Quaker Falls

Human occupation in Pennsylvania may date to as early as 14,000 B.C., as suggested by radiocarbon dating at Meadowcroft Rock Shelter in Washington County about 70 miles away. During the Archaic period, great glacial retreat changed native diets and mobility patterns as mammoth and mastodons gave way to caribou and elk, and native populations were primarily hunter-gatherers. In the Woodland period, warming temperatures and a moist climate brought more diverse resources, leading to population growth, the development of cultural identities with territorial boundaries, more ritualistic burials, expanded trade, and the increased prominence of pottery, tools, and cultivated plants. In the Late Prehistoric period, reliance shifted toward domesticated crops such as corn, beans, and squash, while rock shelters served as hunting and gathering stations, winter campsites, or small farmsteads. The tribes in this area included Iroquois groups known as the Seneca, Wyandot, Shawnee, and Delaware, and before 1742 at least three Iroquois towns stood in Kuskusky, in the region now centered on the City of New Castle. During the French and Indian War, Christian Frederick Post arrived at these Kuskusky villages on August 18, 1758, to meet Indian leaders including Shingas, Delaware George, and King Beaver, at a time when the occupants were primarily Delaware and Shawnee, although the Wyandots had built a town on the Beaver River below the confluence of the Shenango and Mahoning. In February 1778, General Edward Hand left Fort Pitt with 500 militiamen to raid a British supply post near present-day Cleveland, but at the meeting of the Shenango River and Neshannock Creek his men encountered a Lenape village at what is now New Castle and killed the mother and brother of Captain Pipe; this and other violence toward Native Americans brought condemnation for the "Squaw Campaign," and Hand was relieved of duty.

Pennsylvania · United States