The Pringle Brothers Story – First White Settlers of the Buckhannon

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My name is Samuel Pringle, the year is 1761 and my brother John and I are garrisoned here at Fort Pitt.

What a muddy hell this is. We work all day with little rations. Everyone here has the flux, the Indians are all diseased and try anything to barter for everything you own. The commander of this Fort always has drilling and marching. We are not British regulars but we are expected to act, march and discharge our duties as such.

I was at the river front the other day when by chance I met Chancy Rogers just coming in to trade furs. He told me of the mountains to the south and clean rivers.

He told me of timber a man can not reach around, bears and buffalo along the rivers, deer and elk in the mountains. He told me the Middle Ground was a heaven on earth if you could friend and live as the Indians.

I went to my brother John who was suffering from flux awful bad. I passed on all this and told him we should desert and be away from this diseased Fort. He was leery as to deserting. If caught we would be hung immediately with no court martial. I told him we needed to plan well and be gone.

For the next month we hoarded rations. We packed our issue haversacks with food, string and extra clothing. We rolled away a couple extra wool blankets. I traded a stolen British officers gorget to a Delaware for a French Fusil de Chasse of .62 caliber and hid it away.

John and I swiped some powder horns from the commissary and hid those. John came up with a cut off British musket of .69 caliber. My final step was to trade John’s scarlet militia coat for a canoe that would carry us both and our cache up the Monongahela river.

The cold night came when we must leave. The food situation at the Fort had worsened. John’s flux was starting to drain the life from him. So at the guard change that night we snuck out. We immediately went to where our canoe was hidden. John and I quickly loaded all our goods and pushed off.

At first the going was tough. The Monongahela was flowing swift and muddy. The early February flow coming out of the mountains was great. Once we figured the canoe out we started making time. We had decided we would paddle all night and into the afternoon before setting a camp for food and rest. We needed distance from the Fort.

It was cold that night and John was bundled in a wool blanket since we had traded his uniform. I had on my scarlet wool coat but our faces and ears became numb without protection from the wind.

We knew nothing of this wilderness.

After three days on the river we did venture to shoot some ducks. We had chosen our weapons for their availability and also because we could load them with buck or ball and at times with both. John being in front took down a brace of ducks and a large white swan that day. That night we fed well upon them as we built a warm fire.

So went the days on this river. Never once seeing a living person either white or red. We killed deer several times and smoked the venison against harder times. We also worked the green hides each time we stopped.

We grew up on the South Branch of the Potomac river. We knew fishing, hunting and trapping. We would have to hunt and trap enough hides and furs to make new clothes as these military issue were not sufficient for the wilderness.

The miles went and when we arrived at a place where another great river entered the Monongahela we decided to take it. That did not last long as this river, that we guessed to be the Cheat, was to rugged with swift water to take the canoe upstream. We loaded our few belongings on our back and continued on. Our goal was a river that came into the Cheat that would lead us deep into the Middle Ground. After 7 days of walking and wandering a little we came to the river we were looking for. (Tygart River)

We went up this new river several miles and made camp.

We had found a beaver pond nearby and I fashioned three deadfalls with fresh cut black birch as the bait stick.

John’s flux had cleared on this new diet of wild meat and pure water. He was feeling more like his old self. By the time I got back from setting deadfalls, John had a fire going, a tent set up made from the half sail we scrounged up. He had a turkey going on the spit.

” Brother, we need new clothes and we need shelter. This winter is far from over, the cold will set in again.” He was right. We made a plan to stay here a couple of days and try for some beaver. Also we would hunt for a couple days here for a couple bear. We needed some fat meat to get heat in our bodies. We also needed the bear skins to make some coats. One of the best things I had swiped at the Fort was needles, awl and several rolls of course thread. We would also keep the tendons and silverskin covering from our bears and deer to make a strong string and thread. Also I had made sure to bring a large kettle and several small iron hooks for catching turtles and fish.

John had been set against extra weight but I convinced him other wise about the need for a few extras. It could be we have to live our life out in these mountains.

The next day I checked the deadfalls and I caught one small beaver. I reset and headed up a mountain close by. There I found a good pile of chestnuts to make a warm soup out of. I headed back to the camp.

John had killed a bear some distance away and had brought the heavy hide and all the best cuts of meat. We kept the claws and teeth of the bears as trade items and also as button material if need be. We stretched the bear hide and fleshed it good with our knives. We had no salt but would try to get a decent tan with the bears brain without the salt. I had heard from a Seneca when I was younger about tanning with the bark of an oak. We would have to try this. That night we feasted on bear, the choice cuts of the beaver and the skinned and roasted beavertail. I had also made a thick porridge out of the chestnuts.

That night it snowed. The wind shifted from a southwest to a north by west and the snow from this storm hit with a rush. The next day would be a camp day for sure.

After 2 weeks in the Tygart camp we went on. Each clothed in a new bearskin coat and leggings. We each had a beaver pelt hood and mitts. We continued on in the snow. Further up the Tygart River we went until we came upon another nice river flowing in. This was in a remote canyon and we made our camp overlooking this junction. We made another camp here on a rock ledge overlooking the canyon. Using our half sail and the ledge we had a palace in these mountains.

John had started hunting more and more as he had completely regained his strength. I was feeling stronger than I had in years. There was a pureness to this air and no disease whatsoever.

I found several shoots of elderberry. I took these stalks to camp and began to fashion short hollowed out tubes. When I had about 20 done I took up a deerskin pack full of something very valuable we had been keeping.

Out of every deer and and bear we had killed, I had extracted the bladder and emptied it, turning it inside out I blew it full of air and tied it off. These had dried. Now I had a dozen small containers for liquid. I took my elderberry tubes and went to a sugar maple grove and I carefully drilled into the tree with my knife until I could insert the tube and hang a bladder on the tube. John and I would have sugar now.

Where goes the time? We spent a full year in this area, the next year we spent roaming the length of another river that we discovered. ( Middle Fork). Finally the year 1764 was approaching, it had been 3 years since our desertion. We decided we had to have a more permanent home as our sailcloth had given way during the last great snow. In three years of hunting and trapping this area we had run into no Indians, we hated to leave it but we were having to hunt harder for game and food also.

We headed up the river whose mouth we had lived on for two years and more. (Buckhannon River). This river valley leveled out more so than the Tygart and the Middle Fork. We had to keep our eyes out for a cave or something similar to set up permanent residence in, seeing how we only had tomahawks we could not build a cabin.

I had long studied the Delaware huts around Fort Pitt. They would pull de real saplings over and lash them together making a frame. Then they would cover this with overlapping bark creating a waterproof hut. We pushed on up this new land.

The game was unbelievable. Deer and bears were seen frequently. Elk roamed the higher peaks and ridges and buffalo sign was everywhere. The river was full of fish and abundant waterfowl.

We pushed on camping and hunting. We had accumulated quite the bale of furs and hides. We had made a sled to pull our belongings on and this was tiring.

We were finding no shelter or caves near water! This was disappointing. John and I would have to build that Delaware style hut soon and settle in. We came upon a creek entering the Buckhannon river from the west. We decided to rest here for a day or two. John went up the creek to hunt and I crossed the creek to continue up the river for a scout.

I had turned into a true savage. I had not a stitch of civilized clothes on. I had on buckskin moccasins and leggings. I wore a buckskin breechclout, over this I had a knee length tunic of doeskin. I had a bearskin coat and on my head was a beaver pelt hood. The last three years had really changed our ward robe.

I started up the steep bank of the creek where it entered the river and there before me was a mighty sycamore standing well over a hundred feet tall. This tree was immense and had three trunks coming up from an immense swelling at the level of the ground. I walked around the base and on the river side an opening in the base! I quickly struck a fire with flint and steel and made a torch. I reached in cautiously to make sure a sleeping bear was not inside. I crawled in and stood up in an amazing eight feet by eight feet room! Completely weather tight. I held the torch high and the ceiling was some nine feet high. I had found our new home.

John soon returned with a couple turkeys. He was amazed and moved with emotion that God had given us a home. We quickly moved in. The first thing we did was to take stones and clay from the riverbank and we built a fireplace with a chimney. After two days of hard work we finally figure on how to make it draw.

John made two low cots out of our sled while I made a chair that could be used to reach the high reaches of our interior. I wedged saplings up near the ceilings to hang meat on that had been cured. We moved our pelts and hides in and made warm comfortable beds.

What a country we had roamed into. The creek our tree was on we named Turkey Run. You could go up it and kill a turkey or two within minutes. The next creek that flowed into the Buckhannon upstream was full of beaver. We had found a buffalo jawbone in the mud at the mouth of the stream and thus we named this stream, Jawbone.

We made pounds of maple sugar in our kettle. Then on one of our several week treks we located a spring on another river miles away that contained salt. We returned there with our kettle and boiled down several pounds of salt. ( Webster Springs on the Elk River).

We lived good but for two fears. Indians and our powder and lead was running low. After two good years in our tree, we had tomahawked claimed acres and acres of land and had made our plans on living here permanent. We knew that at least one of us would have to make a run for powder and lead. It was decided that John would take a large bale of furs and travel due east until he hit the southern branch of the Potomac river. Here he would travel until encountering a town or post to trade the furs for what we needed and return across land as quick as possible. John also took my deerskin with a map of the Middle Ground we had been exploring going on five years now. He would add to it or use it if necessary.

The next morning John took off and I was alone. I spent the next week exploring a canyon not far away that was full of ginseng and ramps. This was a steep country. (Stonecoal Creek) The stream was clear and full of many colorful trout. I would gorge myself in the evening with fish and ramps. I found the big yellow morel mushrooms that we came to like growing here. They covered these hill sides. It was a good time but I had only enough powder for five more shots and only 3 round balls and a small amount of buck shot left. If John did not return soon I would be surviving with longbow and club.

As I was coming down one of those steep hillsides my moccasined foot slipped and I felt my leg snap between a log and a rock. I rolled to the bottom. My head was spinning with pain. My leg was broke and I was at least five miles as a crow flies from the tree probably a good eight to nine miles away.

I got as comfortable as I could and looked over my situation. I found a couple sapling I could reach and with my tomahawk I fashioned a couple splints. Every pound with that hawk jarring my shattered leg with pain.

I crawled over to the stream edge and wedged my leg between two rocks, I pulled gently in severe pain, passing out twice until my leg was set as good as I could get it. I splinted it and wrapped the splinting with rawhide.

My best bet was to get back to our tree. There I had food and constant water. I could also fish for food. I decided to start crawling. After the first one hundred yards I was torn up from the rocks and cold from the damp soil. I had to keep going.

I crawled what seemed a mile but was only five hundred yards and passed out. I don’t know how long I had been this way but I was awakened by a cold nose and a warm tounge! There was a bear smelling and licking me. When I opened my eyes he stepped back. I grabbed my Fusil and held it on him and talked to him about the need for him to go.

He backed off and sat on his haunches licking his great paw. I started crawling again. I topped onto a flat plain and crawled. I hit a swampy stream and knew that this creek flowed into the Jawbone creek about three miles away. I kept on.

Now funny thing was that old bear kept following me to. At the end of the third day I began to feel a fever taking me. I chilled and began coughing, my lungs full of fluid. I was coming down with pleurisy. I passed out in a shivering fit on the cold April soil.

I awoke with a start. That old bear was curled up next to me keeping me warm! I started crawling again. Later that day I tried eating a couple dried ramps from my possible bag and some jerky. I found a small amount of maple sugar and gave it to the bear.

That night passed out and cold again, the bear got close and slept against me. I did not know if I was in delirium or not but in the middle of the night I heard the bear growling at two wolves that were getting close to me.

The next morning I crawled on. After several days of the cold and crawling, I finally arrived back to the tree. I threw my new friend a good amount of our sugar as I kindled a fire. I passed out again from the fever and liquid filled lungs. I was close to death.

I made a tea from ginseng, mullein and maple sugar and sipped this. The whole time giving my new friend some dried fish and sugar. The days passed into a couple months. The old bear stayed with me providing me someone to talk to while I healed. After six weeks I got myself a crutch built and wandered around. After twelve weeks I could take a few steps.

After four months my leg was healed somewhat but I was out of powder and lead. I had used my last rounds on ducks, geese and a few pigeons. My food supply was running low. The pneumonia had taken pounds from me and my energy. I would talk to the old bear telling him how lucky he was that I did not have a round left for him and was to weak to pull a bow. If John did not get back soon he would not find much of me left.

I was laying outside in the warm sun of an autumn day. I was sinking in and out of delirium. I had not long on this earth.

My bear who came to me many months ago was sleeping nearby. He suddenly came awake and stood on his hind feet and looked around sniffing the wind. He suddenly bolted away! It was then I heard a familiar voice yelling, ” Hello the camp!” Then in strode John with a big pack on his shoulders. I began to cry.

Good old John had returned. He nursed me back to health over the next few weeks. He had told me that he looked for my bear and found no tracks anywhere near by. That the old bear was a figment of my imagination and delirium.

The other news that John brought was that we was no longer fugitives. That the war was over and we could return to our childhood home. I contemplated that and agreed but we both knew we would be back to this Eden and when we returned we would bring back friends and family and settle this country.

We began the trek to the Potomac valley in the spring. As we topped a ridge, I turned back and looked at our tree and the valley of the Buckhannon and knew I would return and my bones would lay here permanently someday…….