“From one end of the valley to the other the scenery is exceedingly beautiful and attractive; in fact no one can form a correct idea of its beauty without passing through it.” (1)
Story I:
Widow Benjamin
The Appalachian mountains of central Pennsylvania are home to the West Branch of the Susquehanna River, which has nourished the West Branch Valley and her inhabitants for time immemorial. From her origins the river carves and winds her way through approximately two hundred and forty three miles of ancient rock and soil. The landscape is at first one of low and softly rolling hills, but the course of the river eventually descends through steep and forested terrain. She then bends sharply to the southeast before passing through the Allegheny Front, a gateway into broad valleys framed by high ridge lines.
John Franklin Meginness was a journalist, historian and native Pennsylvanian who, for many years, lived in and loved the West Branch Valley. He wrote that “the river flows through a valley noted for the beauty and picturesque grandeur of its natural scenery, and at many points it rises to the degree of sublimity” (2). And in one of his 1889 publications he also wrote:
“Emerging from the hills, a short distance west of the city of Lock Haven, the river enters what is properly called the West Branch Valley, through which it flows, on the north side of Bald Eagle Mountain, in a line due east for about forty miles, when it gracefully curves to the south at Muncy, and then flows in a straight line to the junction. Its passage around the Muncy Hills and the point of Bald Eagle Mountain is grand.” (3)
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After meandering languidly through the valley, for “the rhythm of its meanders is a part of the individual nature of a river” (4), the West Branch reaches Northumberland where she unites with her sister, the North Branch of the Susquehanna.
A missionary woman who had formerly lived along the banks of North Branch later wrote to a friend “I should love to sit with you at your window, to hear the voice of the Susquehanna once more. I love that river greatly” (5). And it was said by other settlers along the North Branch:
“That if there be a more beautiful river on the continent we have not seen it. From its source in Otsego Lake, to its union with the Chesapeake, every mile of the Susquehanna is beautiful. Other rivers have their points of loveliness or of grandeur. The Susquehanna has every form of beauty and sublimity.” (6)
Together, the merged branches of the river continue on until completing their “natural course of…rhythmical meandering” (7) by emptying themselves into the Chesapeake Bay at Havre de Grace, Maryland.
Six miles upriver from where the West Branch “gracefully curves to the south at Muncy” (8) sits the mouth of Loyalsock Creek. This tributary of the West Branch flows out of “an extremely wild and almost impenetrable region” (9), through deep and narrow glacial valleys before emptying herself into the West Branch of the Susquehanna. This Loyalsock Valley was carved into existence by an ancient glacial flow that likewise raised the surrounding Allegheny mountain range, which “sweeps across the country in the form of a crescent-like curve for a distance of forty-five or fifty miles” (10). And, as Meginness also notes, “much good bottom land is found on…Loyalsock Creek” (11). It was this “good bottom land” that, in part, drew the European settlers into the West Branch Valley, which had, of course, been “settled” — and understood — long, long ago by its indigenous populations.
The Loyalsock “is a historic stream and has figured in Indian annals from the earliest times. The aboriginal villages of Ots-ton-wak-in and Ots-tuagy were situated on its banks—the former on the west side and the latter on the east” (12). The inhabitants of these and the other villages in the valley created an intricate and intertwined web of footpaths, allowing them to elegantly navigate what European settlers saw as hostile, harsh, impenetrable territory. The Bucknell Environmental Center at Bucknell University wrote in Sunbury: A History, Indian Trails:
“Looking to the water as their guide…the Indians, followed the Susquehanna River because it provided them with a sense of bearing, served as a source of hydration and cleansing, supplied fish, and attracted game. However, contrary to popular belief, the Indians living in Pennsylvania during the seventeenth century did not often rely on rivers or creeks to transport them…What these first inhabitants did use were wooded trails. Pennsylvania’s moderate rainfall and light underbrush created the perfect environment for efficient and dry footpaths…long before bridle paths…were created, Native Americans were marking trails through the woods.” (13)
Bucknell University goes on to explain that, “the Great Shamokin Path is considered to be the most famous of all the Indian trails, chiefly because it connected the two largest Indian towns in Pennsylvania: Shamokin and Kittanning” (14). One of the villages the Great Shamokin Path passes through is Otstonwakin which sat on the west bank of the Loyalsock at a point where the creek can be forded when
the water is low. And “travelers…could leave the Great Shamokin Path about a mile west of the Loyalsock, go northwest to Millers run” (15). Because of the area’s rugged impenetrability there were only a small number of settlers at the time and, even by the year 1772, “there were not more than eight or ten houses on the Susquehanna west of Muncy Hills,” but instead an “unbounded forest, the deep silence of which was only disturbed by…the howling of wolves, the cry of the panther, or some wild animal” (16). It is here, one hundred and twenty nine miles (as the crow flies) from the budding hotbed of rising democracy in Philadelphia, “near Miller’s Run, at the foot of the hills” (17), that my Benjamin ancestors attempted to settle themselves.
Although my Benjamin ancestors’ appearance in local records as of 1768 classed them as the first pioneers into this “wild and impenetrable region” we know, of course, that they were not. The very words given to name the landscape in which my ancestors settled came from the language of the true first inhabitants of the land. The originally intended meanings, pronunciations and spellings of Susquehanna and Loyalsock have, however, been corrupted over time as waves of different nationalities applied their own interpretations, spellings and accents. To make it even more difficult, the first peoples had different names for different locations along the river. Some called the area where my ancestors settled “Ot-zin-ach-son,” a word that meant Demon’s Den.
In 1742, Count Zinzendorf explored the West Branch and wrote in his journal, “To the left of the path, after crossing the [main] river, a large cave in a rocky hill [Blue Hill] in the wilderness was shown us. From it the surrounding country and the West Branch of the Susquehanna are called the Ot-zin-ach-son, i.e., the ‘Demon’s Den,’ for here the evil spirits, say the Indians, have their seats and hold their revels” (18). Much later, in 1952, Paul A.W. Wallace wrote how “Bohemia Mountain at the head of Lycoming Creek had a reputation for gathering storms into its bosom — so bad a reputation, in fact, that it was said by the Indians an Otkan or evil spirit had residence there” (19). And later still, in 1989, the Susquehanna River Basin Commission wrote that the region “has a climate that is influenced primarily by continental weather systems originating to the west of Pennsylvania. Major systems moving eastward generally subject the area to relatively rapid changes in the weather” (20). Or, to put it more poetically,
“Yet, oft tho’ warm and fair the day begun,
Cold storms arise before the setting sun;
Nay, oft so quick the change, so great its pow’r,
As summer’s heat and winter in an hour.” (21)
The region’s beauty, hence, was birthed from a violent and chaotically unpredictable natural environment.
Here, contrasted by the spiritually stunning beauty of this place, Elizabeth stands watching the surreal image of her husband lying motionless before her without his scalp. Their youngest babe now lies bloodied and lifeless, crumpled at her husband’s side while at the same time Elizabeth listens to the horrifying screams of her own father, mother and younger sister as they are being slain around her. The sounds of their gruesome end - is this how she will forever remember the lovely frontier valley?
The damnable frontier! This no man’s land where she knew her people were not wanted, where they should not be. Elizabeth is a frontierswoman. Bold and resolute. She is also a seasoned veteran of war who has long been acclimated to the hardships and traumas of frontier living. She has heard the stories all too many times before. Has known the faces involved. This time, however, it is all so horrifically different. Her own personal massacre. Now Elizabeth, along with her six surviving children and her brother, is about to be ushered along against her will into the wilderness of “an extremely wild and almost impenetrable region” (22). Her family’s chances at surviving what is to come are tenuous at best. And even if the young woman herself survives, the Elizabeth she was just moments before is still dead. She will henceforth be known to her community only as the Widow Benjamin.
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