Delaware chief known as "Captain Bull"

[vance hawkins]

I am copyin' & pastin' this from another group of Am. Ind. genealogy researchers online.

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CHIEF BULL, King of the Delawares, Many Descendants Living in the
Monongahela Valley
SOURCE: Now & Long Ago Times, Vol. III, Is. 12 (reprinted in HCPD
Journal- pg. 283-4)

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He was known as 'Capt. Bull' also 'Honest John' and 'Brother Gideon'.
He was son of the great Teedyuscung, King of the Delawares.
Teedyuscung was murdered April 6, 1763 as lay drunk by having his
house at Wyoming Pa burned around him. Bull inherited his father's
place among the Delawares. (A monument to Teedyuscung stands in
Fairmont Park, Philadelphia). Bull believed white men murdered his
father; to avenge the old chief's death, he led a band of warriors on
several great raids in PA & NY, during which he & his warriors
murdered & mutilated more than 50 white settlers, men, women &
children, mostly children (see Sipe's 'Indian Wars of PA pgs. 459-
61), Miner's History of Wyoming & Egle's History of PA and
the 'Frontier Forts of PA, Vol 1, pgs. 173-74.

Bull & his band were finally arrested near Kanestio, NY & later were
given the choice of being hanged for their crimes or removing
themselves & families westward to the Alleghany Mountains. Sipe tells
us that Bull & his band of murdering numbered 135 Delawares from the
Ohio Valley, & informs that Bull prior to his father's death, had
lived in the Ohio Valley for 10 years. arriving here in 1753.

A few weeks after his release from prison in NY, Capt. Bull & about
50 members of his family (relatives) turned up at Frederick Ice's
settlement on Cheat River, near present Morgantown, Wva. Here they
remained for a few weeks, then went up the Monongahela & into camp at
now Fairmont. The following Spring they moved again, this time
settling near present Bulltown, WV named for Capt. Bull. Here by the
Little Kanawha River they erected 20 cabins & a council house on the
site of Chief Bull's old camp. (Note: In 1970-71, this writer
received certain information from descendants of Adam FLESHER, 1760-
1854, John MAHON 1769-1872- died age 103 at Pittsburg-, David MORGAN,
Charles HARRIS & others that Chief Bull kept a hunting camp near
present Bulltown, WVa for about 20 years, until 1772, when he & his
people, about 100 men, women & children, went south & settled on the
lower Mississippi where Bull died.

(Chief Bull's removal with his people from the Little Kanawha River
has been established by DRAPER- James Notes, the Simon Kenton
materials, Draper's Mss microfilm, WVa University. "The Delawares had
a town on the little Kanawha, which Simon Kenton often visited. They
went to the White River, 18 miles from the Wabash, & when Gen.
Hamiliton was taken, they broke off & went to the Mississippi."- see
Kenton materials, Drapers Mss.

A RIDICULOUS TALE
A.S. Withers, in his 'Border Warfare" pgs. 136-37, pub in Clarksburg,
then VA, in 1831, did not know that Bull & his people moved from
Bulltown to near Wabash River in May 1772 as Simon Kenton & others
personally acquainted with these Indians have told us. He, Withers,
thought that 5 white men might have murdered Bull & the entire Indian
population of Bulltown (not less than 100 persons); 'butchered them
all, men women & children & threw their corpses into the Little
Kanawha River....? He was not certain about this being true, though,
for he says (Border Warfare. pgs. 136-37.

There was at that time (1772) an Indian town on the Little Kanawha
called Bulltown, inhabited by 5 families, who were in habits of
social & friendly intercourse with the whites on Buckhannon &
Hacker's Creek; frequently visiting & hunting with them. There was
likewise residing on the Gauley river the family of a German by the
name of STROUD. In the summer of that year, Mr. STROUD, being from
his home, his family were all murdered, his house plundered, & his
cattle driven off. The trail made by these leading in the direction
of Bulltown, induced the supposition that the Indians of that town
had been the authors of the outrage & caused several to resolve or
avenging it upon them.

A party of 5 men, 2 of whom were William WHITE & William HACKER, who
had been concerned in previous murders (murders of whites), expressed
a desire to proceed immediately to Bulltown. The remonstrance of the
settlement generally could not operate to effect a change in that
determination. They went; & on their return, circumstances justified
the belief that the pre-apprehension of those who knew the temper &
feelings of WHITE & HACKER had been well founded; & that there had
been some fighting between them & the Indians. And notwithstanding
that they denied ever having seen an Indian during their absence, yet
it was the prevailing opinion, that they had destoyed all the men.
women & children at Bulltown, & threw their bodies into the river.
Indeed one of the party is said to have inadvertently used
expressions confirmatory of this opinion; and to have then justified
the deed by saying that the clothes & other things known to have
belonged to STROUD's family was requited on them. The village was
soon after visited & found to entirely desolated & nothing being ever
after heard of its former inhabitants there can remain no doubt but
that the murder of STROUD's family was requited on them.

(Note: Withers did not know the names of three of the five men. His
only reason for believing the tale was that as he says, '
circumstances justified the belief' and that inadvertent expressions
confirmed the opinion. The fact that the accused men, as he says,
denied ever having seen an Indian at Bulltown, seems to have meant
little to him...It will be understood that Chief Bull moved from
Bulltown in May 1772 & that the above tale by Withers was published
in 1831, 59 years later.

In a footnote to this tale (Border Warfare.pgs. 136-37) historian R G
Thwaites informs that " Bull & 5 families of his relatives settled in
what the whites called Bulltown on the Little Kanawha. This was a
salt spring about a mile & quarter below the present Bulltown, P.O.
Braxton County, WVa. Capt. Bull was inoffensive & very friendly to
his white neighbors."

Adam STROUD lived on the Elk River, a few miles south of the Indian
Bulltown. The massacre of his family- wife, and 7 children- occured
in June 1772, Shawnees were the murderers and not Bull's people.

Thwaites, a highly accredited historiain, ways nothing here about
white men murdering Bull & his people. Mr. L V McWhorter, in
anaccompanying footnote in reference to the same tale (Border Warfare-
pg 137) informing Thwaites says " The names of 2 others of the
accused five besides WHITE & HACKER, were Jesse HUGHES & John
CUTRIGHT, both settlers on Hackers Creek." McWhorter doesn't name the
5th man but he condemns Jesse HUGHES as a kind of monster with these
words (from Thwaites): "Hughes was a man of unbridled passions, so
confirmed an Indian hater that no tribesman, however peaceful his
record, was safe in his presence. Some of the most cruel acts on the
frontier are by tradition attributed to this man. The massacre of the
Bulltown Indians was accompianed by atrocities as repulsive as any
reported by captives in Indian camps; of these there has been long
traditions, but details were not fully known until revealed by
CUTRIGHT upon his death bed in 1852, when he had reached the age of
105 years.

While HUGHES was a great scout & Indian trader, he never headed an
expedition of this note. This is no doubt was because of his fierce
temperment & bad reputation among his own countrymen. McWhorters
description of Jesse HIGHES is difficult, if not impossible to
believe. First, Jesse was but 21 years old when Bull & his people
moved south from Bulltown in May 1772. Second, as McWhorter tells us,
Jesse was an Indian trader until 2 years after Bull & his people left
Bulltown, which shows that until 1774 he was frieindly toward the
Indians & was trusted by them. The Indians did not trade with a known
enemy or anyone they did not trust. Certain murders of settlers in
1774 set Jesse & his brother Elias against the Indians & not until
then did these 2 begin to earn reputation as Indian fighters. In 1778
Indians murdered Thomas HUGHES, father of Jesse, in a cowardly, sneak
attack. In 1787, a party of Indians & the white renegade, Leonard
SCHOOLCRAFT took captive Jesse's daughter. The next year, Jesse was
able to purchase his daughter's release. After that, his hatred for
Indians seems to have grown into something of an obession.

Concerning Hughes' daughter, Withers (Border Warfare pg 380) says
only that, " Hughes' daughter was ransomed by her father the next
year, and is yet (1830) living in sight of the theatre of those
savage enormities." (It is difficult to know exactly from evidence
available, which of Jesse Hughes' daughters was taken captive by the
Indians. He fathered 7, namely: Rachel, Martha, Sudna, Elizabeth,
Lucinda, Nancy and Massie. Tradition names Martha wife of Jacob
Bonnett as the girl who was carried off by the savages & ransomed by
her father. Certain stories of the capture name other daughters.)
McWhorter's statement that Jesse Hughes had a bad reputation among
his own countrymen (Border Warfare- pg 137) is flatly refuted by the
court records of Harrison County; order book number 1of these records
shows that Jesse Hughes was twice nominated & chosen captain of the
Harrison County milita; other records of this county reveal that he
served in this office 4 times, more often than any other. The record
( order book 1) for May 17, 1786 reads: Jesse Hughes came into court
& took the oath of allegiance and the oath of Capt. of Militia
according to law.

McWhorters statement that John CUTRIGHT died in 1852 at the age of
105 is incorrect. Bible record & Cutright's application for a RW
pension & records established in VA & in Washington D.C. show that
John Cutright was born in 1754 & died March 8, 1850, aged 95; he
would have been 96 in August. He was a son of John Cutright & was
born in Hampshire County. He was 17 years old when Bull & his people
are said to have been massacred at Bulltown. His father claimed 400
acres of land in Monongahela (now Upshur County) in 1770 & is said to
have settled here the same year. In 1782, John Cutright Sr.'s tax
returns show there were 7 persons in his family. Wight of John
Cutright Jr's descendants beginning in 1895 have denied that he ever
confessed to taking part in the so-called Bulltown massacre of Chief
Bull & his people.

DESCENDANTS OF CHIEF BULL
Certain Chief Bull's descendants provided statements that their
ancestor, Chief Bull, son of King of Delawares, Teedyuscung, died in
the 1790's near old Fort Rosalie on the Mississippi where he lies
buried. Relatives of James LAMBERT, settled in Jefferson County,
Missouri before 1790 know of their descent from Chief Bull, through
two of the Chief's daughters who married men by the name of LAMBERT.
With the help of these Missouri descendants this writer was able to
locate others of the same descent; members of the: NELSON family of
Pendleton Co. WVa, members of the CRITES, FREDERICK, YEAGER, SLOAN,
LAMBERT, FISHER, KENNEDY and other families of the Monongahela Valley
& elsewhere in WVa. These many people alive are proof that Bull & his
families were not massacred at Bulltown in present Braxton Co. WV but
rather as Draper truthfully states, " went to the White river, 18
miles from the Wabash, & when Gen. Hamilton was taken they broke off
& went to the Mississippi."



[This message has been edited by vance hawkins (edited 10-28-2002).]

[Brenda Collins Dillon]

There is a lot of stories running wild in the mountains of West Virginia. Almost every line that I connect with came through there on their way to somewhere else or settled there and never left. Most have rumors of Indian blood and it is so fustrating not to be able to prove a thing.
Vance, the HCPD group have a large library at Horner ,WV. They are a great group of people active in research.Hackers Creek was suppose to be a hot spot. There was a Settlement named Walkersville and part of it was Collins Settlement:

This is copy & pasted:>>>>>>>

Walkersville is situated in the central part of the Collins Settlement district in Lewis county,WV and was founded in 1840 by Wm. Bennett, Jr. It has a population of about two hundred at the present time. In the village there are two general stores, one hardware and furniture store, two feed stores (one of which is a co-operative store incorporated at $10,000), one blacksmith and machine shop, two garages, one harness and saddle shop, two barber shops, one grist and planing mill, one high school building costing $60,000, one two-room public school building, and about fifty dwellings.
The village of Walkersville is on the Weston and Webster Springs road and is a central point for the whole upper end of Collins Settlement district.

The first permanent settlement made in what is now within this district was made by John Collins from whom the

district gets its name. This settlement was made about 1787 on a tract of land granted to Mr. Collins by Col. George Jackson, which was located near and includes the present site of the village of Jacksonville. Collins was followed three years later by Wm. Shoulders who settled near by Collins on what is now known as the Big Bend Bottom, one-half mile south of Jacksonville. Mr. Shoulders died in 1808 and was the first person to be buried at the Long Point Cemetery, near Walkersville. Little, if anything is known of any of the descendants of either Collins or Shoulders.
The next settler was Wm. Bennett, who came from Pendleton County, Virginia, now West Virginia, in the year 1800, and settled near the mouth of the run which now bears his name. This run is just a half mile north of Walkersville. Mr. Bennett secured a patent for 2,800 acres of land adjacent to and including the present site of the village of Walkersville. The original patent for this grant of land is still kept. It is written on parchment and is in a fair state of preservation. It is in the possession of the family of the late Wm. Sprigg.

>>>>>>>>>>.
Collins Settlement District is the most southern in Lewis County; it is bounded north by Court House and Skin Creek districts, east by Upshur county, and south and west by Braxton and Gilmer counties. The northern and middle portions are drained by sand fork. Right fork and Left fork, the upper tributaries of the West Fork river, while the southern portion is watered by Gauley fork of the Little Kanawha.

During the last quarter of the eighteenth century George Jackson, who was a member of several of the earlier American Congresses, became a large landed proprietor in what is now known as Collins Settlement. He was a progressive and public spirited man, but his lands were then far out in the western wilderness; he determined that this region should be brought under the sway of civilized men, and in order to induce emigration he conveyed a title to fifty acres of his best land to a man named George Collins, the only condition being that he should settle upon it. Mr. Jackson hoped thus to form a nucleus around which other homes might be established.

Accordingly in the year 1798, Collins complied with the only condition, and removing into the wilderness reared his cabin upon the fifty acres of land deeded to him by Mr. Jackson. In 1799 he was followed to his wilderness home by a man named Shoulders, who settled at the forks of the West Fork river. A year later, in 1900, William Bennett located on the West Fork river immediately below the site selected by Shoulders. here he continued to reside until 1857, when he died, and his lands, then having become among the most valuable in the county, descended to his heirs. They were later owned by his youngest son, the Hon. J.M> Bennett, late auditor of Virginia. William Bennett, the pioneer, deserves more than a passing notice from the pen of the historian. He was born on the 18th day of September, 1775, and died on the 1st of March, 1857. >>>>>>>>>>

One article gives the name of John Collins and the other says George Collins. It really don't make any difference as the Collins only lived on the land long enough to satisfy his obligation and nobody knowes where he went from there.

My natural father is a COLLINS; my stepfather was a SHOULDERS and I have BENNETT on both sides Unrelated. I haven't heard any rumors of NA blood on the Bennett lines but the other two I have. Amos Ritter Shoulders son of John W. Shoulders and a woman named Nisa/Nicy/Nicah was born in Lewis Co. WV and according to his granddaughter he was Indian medicine man. He was supposely the best herb doctor in the area and treated anybody that came to him for help.
Vance...you mention LAMBERT, Meredith Collins brother, William Collins, married 1) Mary MULLINS and 2) Maryann HATFIELD. From the first marriage William Collins JR married Nancy LAMBERT. All the names you have mentioned in your above post in one way or another have connections to the Collins families. I have heard over the years that in WV Indians were NOT allowed to own any land until after the 1940's. These people would die before they would admit to being Indian because their land would be taken away and their families would starve.These people had lost so much they couldn't risk even passing onto thier children their heritage for fear a child would slip and they would lose all. I know I can't prove it but in my heart I know who my people are.

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Life is a Rainbow made up of Many Different Colors.....

[vance hawkins]

Hi Brenda --

What does HCPD stand for?

The more I read the more it seems you are right. Many of the Indians originally on the East Coast fled into the Mountains and there mixed or kept fleeing further West, with a considerable number fleeing into the Ozarks of Northern Arkansas and Southern Missouri.

Eventually, assimilation won out, and we forgot the origin of our ancestors.

This is such a good website for finding out these things.

vance

[Brenda Collins Dillon]

Vance,
HCPD = Hackers Creek Pioneer Descendants

It's too bad that the mountains can't talk. I am sure they could tell us some very interesting stories. I just know that where you find sparks there has to be a fire and there is just too many rumors to discount all of them.

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Life is a Rainbow made up of Many Different Colors.....

[Poundstone]

Vance we seem to be in more than one discussion of Interest. In the Blackfeet of Illinois discussion we are speaking of one of my Great grandparents and here in this room there is a link to another. Nancy Crites was the second wife to a direct ancestor of mine, a man named Joseph Pritchard. Nancy was the grand daughter of Chief Bull, and Joseph was the descendant of Thomas Pritchard a welsh carpenter who came to live and work in Jamestown in 1620. Generation after generation of this line married into the local Indian families, until in the 1740's their lands in eastern VA were taken back by the Crown for high crimes and treason against the Crown. These crimes included teaching other mixed Indians and full blood, escaped slave-indians carpentry...that and swearing oaths for the death of the King and his officers when Christopher Pritchard was with a surveying party, the first to reach the upper Ohio, led by George Washington. The best I can tell from the charges against him, he uttered something to the effect of "May the King and his men die before they take this land from it's people." Christopher was 3/4 Indian, his wife was the daugter of an indentured servant and 1/2 Indian. Shortly after being released from the stockade after a plea for clemmency by old family friends, (which suposedly included Washington, which I doubt as he was likely the one who brought the charges) Christopher and wife moved west into an Indian community near the Shenandoah Valley. Their children then moved on to the crest of the Blue Ridge. A few generations later and many more Indian marriages, Joseph marries Nancy Crites as his second wife. The two then move off to Indiana to meet up with other family memebers who have moved on before them, these include many of Nancy's relatives. Did thye move on to find and join with Chief Bull's group? Did they maintain regular contact with them? They moved to a spot between the north/western branch of the White river and the Wabash. Joseph's son Frank then travels west with cousins, crossing the Mississippi and eventually settling into a Lakota community in the 1860's. His wife, a Lakota named Green Branch?(sp)returned to the banks of the White river with their first child my great/great grandfather William (english name). William in turn returned west with his father and in turn married another Indian woman. Her name we will never know. She died shortly after my great grandfather was born, who was like his father returned to Indiana for safety and to avoid the missery and starvation which existed across the plains after white conquest. This family married a combined line of Shawnee/Lakota/Blackfeet(?) eastern?/Cherokee. This line is my great grandmothers, and traces the confluence of these tribal lines to Tecumseh's allied United Tribe. Whew...that was the shortest I have ever summerised that. I hope that this sample of the family lines around Chief Bull and the history of the region help explain, or make real some of your own thoughts about your own research. All of my work was done via document searches, family histories, online genealogies, historical documents, census records, property records, all of which are available online. Have faith it can be done...just give up your day job.

[vance hawkins]

howdy -- good to meet you.

I am discovering more and more all the time! I have pretty much discovered the Cherokee part of our heritage. Old Settlers with surnames Brown, Guess, Looney and were related to some pretty well known Chiefs and we can trace them back to traditional Cherokee lands in NE Ala. and Overhill areas around Little Tennessee River E. of Knoxville, Tn (sp?).

But these Cherokee folks married the Richey's in Arkansas (Jeffry Hoten Richey m. Josephine Brown). These Richey's are much less well known surnames and therefore harder to trace. Jeffs parents were Sarah Wayland (b. Ar 1830s)& Joseph Richey (b. In 1829), Joseph's parents were John Richey (1797 Va., m. Mary (polly) Wood 1817 in Indiana. Mary's parents were John Wood(s) and Nancy Dickson. John we think born 1750-75 and Nancy probably close to 1775-80. My ancestors moved to N. Arkansas in the 1840s and mixed with Old Settlers who didn't go to Oklahoma for whatever reason. Later these people all moved to Choctaw nation, then N. Tx, then the Chickasaw Nation in South Central Oklahoma, where they lived til 1906 when they moved to Tillman County, Ok.

I am thinkin' this branch (Richey, Wayland, Wood, Dickson) is very mixed, many tribes and has Cauacsian blood, too. I had no idea HOW mixed they were tho! http://winwinworld.net/SaponiForum/UBB/smile.gif This is very interesting . . .

thank you

vance hawkins