The prefatory paragraph that I wrote for the 150th Anniversary History of Blair County, Pennsylvania is appropriate to repeat here. We are all sojourners in this land. In the earliest ages only animals laid claim to the hills and valleys of what is today south~central Pennsylvania. Currently accepted anthropological opinion states that during the period between thirty and six thousand years B.C., people from the Asian Continent entered the North American Continent by way of the now submerged Bering Strait landbridge. It is noted in the book, Smithsonian Book of the North American Indian, that a number of Paleo-Indian sites have been excavated across the Northeast that date to the post-glacial period. One of those sites is the Meadowcroft Rock shelter near present-day Pittsburgh. The Meadowcroft site has been dated to between fourteen and eleven thousand B.C. As I just noted, on the North American Continent the period of the initial migration of peoples into and across the North American Continent is known as the Paleo-Indian era; that period was part of the Stone Age. The people had not yet discovered how to fashion tools and weapons out of metal. Those peoples were not 'native' to this continent; nonetheless they moved in and claimed the land for their own. Some regions of the continent were chosen by these peoples as more or less permanent homelands. Other regions remained undisturbed except for occasional hunting forays. Like their Asiatic ancestors, those peoples were generally nomadic and did not believe in 'owning' the land as the later European sojourners would.
Discussions were held in the 1990s with Paul M. Heberling, a retired anthropology professor of Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, and owner of the Heberling Associates, an archaeological research company. The discussions were aimed at identifying which tribes inhabited this south-central Pennsylvania region. The result of those discussions was the discovery that the region was not actually 'inhabited' by any of the Amerindian tribes, but rather, the region functioned as a place through which many tribes moved on seasonal and hunting trips.
Prior to the arrival of Euro~Americans in the form of traders and fur trappers, the Delaware, or Lenni Lenape, established some villages in this region. A notable village in this region was known in later years as Shawnee Cabins. Those villages, though, were abandoned many years prior to the Euro~Americans coming into the region.
During the period of Euro~American occupation of this region, no Amerindian villages were occupied. The Amerindians primarily moved into the Allegheny Mountains. They would return from the west and north during the years of the American Revolutionary War, goaded on by the British, to make incursions back into the valleys of Bedford County. It was during those incursions that the various noteworthy massacres took place. The Tull family was massacred in the autumn of 1777. The Ernest family was attacked in the autumn of either 1777 or 1778. The Peck family was attacked and massacred in August 1782. The Dibert family tradition states that the family of John and Mary DeBurt was massacred in the year 1732, but since the settlement in 1710 is questionable, the massacre that ended that settlement is also questionable.
The primary 'cultural periods' relating to Amerindians in the region now encompassed by Pennsylvania included:
Contact/Colonial ~ Present to 500 years ago.
Stone tools and weapons replaced by metal. Beads used as currency.
Late Woodland ~ 500 to 1,000 years ago.
Wood fired clay pottery and smoking pipe become more decorated and ornamented. Chert and flint arrowheads in widespread use.
Middle Woodland ~ 1,000 to 1,800 years ago.
Both unfired and wood fired clay pottery is common. Celts in widespread use. Smoking pipes begin to be decorated and shaped.
Early Woodland ~ 1,800 to 2,800 years ago.
Earliest ceramic vessels and earliest smoking pipes. Three-quarter grooved axes. Gorgets and other 'non-utilitarian' objects.
Transitional ~ 2,800 to 4,850 years ago.
First use of soapstone, or stealite, for carving bowls, pots and other vessels. Broadspears and other large knives in use.
Archaic ~ 4,850 to 11,700 years ago.
Full and three-quarter grooved axes and adzes; mortars and pestles, mullers and other grinding stones in use.
Paleo~Indian ~ 11,700 to 19,800 years ago.
Chert was flint-napped into scrapers and knives.
In the following pages various sites in Bedford County which related in some way to the Amerindians who sojourned in this region are highlighted.
