Arrowmaker (Pennsylvania Frontier Series) by Chandler Roy F

Author:Chandler, Roy F. [Chandler, Roy F.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Katherine R. Chandler
Published: 2011-05-30T16:00:00+00:00

In the first month of the new year of 1755 a final meeting of Sachems was to be reopened in Albany, and both George Croghan and Sattelihu were to be present as interpreters. The Albany meeting would ratify and pay in full the Penns’ summer purchase of much of the Endless Hills, and Rob Shatto could soon thereafter own his land.

Montour reported that the Indians along Cisna Run were mostly gone, and only a few remained on Duncan’s Island at the mouth of the Juniata. White squatters were clearing cabin sites along the rivers and creeks, and Montour had given up trying to remove them. The squatters were ruining the country faster than Sattelihu would have believed possible. They ripped out the old beaver dams that had kept the streams from flooding, they burned the forest to make their clearings, and they shot anything they saw whether they could eat the meat or not. An Indian was not safe in the woods. A settler seeing any Indian seemed to panic and let go with his musket.

Rob hoped Shikee would use care when he visited. Just months before he had moved without caution to bring E’shan’s body home. Remembering the free days, roaming the woods and meeting no one, Rob, too, was saddened by the abuse of the land.

Predicting open warfare with the French by spring, Montour was even more discouraging than Croghan. A campaign against Fort Duquesne was already organizing. A General named Braddock would command over two thousand British regulars, and colonial militia from Virginia under Colonel Washington would accompany the expedition.

Montour believed an English success would secure the forks of the Ohio and drive the French north. Hostile Indians would withdraw, and there could be peace on the frontier. A French victory would raise tomahawks and bring savage Indian warfare to the border. The prospects appeared uncertain, but the English were mustering an overwhelming force and should prevail. Rob hoped Montour was correct. Despite occasional outbursts of savagery, the Endless Hills had been spared open warfare. Rob did not wish to bring his bride into a wilderness preparing for conflict.

Despite the rumors of war, Indians appeared regularly at Rob’s stand. They sought Quehana’s iron points and were willing to trade whatever was asked. Pondering the inter-tribal demand for his arrowheads, Rob assumed it a combination of a superior point and that Quehana, maker of points for The Warrior, had produced them. The need for his points seemed almost religious in nature, as though by having Quehana’s iron points a warrior or hunter stood closer to the redman’s mighty fighter, The Warrior.

Other traders would be quick to enter the market with their own points and would, without doubt, claim their points were also made by Quehana. There was nothing Rob could do about that, but by spring, he and Croghan would have taken the cream of the trade, and within a year, iron arrowheads would become so common that their mysticism would be gone, and Quehana’s would be no better than other iron implements.

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