Tredway Trail placards to chronicle lives of Native Americans, pioneers such as Massey Harbison

It’s a tough balancing act to celebrate the Alle-Kiski Valley’s rich Native American history while also paying homage to a local pioneer woman who was violently abducted by a group of Delaware and other American Indians.

Ren Steele said he feels uniquely qualified to contribute to efforts to do both along the newest leg of the Tredway Trail in Allegheny Township, where officials plan to install four historical placards.

Steele, a township supervisor who oversees trails in the community, claims both Scots-Irish and Cherokee ancestry. He wrote a play in 1996 about pioneer Massey Harbison, who was pregnant with her fourth child when she made a daring escape from Native Americans who abducted her and her 1-year-old son from a cabin along the Allegheny River in 1792.

“I felt strange about it because I’m part Native American, and ugly things happened then,” Steele said. “I want historical placards paying tribute to both the courage of the pioneers and courage of the Native Americans who defended their homes.”

Steele is one of a number of people working to chronicle thousands of years of history along the Alle­gheny River and a trail that follows the path of a former Allegheny Valley Railroad bed. Only within the past year has the public gained free access via the trail to these hallowed historical lands along the Allegheny River.

Some of the placards are expected to be installed along the trail as early as this spring.

Content on three of them had to be approved by Native American groups and state government agencies, according to Brian Fritz, principal archaeological investigator for New Castle-based Quemahoning LLC, who is writing the histories on the three placards. The government approvals are needed as a condition of a state grant for the trail and placard project, which is expected to cost about $300,000.

The trail is being extended from River Forest marina to an area under the Freeport Bridge.

A fourth placard, about Harbison, also is planned. Steele and other local officials are spearheading that effort on their own. As a result, they say they likely won’t have to cut through as much red tape.

Chronicling history

The history of Native Americans in the Allegheny Valley is detailed on one of the planned placards.

Native Americans have been in the Valley from perhaps as far back as 16,000 years ago during the tail end of the last ice age, when the area was an open tundra with patches of spruce and fir trees. They remained through the 18th century, when the area was a hotbed of “rapidly shifting political alliances, violent conflict, outbreaks of deadly European diseases and forced migrations,” according to a draft of the placard.

The placard-in-progress also profiles Seneca Chief Cornplanter, a man familiar with tough balancing acts. Cornplanter didn’t live in the Allegheny Valley, but the area was claimed and controlled by the Seneca Nation of the Iroquois League. He fought in both the French and Indian War and the American Revolutionary War when the Seneca sided with the British. Later, Cornplanter helped broker peace between the Iroquois and new American government. The government gave Cornplanter 1,500 acres of land along the Upper Alle­gheny for his latter efforts, according to the draft placard.

Another placard focuses on the history of the Allegheny Valley Railroad, while a third deals with how pioneers traveled on, over and through the Allegheny River.

For as long as people lived in the area, the Allegheny River and its tributary, the Kiski­minetas (Kiski) River, served as major transportation arteries that attracted Native American and European settlers alike, according to Fritz.

“The remains of their campsites and villages are abundant along the Allegheny River,” Fritz wrote on one of the draft placards about the first Native American inhabitants of the Allegheny Valley.

When European settlers took over the land from Native Americans, Fritz said, “Pittsburgh (became) the gateway to the west, with its rivers pushing the supply chain to move west.”

Development of the railroad along the river in the mid-19th century accelerated the movement of goods and people.

Combined, the placards boil down the extensive histories into fewer than two dozen paragraphs.

Harbison isn’t mentioned.

Fritz said the decision not to include Harbison was made because she already is memorialized in the area. Another factor was the lack of official documentation on where Harbison’s cabin stood, though local historians insist it was located near where the women’s No. 4 tee on the River Forest Country Club sits.

The golf course was developed by the late Wynn Tredway, one of the namesakes of what is formally known as the Wynn and Clara Tredway River Trail. Phyllis Framel, a co-founder of the Allegheny Township Historical Society, said there might have been a timber or two remaining of the cabin when Tredway bought the property in the mid-1960s, but the only evidence remaining today is a small plaque that the Daughters of the American Revolution placed on the ground near the No. 4 tee.

Life on the edge

Steele, Framel and other local officials believe Harbison’s history, specifically the location of her cabin, should be presented on a placard similar to the other three planned for the trail.

Harbison was 22 and pregnant with her fourth child when she was abducted from her cabin in the spring of 1792. Her husband, John, had been away scouting Native Americans for the government, according to an account shared by Harbison after her rescue.

Two of the Harbisons’ young sons were killed during the abduction, with one of them scalped.

Massey Harbison kept their 1-year-old son with her throughout a six-day, 70-mile odyssey that took them to a Native American camp near Butler and through the rugged wilderness. The escape ended with their rescue in the area of today’s Fox Chapel Yacht Club, according to the booklet “Escape: Massey Harbison, Wilderness Captive,” written by two former teachers, the late Drenda Gostkowski of Winfield and Susan Przybylek of Buffalo Township.

Rescuers pulled about 150 thorns from Harbison’s body, including some that went through her feet because she did not have shoes, according to accounts. She was taken to Pittsburgh, where she provided an account of her ordeal to a magistrate.

Framel said Harbison is worthy of further recognition along the trail because she was among the most admired pioneer women in the state and perhaps the era.

“Massey Harbison provides one of the earliest eyewitness accounts of what life was like on the edge of Western civilization at that time,” Framel said.