Washington’s Trail 1753 group holds annual summit
PENN TWP — Approximately 75 history buffs and lovers of learning enjoyed a full day of speakers, displays, booths and camaraderie Thursday at Butler Country Club as the Washington’s Trail 1753 group held its annual summit.
While all of the group’s activities surround George Washington’s trek through Butler County in 1753, each annual summit comes up with a specific theme regarding the trail.
This year’s event was Summit 2022: Cultural Contrasts Along the Trail.
Speakers included Stephen Clark, superintendent of the National Park Service units in Western Pennsylvania; Perry Ground of the Onondaga Nation; Leon Briggs of the Tonawanda Seneca Nation; Donald Price, vice president of the Fort LeBoeuf Historical Society; Susan Sleeper Smith, history professor at Michigan State University; and Alan Fitzpatrick, author of four books on the conflict between Native Americans and colonials in the late 1700s.
Fitzpatrick used his time behind the lectern to discuss the untold story of “white Indians,” or Caucasians captured by Native Americans and adopted or assimilated into native communities and cultures.
Fitzpatrick said although he had written three heavily researched books on Native Americans, he was completely unaware of the practice of some tribes and nations in the “Ohio Country” to capture Caucasians to add to their communities between the mid-1700s to the time of the American Revolution.
“The captive story that has been brought to me by native people has been hidden for 250 years in plain sight,” Fitzpatrick said.
He explained that if a white person disappeared or was captured by Native Americans at that time and did not return within two to three days, they were considered dead.
Because the invading white men in America’s early days killed every Native American they saw — man, woman or child — white settlers assumed Native Americans killed the white people they captured during raids, Fitzpatrick said.
“White people didn’t know about native adoption because white people were not adopting natives,” Fitzpatrick said. “There was a prevalent view in the 1700s that all native people were inferior savages.”
Regarding the reason for what Fitzpatrick calls “native adoption,” he said birth numbers in Native American tribes was very low in the 1700s, largely due to war and the diseases hiding in blankets and cookware proffered by settlers with nefarious intentions.
Also, adopting white men replaced casualties in tribes, and many white men who had been captured married native women, had children and became warriors.
“Natives had no prohibition about color, unlike white people,” Fitzpatrick said.
He said older women of the Ohio Country tribes were behind the practice and oversaw the processing of captives once they reached the village.
Clan mothers inspected captive women upon their arrival at the Native American village, and if they had been violated in any way, the warrior who brought them back was expelled from his tribe.
Clan mothers bathed the women, fed them, placed a dot of red paint on their foreheads and dressed them for potential adoptions by families in the village.
Men were stripped and forced to run a gauntlet, but those with a dot of red paint on their foreheads were not hurt in the trial so they could be assimilated into the village.
Men not considered viable were often traded for a horse, or some blankets or cookware.
Fitzpatrick said hundreds of white people from Western Pennsylvania were captured by Native Americans during raids and assimilated into tribal life.
Martin O’Brien, a retired county court judge, founded the Washington’s Trail 1753 group 20 years ago to commemorate Washington’s trek through Butler County that year, when a Native American tried to assassinate him but missed.
If the man had been a better marksman, O’Brien said, Washington’s idea of democracy may never have been brought to light and in existence today in about half of the world’s 95 countries.
“We forget sometimes how important it is to be a democracy,” O’Brien said.
He said the group held the annual summit for five or six years before the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.
Tickets are available to the public, and while many attendees are members of historical societies and those interested in local history, a few master gardeners attended Thursday to learn about plants and seeds along the trail, as well as a handful of educators who will share the new knowledge with their students.
“I think most people are generally interested in George Washington and his travels through this area,” O’Brien said.
More information on George Washington’s trek through Butler County as well as on the group and its activities is available at washingtonstrail.org.
