the Allegheny Path, Volume 1, Putnam's sons, 1911
Together with Logstown, Pickawillany, Sandusky, and Lower Shawneetown, Kittanning was one of several large multiethnic and autonomous "Indian republics" made up of a variety of smaller disparate social groups: village fragments, extended families, or individuals, often survivors of epidemics and refugees from conflicts with other Native Americans or with Europeans.Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 Cambridge studies in North American Indian history, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Kittanning served as a staging area for Delaware and Shawnee raids on British colonial settlements during the French and Indian War, until Pennsylvania provincial troops under the command of Colonel John Armstrong destroyed the village on 8 September 1756.
Etymology The name Kithanink means 'on the main river' in the Lenape language, from kit- 'big' + hane 'mountain river' + -ink (suffix used in place names). "The main river" is a Lenape epithet for the Allegheny and Ohio, considered as all one river.McConnell, Michael Norman, A Country Between: The Upper Ohio Valley and Its Peoples, 1724–1774. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1992 The Six Nations tribes referred to the town as Adego, or Atiga, from which the French derived the names they used for the town, "Attigué" or "Attiqué".
History Establishment, 1724 The village was initially settled in 1724 by Delaware (Lenape) of the Turtle (Pùkuwànku) and Turkey (Pële) clansSipe, C. Hale, The Indian Wars of Pennsylvania, 1929, Telegraph Press, Harrisburg. who were relocating westward due to pressure from expanding European settlements near Shamokin. It eventually became one of the largest Native American villages on the western side of the Alleghenies, having an estimated 300–400 residents in 1756. In a conference between Pennsylvania provincial authorities and the chiefs of the Six Nations at Albany on 3 July 1754, Conrad Weiser, an interpreter from Pennsylvania, told the colonials: "The road to Ohio is no new road; it is an old and frequented road; the Shawnese and Delawares removed thither above thirty years ago from Pennsylvania."Myers, James P. "Pennsylvania's Awakening: the Kittanning Raid of 1756". Pennsylvania History 66 (Summer 1999), pp 399—420
By 1727, Pennsylvania traders including Edmund Cartlidge, Jonah Davenport, and James Le Tort, along with others, were trading at the Allegheny, with headquarters on the "Kythenning River".William A. Hunter, "Traders on the Ohio, 1730", Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, 35: 1952 85-92. Anthony Sadowski established a trading post at Kittanning in June, 1729.Wilshire Butterfield, "History of Ohio", National Magazine: A Monthly Journal of American History. Vol. V, No. 1 November, 1886. Cleveland: Magazine of Western History Publishing Company In October 1731, Jonah Davenport and James Le Tort, in separate affidavits made before Lieutenant Governor Patrick Gordon, reported that "last spring there were at Kythenning on the Kythenning River, fifty families and one hundred and fifty men, most Delaware."Storey, Henry Wilson, History of Cambria County, Pennsylvania, with Genealogical Memoirs Vol. 1. New York: The Lewis Publishing Co., 1907 The population grew as groups of Lenape, Cayugas, Senecas, and Shawnees migrated west into the Ohio River Valley seeking to escape a smallpox epidemic in 1733 and a drought in 1741, creating a multi-ethnic community.Richard S. Grimes, "The emergence and decline of the Delaware Indian nation in western Pennsylvania and the Ohio country, 1730–1795", Doctoral Dissertation, Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, West Virginia University, 2005 The Shawnee established several smaller communities nearby, including Neucheconeh's Town, later known as Chartier's Town after the Shawnee leader Peter Chartier. Kittanning, with two or three smaller villages, and several on the Kiskiminetas River, constituted a center of Lenape and Shawnee population known as "Allegeney" or "Allegania".
Trade with New France As early as 1726 the French made contact with the inhabitants of Kittanning and other Native American communities on the Allegheny. In a report written 1 October 1728, the Marquis de Beauharnois, Governor of New France, wrote that the Nation of the Chaouanons (Shawnees)
"has been much attached to the French ... These Indians have begun a village on the river Ohio, which already contains more than 150 men and their families. They have traded from all time with the French, and are a very industrious people, cultivating a good deal of land ... Cavillier is the name of the person whom M. de Beauharnois has permitted to return to the Chaouanons. He is understood and known by these Indians, and will probably negotiate this affair with success."
In a deposition made by James Le Tort and Jonas Davenport at Philadelphia on 29 October 1731, they stated that they had
"... lately come from Allegeney, where there are Indian settlements consisting of about three hundred Delawares, two hundred and sixty Shawnees, one hundred Asswekalaes, and some Mingoes ... and that ... a French gentleman, in appearance, came down the river to a settlement of the Delaware Indians on the Ohio River, which the Delawares call Kithanning, with an intention ... to enquire into the numbers of English Traders in those parts, and to sound the minds of the Indians."
On 7 December 1731, the Quaker trader Edmund Cartlidge, in a deposition in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania stated: "For these five years past except that of 1729, a French gentleman who calls himself Cavalier has made it his practice to come every spring among the Indians settled there ... and that it is generally believed by all the Traders at Allegeney ... that this Cavalier is the bearer of the Governor of Montreal's messages to the Indians in these parts."
Petitions to the Pennsylvania Provincial Council, 1733-43 On 24 April 1733, the Shawnee chiefs at Kittanning sent a petition to Governor Gordon complaining that "There is yearly and monthly some new upstart of a trader without license, who comes amongst us and brings with him nothing but rum ..." and asking permission to destroy the casks of rum: "We therefore beg thou would take it into consideration, and send us two firm orders, one for Peter Chartier, the other for us, to break in pieces all the [casks] so brought."Randolph Chandler Downes, Council Fires on the Upper Ohio: A Narrative of Indian Affairs in the Upper Ohio Valley Until 1795: Vol 42, Western Pennsylvania Historical Survey, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1940. Chartier was a licensed trader for Shawnee communities who later became a Shawnee leader.
In 1734 the Council received a second letter, dated 1 May, from Neucheconeh and other Shawnee chiefs living in Kittanning and other communities on the Allegheny, responding to Pennsylvania's repeated requests that the Shawnees return to the Susquehanna Valley.Stephen Warren, Worlds the Shawnees Made: Migration and Violence in Early America, UNC Press Books, 2014 The letter complained about certain traders who sold rum to the Shawnees, and they requested that these men be "kept particularly" from trading amongst the Shawnees. They then endorsed several traders whom "we desire may have Licence to come and trade with us, as also Peter Cheartier, who we reckon one of us, and he is welcome to come as long as he pleases." They also petitioned that "no trader above-mentioned may be allowed to bring more than 30 Gallons of Rum, twice in a year and no more", as excessive drinking was starting to have social and economic effects on the Shawnee people.Caudill, Courtney B., "Mischiefs So Close to Each Other": External Relations of the Ohio Valley Shawnees, 1730-1775 (1992). Master's thesis, Department of History, The College of William and Mary in Virginia. Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539625770.
On 6 June 1743, Governor Thomas informed the Pennsylvania Council that traders living at Allegheny had been advised by some friends of theirs among the Indians to leave "in order to avoid being murdered by the Indians, who had come to the resolution of cutting off all the white people." The Governor concluded that Peter Chartier had been spreading rumors in order to frighten traders who were still bringing quantities of rum into the Allegheny communities. In 1745 Chartier, dissatisfied with the Pennsylvania government's unwillingness to restrict the sale of alcohol to Native Americans, led Neucheconeh, Meshemethequater and over 400 Pekowi Shawnees out of Pennsylvania to found the community of Eskippakithiki in Kentucky.Lucien Beckner, "Eskippakithiki, The Last Indian Town in Kentucky", The Filson Club History Quarterly, Vol. 6, No. 4, Oct 1932. Louisville, KY, pp 355-382
Visit by Céloron de Blainville, 1749 In the summer of 1749 Pierre Joseph Céloron de Blainville, leading a force of eight officers, six cadets, an armorer, 20 soldiers, 180 Canadians, 30 Iroquois and 25 Abenakis,O. H. Marshall, "De Celoron's Expedition to the Ohio in 1749, Magazine of American History, March, 1878, p. 146. moved down the Ohio River on a flotilla of 23 large boats and birch-bark canoes, on his "lead plate expedition", burying lead plates at six locations where major tributaries entered the Ohio and nailing copper plates bearing royal arms to trees to claim the territory for New France.
Céloron arrived at Kittanning, which he referred to as "Attigué", on 6 August 1749. He found the village of 22 cabins (probably wickiups) abandoned except for a Lenape chief and two young men. Through his interpreter Philippe-Thomas Chabert de Joncaire, Céloron told them, "I come only to speak to the nations of the Beautiful River (the Ohio), to animate the children of the (French) government which inhabit it." Céloron gave this chief wampum belts to deliver to the villages lower down as an invitation to hear Céloron speak at a council he was planning to hold in the nearby village of Chiningué (Logstown). He requested that anyone attending his council should "remain quiet upon their mats [listen attentively without interrupting], since I only came to treat of affairs with them, which would be advantageous to them."
Captives