Update this timeline entry

Carolina Shawnee ascended the Ohio or Cumberland river to Pennsylvania

Source: Early History of the Creek Indians and Their Neighbors #121

Project ID

Chapter

Timeline title

Start date

End date

Filename received

Filename assigned

Content

In 1715, as a result of the Yamasee war, a part of the Shawnee on Savannah River moved to the Chattahoochee, settling apparently near where Fort Gaines is now located. The rest either remained in their old towns
until about 1731 or began moving north immediately. All we know with certainty is that they were in Pennsylvania by October of the latter year, as the following testimony demonstrates:

On October 29, 1731, two traders, named Jonah Davenport and James Le Tort, furnished detailed information to the governor of Pennsylvania regarding the number of Indians in the Alleghany country, and this testimony contains the following item: "Assiwikales: 50 families; lately from S. Carolina to Ptowmack, and from thence thither; making 100 men. Aqueloma, their chief, true to the English."3 On an earlier page he enumerates these people as if they were distinct from the Shawnee. As a matter of fact they were the principal Shawnee division in the south, and according to recent information gathered by Doctor Michelson would seem to have been considered first in rank. In order to reach Pennsylvania the Piqua seem, as Hanna suggests, to have ascended the Ohio or Cumberland and then to have crossed to the headwaters of the Potomac by "the Virginia Valley, the Kanawha, or the Youghiogheny," 2 Part of them occupied towns on the upper course of the Potomac for a time, while the remainder kept on eastward to the Susquehanna. As these upper Potomac towns appear to be apart from and to one side of the Shawnee towns reported near Winchester, Va., the latter may have marked a stage in the northward movement of the Carolina Shawnee.

The following information regarding the Winchester settlements is contained in Kercheval's History of the Valley of Virginia: 
"The Shawnee tribe, it is well known, were settled about the neighborhood of Winchester. What are called the "Shawnee cabins" and "Shawnee springs" immediately adjoining the town is well known. It is also equally certain that this tribe had a considerable village, on Babb'smarsh, some three or four miles northwest of Winchester."4

Of course, which band of Shawnee was actually settled here cannot as yet be demonstrated. Those who went to the Chattahoochee probably remained there very few years, since we soon hear of them among the Upper Creeks.

(Swanton)