The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 | Page 8

for the establishment of Lycoming Creek as the
Tiadaghton, and consequently, as the eastern boundary of the Fair Play
territory is apparent once all the evidence is examined. Aside from the
comments of the Indians at the treaty negotiations and Smith's Laws of
the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, there are only secondary accounts
with little documentation to sustain the Pine Creek argument.
On the other hand, the Lycoming Creek claim is buttressed by such
primary sources as the journals of Weiser, Bartram, Spangenberg,
Ettwein, and Fithian, three of which were written before the location of
the Tiadaghton became a subject of dispute. Since none of these men
was seeking lands, they can be considered impartial observers.
Furthermore, the cartographic efforts of Lewis Evans and John Adlum
followed actual visits to the region and say nothing to favor the Pine
Creek view.
Perhaps the Indians were merely accepting an already accomplished
fact at the meeting in 1784. Dr. Paul A. W. Wallace says that this
would have been expected from the subservient, pacified Indian.

Regardless, the Provincial leadership made no effort to settle the lands
in what some called "the disputed territory" until after the later
agreement at Stanwix; in fact, they discouraged it.[37] The simple
desire for legitimacy gives us very little to go on in the light of more
than adequate documentation of the justice of the Lycoming view.
This evidence might suggest changing the name of the long-revered
"Tiadaghton Elm" to the "Pine Creek Elm" and bringing to a close the
vexatious question of the Tiadaghton. However let us strike a note of
caution, if not humility. Indian place names had a way of shifting,
doubling, and moving, since they served largely as descriptive terms
and not as true place names. It is not at all unusual to find the same
name applied to several places or to find names migrating. The
Tiadaghton could have been Lycoming Creek to some Indians at one
time, and Pine Creek to others at the same or another time. Consider,
for example, that there were three Miami rivers in present Ohio, which
are now known as the Miami, the Little Miami, and the Maumee. It
hardly makes any real difference to the geography of the Fair Play
territory, or to the delimiting of its boundaries, which stream was the
Tiadaghton. Actually, it was the doubt about it which drew in the
squatters and created Fair Play. These settlers justified their contention
that the Tiadaghton was Pine Creek by moving into the territory and
holding onto it. This may be reason enough for calling the famous tree
the Tiadaghton Elm, even if early travelers and the proprietary officials
said that the Tiadaghton was Lycoming Creek.[38]
The topography of the region also influenced the delineation of what
we call Fair Play territory. The jugular vein which supplies the
life-blood to this region is undoubtedly the West Branch of the
Susquehanna River. This branch of the great river, which drains almost
fifty per cent of the State, follows a northeasterly course of some forty
miles from the Great Island, which is just east of present Lock Haven,
to what is now Muncy, then turns southward.[39]
The West Branch of the mighty Susquehanna, which has plagued
generations of residents with its spring floodings, was the primary
means of ingress and egress for the area. Rich bottom lands at the

mouths of Lycoming, Larrys, and Pine creeks drew the hardy pioneer
farmers, and here they worked the soil to provide the immediate needs
for survival. Hemmed in on the north by the plateau area of the
Appalachian front and on the south by the Bald Eagle Mountains, these
courageous pioneers of frontier democracy carved their future out of
the two-mile area (more often less) between those two forbidding
natural walls. With the best lands to be found around the mouth of Pine
Creek, which is reasonably close to the center of this twenty-five-mile
area, it seems quite natural that the major political, social, and
economic developments would take place in close proximity--and they
did.[40]
Thus, an area never exceeding two miles in width and spanning some
ten miles (presently from Jersey Shore to Lock Haven) was the
heartland of Fair Play settlement. Lycoming Creek, Larrys Creek, and
Pine Creek all run south into the West Branch, having channeled breaks
through the rolling valley which extends along the previously defined
territory.
"The land was ours before we were the land's," the poet said, and it
seems apropos of this moment in history.[41] Fair Play territory,
possessed before it was owned and operated under de facto rule, would
be some time in Americanizing the sturdy frontiersmen who came to
bring civilization to this wilderness.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Carl L. Becker, Beginnings of the American People (Ithaca, N. Y.,
1960), p. 182.
[2] Turner,