5 days Ago By TribLive
Editor’s note: This is Part 1 of a two-part series on Massey Harbison by the Richland History Group. Part 2 will appear in the May edition of the Pine Creek Journal. On May 22, 1792, today’s Pine and Richland townships were in the “Wild West” of the United States of America, which officially became sovereign in January 1784 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris.
John Harbison, a U.S. Army spy, was away scouting Native Americans in the “Ohio Country,” America’s then-frontier on which the 1785-1794 Northwest Indian War was staged.
His 22-year-old wife, Mary Jane (Massey, Massy, Massah or Massa), was with their three young children in the Harbison cabin on the grounds of today’s River Forest Country Club along the Allegheny River, 4.5 miles south of Freeport. In the stillness of that early morning, sudden and unspeakable terror transpired.
Two white men painted as Indians and 30 Seneca, Munsees, Delaware and other tribesmen violently raided the Harbisons’ Allegheny Township log cabin with tomahawks in one hand and rifles in the other. Bedlam and horror ensued. Massey and her children were yanked out of bed.
They were flogged. The cabin was pillaged and ultimately set on fire. Horses and belongings were taken, but then the true horror started.
With regard to her 3-year-old, Samuel, I will quote Massey directly from her 1825 “A Narrative of the Sufferings of Massey Harbison, From Indian Barbarity”: “They took him by the hand to drag him along with them, but he was so unwilling to go and made such a noise by crying, that they took him up by the feet and bashed his brains out against the threshold of the door. They then scalped and stabbed him and left him for dead.” After Massey screamed in horror, but before she passed out, they “gave me a blow across the face and head.
” Worse than this was that Massey discovered several days after what would become her six-day ordeal in the North Hills wilderness, that young Samuel survived his butchery, in agony and alone, for two more days before dying. This, however, was only the beginning of the unfathomable heinousness she would face. Until 1795, atrocities occurred in the Ohio Country by Native Americans against white colonists and by whites against Native Americans.
The natives resented being pushed further and further west off their land by westward-moving European settlers. And the British resented American colonists’ desire for freedom and had hoped that America would remain a British-loyal territory, like Canada. This led to many Native Americans siding with the British during the American colonists’ struggle for freedom from England.
Britain had paid Native Americans good money — $10 — for the scalps of American colonists during the Revolutionary War. With the U.S.
winning the Revolutionary War in 1783, native hostilities in Western Pennsylvania intensified and the next decade resulted in the above-mentioned Northwest Indian War. In retaliation for the Native American scalpings of white settlers, the Pennsylvania government offered bounties for Native American scalps. The immediate post-Revolutionary War 18th century Native American threat made northern Allegheny and southern Butler counties as dangerous as America’s Wild West would become some 75 years later.
One of Richland Township’s most famous campers, Simon Girty is proof. “White Savage” Girty, the settler boy who was 14 when he was taken from his family in 1756 near Harrisburg by the Shawnee, was subsequently given to the Seneca of the Iroquois Nation. Simon was fathered by the famous Mingo (Ohio Seneca) Chief Guyasuta.
Girty became an “Indian” but, in 1764 at age 22, was returned by Guyasuta to white society at Fort Pitt. Girty became very valuable to all parties wanting control of Western Pennsylvania because of his Native American language ability and knowledge of their ways. He initially served as a scout with the American army.
Girty felt that 1) the indigenous people were taken advantage of by the colonists in land purchases; and 2) the colonists would be more likely than the British to disregard an earlier Bristish-Indian treaty stating that the white man would not settle on land in Pennsylvania west of the Alleghenies. Therefore, though a white colonist by birth, Girty ultimately supported England during the American Revolution, as did many Native Americans. By tradition, Simon and his British loyalist brothers, James and George, camped at times between the mid-1760s and early 1790s with renegade Delaware, Shawnee, Mingo and Wyndot on Girty’s Knob — the hill above today’s Meridian Road/Route 910 intersection in Richland Township.
From that location, these renegade Native Americans, led by the Girty brothers (with Simon being the most notorious), were said to have undertaken pirate-like atrocities against “rebel” colonist settlers. The West View Historical Society wrote: “They roamed the Pittsburgh area as far north as Richland Township, terrorizing white settlers and pedaling their scalps to the British for $10 apiece.” A traitor to the new American government, Girty left Pennsylvania in 1778 for loyalist Detroit.
He briefly returned to the area in 1792 but ultimately was forced to leave for Canada, a country loyal to England. Simon died in 1818 as an American traitor, but an Indian and British hero. In Massey Harbison’s later writings, she named Simon Girty as one of the “two white men painted as Indians” who had raided her cabin.
I do note that Girty did return briefly to Pittsburgh in 1792, so Massey’s claim may be plausable, but we must recognize from these years-later writings of hers that she despised Girty and felt he was responsible for Native American carnage against white settlers. It is understandable why she felt that way, especially given the family horrors she endured; but, in fairness to Simon Girty, history shows that, though certainly involved in the Indian cause, he did help many whites escape certain scalping deaths, and he probably took much blame for atrocities his brother, James, actually committed. It was not until Gen.
Anthony Wayne won the 1794 Ohio Battle of Fallen Timbers (primarily against the Miami people), ending the Northwest Indian War, and the subsequent USA/Native American signing of the Treaty of Greenville in August 1795 , that the Native American threat was truly eliminated in our area and safe settlement could commence. While neither today’s Pine nor Richland townships actually had permanent 16th to 18th century Native American settlements, this area was designated hunting ground for numerous tribes over time, including the Iroquois Nation and the Delaware (Lenape). Much of the Depreciation Land — in essence, land offered starting in 1784 by cash-strapped Pennsylvania in lieu of cash to U.
S. Revolutionary War soldiers for service rendered — in northern Allegheny and Butler counties was on this former designated Native American hunting ground. It had remained more or less unsettled for a decade because of the indigenous threat.
Much of this Depreciation Land ended up with Philadelphia land speculators as many soldiers were dissuaded by the 1784-1795 native threat from taking the land. It actually took a few more years beyond the 1795 Greenville treaty signing to ensure that all area Native Americans “got the word.” We begin to see permanent settlement in our townships in the very late 1790s and for sure by 1800.
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