The Forgotten Story
By:RANDY WELLS, Gazette Staff Writer 27 june 2004
Professor says
Americans know little about era of French-Indian War
Educator Dr. Robert Millward
sometimes asks participants in his workshops to draw a picture of what
life was like in a Delaware Indian village 250 years ago. Students, and
often teachers, frequently respond by drawing tepees and an Indian brave
wearing a feather headdress.
Millward said it's almost as
if no one remembers the Eastern Woodland Indian. Very few people seem to
know what life was like for 18th-century Native American women and
children who inhabited what is now Indiana County. It's as if most people
don't know that many Indians never spent a single night in a tepee.
As America begins a six-year
observance of the 250th anniversary of the French and Indian War, Millward
predicts that it will be the story of the native Indians that will be
overlooked during the anniversary.
Many Americans have the
impression that their country's history started with the American
Revolution. They have little grasp of what happened here during the 250
years before that.
"There's half of our
history that almost no one knows anything about," Millward said.
Millward is a professor of
education at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He and his wife, Kathleen
Werner Millward, a former college history and writing instructor, have
developed guides and programs to help other educators teach the history of
the French and Indian era by using the paintings of Pittsburgh artists
Robert Griffing and John Buxton.
The dramatic and
historically accurate paintings - and the hands-on teaching activities
developed to accompany the paintings - help students understand the
cultures and conflicts of that era.
"Two hundred and fifty
years ago we went to war over a beaver," Millward tells students at
his workshops. Fashionable beaver hats at that time cost 24 pounds
sterling - as much as a blacksmith could earn in a year. The French and
English recognized the value of the seemingly unlimited supply of pelts
and furs in the uncharted frontier, of which Indiana County was a part.
And as the two colonial powers fought for control of the frontier, the
native Indians living here were caught in the middle of the struggle, and
realized their homes were being taken, their way of life was being changed
forever, Millward said.
The first white traders who
came into Indiana County led strings of 15 horses, according to Millward.
Only half of the horses carried trading supplies. The others carried
fodder for the horses because the forest was so dense that it filtered out
80 percent of the sunlight and little grew underneath the canopy for
horses to eat.
The first traders and white
settlers here found trees 200 feet tall, woods filled with fur-bearing
animals and land never touched by a plow.
And they met Indians living
along streams, often in villages of five to 24 families.
Eastern Woodland Indians
never lived in tepees. They built wigwams, bark-covered stick-frame
structures about 18 feet in circumference and 8 feet high.
(Note
from webmother: On the basis of my own experience of living in teepees and
benders for several years, I think this should be 18 feet in diameter, because
not only would the girth/height proportion be ridiculous, but it would also be
difficult to sleep a family in such a wigwam.)
Within a few weeks, the
village's hunters often depleted the wild game in the area, and the
Indians moved to a new location and built new wigwams.
"If it was a large
village, it might have 200 acres of corn," Millward said. The Indians
also cultivated squash and beans.
(Note from webmother:
Again, there seem to be some facts here that don't match. The First Nation
people did indeed cultivate corn, beans and squash and because of this it seems
far more likely that tribal villages would have several dwellings in various
places, between which they moved for hunter/gathering activities. The tribal
people had a deep knowledge and understanding of their environment and the
creatures in it and it is unlikely that they 'depleted' wild game, probably just
moved on when they felt that enough had been taken in a particular area.)
"They knew something
about diseases," he said, and they planted corn in hills eight feet
apart. If disease came, it wouldn't decimate the entire crop.
The Indians lived in a
matriarchal society.
"Women had more say in
affairs than white women of that time," Millward said.
And the Native Americans
were outstanding speakers.
"They really knew how
to make a presentation. ... They knew how to make an argument, how to
present their case."
Many historians have written
of the Indian's eloquence and their ability to express themselves in
metaphors.
"And they knew their
land was being taken. Many times their diplomacy was a stalling
tactic" as they played the French and English off against each other,
he said.
Indiana County has its share
of historic sites from the French and Indian era.
Several Indian paths crossed
the county, and one notable early Indian village was located near
present-day Shelocta.
On Sept. 6, 1756, soldiers
led by Lt. Col. John Armstrong camped at Shaver Spring, where the Hadley
Union Building on the IUP campus is now situated, while on their way to
attack the Indian village at Kittanning.
But, according to Millward,
Indiana County lacks one 18th-century tourist attraction: George
Washington probably never slept here. The closest Washington ever came to
Indiana County was probably the Battle of Bushy Run, near present-day
Jeannette, in August 1763, he said.
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