Frontier survival took courage, strength and intelligence
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Life could be nasty, brutish and short for settlers and American Indians alike on the 18th-century Pennsylvania frontier. Survival required courage, strength and intelligence.
Massey Harbison had those qualities in abundance, according to Butler County historian Drenda Gostkowski.
Mrs. Harbison was 22 and pregnant in May 1792 when she and three of her children were surprised by warriors at their cabin in what is now Allegheny Township, Westmoreland County. Her husband, John, had built their cabin across the Allegheny River, not far from present-day Freeport and near a frontier blockhouse called Reed's Station. Then he went off to battle Indians.
Following rules of war as they understood them, her Muncy and Wyandotte captors planned to take her and her children into their tribes to replace dead family members. Such forced adoptions were common.
When Samuel, age 3, refused to leave, he was killed and scalped, Ms. Gostkowski said. The captors and captives crossed the Allegheny to Todds Island. When the terrified Robert, 5, could not stop crying, he, too, was killed.
The war party split up, and Mrs. Harbison and her remaining son, John, 1, were marched northwest into what is now Butler Township with two Indians to guard them.
Probably in shock, but still defiant, she refused to carry a powder horn that one warrior might have taken from a settler's cabin. But when one of her captors began to stretch her son Robert's scalp onto a hoop to preserve it, her composure cracked. She tried to grab a tomahawk and attack her kidnapper, but the attempt failed.
Concerned about pursuit, one of the two Indians guarding her stayed back to scout for potential rescuers. When her remaining captor fell asleep, Mrs. Harbison, still barefoot, grabbed a blanket and clothes for her baby and fled.
"They had been traveling northwest," Ms. Gostkowski said. "So she keeps going that direction, away from home and walking on rocks in an effort to leave no tracks."
Only later, when she had put distance between herself and the Indians, did she begin to loop south, heading back toward the banks of the Allegheny.
She probably reached Connoquenessing Creek near the Lyndora section of Butler Township and then began heading west toward what is now Renfrew.
Regaining her bearings, she headed south, but sensed that pursuers were close behind. Holding onto her sleeping son, she climbed into the branches of a fallen tree while one warrior spent two hours searching for her.
Finding the headwaters of Pine Creek, she traveled through what is now North Park. After close calls with a nest of rattlesnakes and Indian hunters, she moved away from the stream, the natural highway likely to be used by the warriors, and traveled through the woods.
Six days after her capture, she made it back to the north bank of the Allegheny. The most likely spots were near the city of Pittsburgh's Waterworks or farther downstream, near the Highland Park Bridge, Ms. Gostkowski said.
Mrs. Harbison spotted three men on the opposite bank. "They thought she was a decoy, and they wouldn't cross the river to come get her," Ms. Gostkowski said. Finally, a neighbor, James Closier, paddled over and rescued her.
When her fourth child was born several months later, she named him James.
First Published July 30, 2006 12:00 am
