Nemacolin (c. 1715 – c.1767) was a hereditary chief of the
Delaware Nation
Delaware Nation ( del, Èhëliwsikakw Lënapeyok), also known as the Delaware Tribe of Western Oklahoma and sometimes called the Absentee or Western Delaware, based in Anadarko, Oklahoma[Thomas Cresap
Colonel Thomas Cresap (17021790) was an English-born settler and trader in the states of Maryland and Pennsylvania. Cresap served Lord Baltimore as an agent in the Maryland–Pennsylvania boundary dispute that became known as Cresap's War. La ...]
widen a Native American path across the
Allegheny Mountains
The Allegheny Mountain Range (; also spelled Alleghany or Allegany), informally the Alleghenies, is part of the vast Appalachian Mountain Range of the Eastern United States and Canada and posed a significant barrier to land travel in less devel ...
to the
Ohio River Valley
The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illino ...
.
Biography
The son of Checochinican (Chickoconecon), chief of the Fish Clan of the Turtle tribe, Nemacolin was born near the
Brandywine Creek, probably close to the Swedish trading post at
Fort Christina
Fort Christina (also called Fort Altena) was the first Swedish settlement in North America and the principal settlement of the New Sweden colony. Built in 1638 and named after Queen Christina of Sweden, it was located approximately 1 mi (1. ...
that later became
Wilmington, Delaware
Wilmington (Lenape: ''Paxahakink /'' ''Pakehakink)'' is the largest city in the U.S. state of Delaware. The city was built on the site of Fort Christina, the first Swedish settlement in North America. It lies at the confluence of the Christin ...
. By a treaty with
William Penn
William Penn ( – ) was an English writer and religious thinker belonging to the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and founder of the Province of Pennsylvania, a North American colony of England. He was an early advocate of democracy an ...
in 1726, various tribes either rented or gave up their land on both sides of Brandywine Creek. Nemacolin likely grew up near
Shamokin, Pennsylvania
Shamokin (; Saponi Algonquian ''Schahamokink'', meaning "place of eels") ( Lenape Indian language: Shahëmokink) is a city in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, United States. Surrounded by Coal Township at the western edge of the Anthracite ...
, a village near the
Susquehanna River
The Susquehanna River (; Lenape: Siskëwahane) is a major river located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, overlapping between the lower Northeast and the Upland South. At long, it is the longest river on the East Coast of the ...
to which the Delaware had retreated when faced with disease and colonization of their traditional lands by white settlers. His family grew to know trader
Thomas Cresap
Colonel Thomas Cresap (17021790) was an English-born settler and trader in the states of Maryland and Pennsylvania. Cresap served Lord Baltimore as an agent in the Maryland–Pennsylvania boundary dispute that became known as Cresap's War. La ...
, and moved south and west with the Cresap family, likely after a controversy between groups of settlers aligned with the colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania known as
Cresap's War
Cresap's War (also known as the Conojocular War, from the Conejohela Valley where it was mainly located along the south bank) was a border conflict between Pennsylvania and Maryland, fought in the 1730s. Hostilities erupted in 1730 with a seri ...
.
Circa 1750, Cresap received instructions to improve the Native American path across the Appalachian Mountains through the
Cumberland Narrows
The Cumberland Narrows (or simply The Narrows) is a water gap in western Maryland in the United States, just west of Cumberland. Wills Creek cuts through the central ridge of the Wills Mountain Anticline at a low elevation here between Wills ...
. He hired Nemacolin and his two sons, among others, to complete the task between Will's Creek (a trading post on a tributary of the
Potomac River
The Potomac River () drains the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic United States, flowing from the Potomac Highlands of West Virginia, Potomac Highlands into Chesapeake Bay. It is long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Datas ...
later the site of
Fort Cumberland
A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...
) and the mouth of
Redstone Creek on the
Monongahela River
The Monongahela River ( , )—often referred to locally as the Mon ()—is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed August 15, 2011 river on the Allegheny Plateau in north-c ...
(a tributary of the
Ohio River) which later became
Redstone Old Fort Redstone Old Fort — or Redstone Fort
or (for a short time when built) Fort Burd — on the Nemacolin Trail, was the name of the French and Indian War-era wooden fort built in 1759 by Pennsylvania militia colonel James Burd to guard the ancient ...
and even later
Brownsville, Pennsylvania
Brownsville is a borough in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, United States, first settled in 1785 as the site of a trading post a few years after the defeat of the Iroquois enabled a post-Revolutionary war resumption of westward migration. The Tradi ...
. A side trail led to the residence of
Christopher Gist
Christopher Gist (1706–1759) was an explorer, surveyor, and frontiersman active in Colonial America. He was one of the first white explorers of the Ohio Country (the present-day states of Ohio, eastern Indiana, western Pennsylvania, and nort ...
. Gist led
George Washington along Nemacolin's Path in 1753 and 1754. It was later improved to permit supply wagons for General
Edward Braddock
Major-General Edward Braddock (January 1695 – 13 July 1755) was a British officer and commander-in-chief for the Thirteen Colonies during the start of the French and Indian War (1754–1763), the North American front of what is known in Europ ...
's army, and the General ultimately died on the route in 1755 after the disastrous
Battle of the Monongahela
The Battle of the Monongahela (also known as the Battle of Braddock's Field and the Battle of the Wilderness) took place on 9 July 1755, at the beginning of the French and Indian War, at Braddock's Field in what is now Braddock, Pennsylvania, ...
near present day Pittsburgh. About 1759, as the war ended, Nemocolin reblazed the path to the residence of
James Burd
James Burd (March 10, 1725 – October 5, 1793) was a colonial American soldier in the French and Indian War, during which he played an important role in fortifying the Pennsylvania frontier.
Early life
Born in Ormiston, near Edinburgh, Scotland, ...
which became Fort Burd and later renamed Redstone Old Fort. Another branch went to
Uniontown, Pennsylvania
Uniontown is a city in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, United States, southeast of Pittsburgh and part of the Greater Pittsburgh Region. The population was 10,372 at the 2010 census, down from 12,422 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat and ...
.
Later years and death
After blazing the trails, Nemacolin moved the remainder of his tribe to a site alternately known as Shawnee town or Neal's Landing on
Blennerhassett Island
Blennerhassett Island is an island on the Ohio River below the mouth of the Little Kanawha River, near Parkersburg in Wood County, West Virginia, United States.
Historically, Blennerhassett Island was occupied by Native Americans. Nemacolin, ...
, in the
Ohio River, in what became
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian, Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States.The Census Bureau and the Association of American Geographers classify West Virginia as part of the Southern United States while the ...
. After the peace treaty, as he had after blazing the trail with Cresap and Gist, Nemocolin renewed his tribe's claim that Penn and subsequent settlers had broken the treaty terms in establishing permanent settlements in what had been his tribe's lands, to no avail. Nemacolin died on the island in 1767, and European settlers soon laid claim to that land.
Legacy
After the
American Revolution
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolu ...
once again permitted trans-Allegheny settlement, settlers named the route for the general rather than the Native American ally. Decades later, the
National Road
The National Road (also known as the Cumberland Road) was the first major improved highway in the United States built by the Federal Government of the United States, federal government. Built between 1811 and 1837, the road connected the Pot ...
was built over parts of Nemacolin's Path.
A statue honoring Chief Nemacolin stands in the country club at
Nemacolin Woodlands Resort
Nemacolin (formerly known as Nemacolin Woodlands Resort) is a four seasons resort in Farmington, Fayette County, Pennsylvania. The resort is owned by Maggie Hardy Knox, president of the 84 Lumber Company, and was founded by her father, Joseph ...
, named after the chieftain in the early 20th century.
Nemacolin, Pennsylvania
Nemacolin is a census-designated place (CDP) in Greene County, Pennsylvania, United States. It was founded as a company town around the workings of a Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company owned and operated coal mine in 1917. The name reflects a note ...
in
Greene County was a planned community developed in the early 20th century around steelworks.
The site now known as Nemacolin's Castle in Brownsville may well have been visited by Chief Nemacolin, for a fireplace dates from the late 18th century, and the site had been inhabited by Native American peoples (probably the south Algonkian-speaking
Shawnee
The Shawnee are an Algonquian-speaking indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. In the 17th century they lived in Pennsylvania, and in the 18th century they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with some bands in Kentucky a ...
who may have had mounds there). However, that building was long known as Bowman's castle, after three generations of merchant-industrialists.
References
{{Reflist
Year of birth uncertain
1710s births
1760s deaths
18th-century Native Americans
Lenape people
Tribal chiefs