From the Place where we took Water, i. e. from the old Shawones Town, commonly called Chartier's Town,[1] to this Place is about 60 Miles by Water & but 35 or 40 by Land.
The Indian Council met this Evening to shake Hands with me & to shew their Satisfaction at my safe arrival; I desired of them to send a Couple of Canoes to fetch down the Goods from Chartier's old Town, where we had been oblig'd to leave them on account of our Horses being all tyred. I gave them a String of Wampum to enforce my Request.[2]
28th. Lay still.
29th. The Indians sett off in three Canoes to fetch the Goods. I expected the Goods wou'd be all at Char-
- ↑ There were two Indian towns called by this name—one at the mouth of Chartier's Creek, Allegheny County, three miles below Pittsburg; the other opposite the mouth of Chartier's Run, which falls into the Allegheny in Westmoreland County. Weiser refers to the latter of these. Chartier was a French-Shawnee half-breed that had much influence with his tribe. In 1745, he induced most of them to remove to the neighborhood of Detroit, on the orders of the governor of New France. See Croghan's Journals, post.—Ed.
- ↑ The other edition of the journal adds, that the horses were "all scalled on their backs."
The importance of "wampum" in all Indian transactions cannot be overestimated. It was used for money, as a much-prized ornament, to enforce a request (as at this time), to accredit a messenger, to ransom a prisoner, to atone for a crime. No council could be held, no treaty drawn up, without a liberal use of wampum. It was used also to record treaties, as the one described by Weiser between the Wyandots, Iroquois, and governor of New York. Hale —"Indian Wampum Records," Popular Science Monthly, February, 1897—thinks that it was a comparatively late invention in Indian development, and took its rise among the Iroquois. Weiser's list of the wampum used and received in this journey is to be found in Pennsylvania Archives, ii, p. 17.—Ed.
Duquesne, houses were built by the French for its inhabitants. With the restoration of English interest, the importance of the place diminished, and by 1784 it is spoken of as a former settlement. The site of Logstown is about eighteen miles down the river from Pittsburg, just below the present town of Economy, Pennsylvania. It was on a high bluff on the north shore. For the history of this place, see Darlington's Gist, pp. 95-100.—Ed.
