There is some mystery as to who were the original inhabitants of Butler County in precolonial times. Although many Native American tribes had visited and lived in the area, they were gone by the time white settlers arrived.

According to “20th Century History of Butler and Butler County Pa. and Representative Citizens” edited by James McKee and published in 1909, “The only evidences of the Indian occupation found by pioneers were old Indian trails and traces of Indian villages.”

According to “The History of Butler County, Pa.” by C. Hale Sipe, published in 1927, the Senecas, Delawares and Shawnese (or Shawnee) occupied territory west of the Allegheny River and north of the Ohio River and were the first inhabitants. Tradition held the Delawares occupied part of Butler County before migrating east.

According to Sipe, the Walum Olum, the traditional history of the Lenni Lenape or the “original people” who were the ancestors of the Delawares, the Lenape originated in lands west of the Mississippi River. For some reason lost to time, the Lenape began to move east. In their travels they fell in with the Iroquois, who had also come from the west.

East of the Mississippi, the two tribes found the land occupied by the Allegwi. Described as “tall, stout and many of gigantic stature,” the Allegwi lived in fortified towns and occupied all land as far east as the Allegheny River (which took its name from the Allegwi). At one time, the Allegwi were credited with the historic mounds found in southern Ohio and Allegheny County.

According to the Lenape tribal history, the Allegwi refused to allow the Lenape and Iroquois to settle in their land but allowed the two tribes to travel through it in their move east.

According to the Walum Olum, however, when the Allegwi saw the numbers of Lenape and Iroquois they became frightened and attacked many who reached the eastern shore.

This started a long war between the Lenape and Iroquois against the Allegwi ending with the Allegwi being driven south and out of the disputed territory.

The Iroquois settled in the lands neighboring the Great Lakes, while the Lenape settled in lands south and along the Ohio River.

Many years later, a party of Lenape hunters crossed the Allegheny Mountains and found a bountiful land along the banks of the Susquehanna and Delaware rivers. Many Lenape moved east to the banks of these rivers where they first encountered white men who named the Native Americans the Delawares.

According to West Philadelphia Collaborative History, “The Lenape utilized natural resources to build their homes. They lived in single doorway wooden huts called wigwams, which were situated along rivers and creeks. The size of their wigwams depended on the region they inhabited.

“The Lenape had distinctly different physical features and appearances than that of the Europeans. Skeletal remains indicate that the average male height ranged from 5’1" to 5’7.” They had oval facial structures with high cheekbones, tan skin, and broad shoulders. Both men and women used bear grease to dress their hair, and decorated their bodies, face, and arms with designs painted in various colors.

“For clothing, men wore breechcloths during the summer and fur robes during the winter. Likewise, women wore wrap-around-skirts during the summer and fur robes with leggings during the winter. Both women and girls adorned their bodies with tribal jewelry made from shells, stones, beads, and animal teeth and claws.”

According to West Philadelphia Collaborative History, Delaware men and women married young. Girls commonly married at the ages of 13 and 14 while young men married at ages of 17 and 18.

Fathers with the help of older men taught the boys to hunt for wild game. Women taught daughters how to gather edible plants and tend to the children.

According to the West Philadelphia History, “In late fall, the men left their homes to hunt white-tailed deer, wild fowl, muskrat, rabbits, and foxes. Men were responsible for the heavy work around the village, making tools, weapons, mortars, frames for the wigwams, dugouts, and fishing spears. Tools were made from the bones of animals, wood, stone, as well as various types of grasses.

“Women’s work included tanning hides, sewing, cooking, as well as gathering fruits and berries when they were in season. Mothers would show their daughters how to gather roots, nuts, eggs, clams, and edible plants. As they grew older, young girls learned how to garden, care for the children, and cook. Although corn was the main crop, several varieties of beans, squash, pumpkins, tobacco, and sunflowers were also cultivated,” according to the West Philadelphia history.

According to Sipe’s history, another Native American tribe, the Shawnee, came north to the Susquehanna Valley and by 1673 occupied land along the tributaries of the Ohio River in Western Pa. Many of the camps in Butler County were attributed to Shawnee inhabitants.

According to Sipe, the Senecas were occupants of the western part of the state south of Lake Erie, but in the time of white immigration reached the east bank of the Allegheny River so this area was claimed by several tribes, the remnants of the Delaware (Lenape), the Shawnee, the Munceys (a tribe that had descended from the Lenape as they moved east of the Allegheny Mountains) and the Senecas.

However, by 1773, when the first white scouts and fur hunters reached what would become Butler County, the land was largely unoccupied, but traces of the Native American past occupation were abundant.

Maps of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania published in 1875 show Native American towns in Butler County to have been Cushcushking on Wolf Creek in Slippery Rock Township; Kaskaskunk in Center Township near the Franklin Township line: Sakonk near Harmony; a second Sakonk near the mouth of the Beaver River; Logstown on the northeast bank of the Ohio River southwest of the southwest corner of Butler County; Shannopin Town across the Allegheny River from Freeport; and the ominous-sounding Murderingtown on the Connoquenessing Creek.

There were also remnants of Native American villages at the mouth of Breakneck Creek, a village on the Jacob Summers farm in Buffalo Township, a town near Bruin and a village a mile south of Prospect in Franklin Township.

There were also temporary camps at Buhls Mill near Mechanicsburg in Worth Township, at the site of Harrisville in Mercer Township and a camp on the site of the courthouse in Butler as well as a camping place on the Kearns farm in Butler Township.

Butler County was crisscrossed with Native American trails. By 1750 a large trail led from Philadelphia to Kittanning on the Allegheny River. The trail then led west to the Ohio line passing Kaskaskunk north of Butler. From Kittanning, another trail led north to Franklin. Traces of trails traveling north/south were found in Buffalo Township.

Another path, the old Venango Trail, led from the banks of the Ohio River north through Cranberry Township.

George Washington, in his 1753 mission to the French at Fort LeBoeuf, traveled on the Logstown Trail up the Beaver River and Connoquenessing Creek and intersected the Venango Trail near Murderingtown. He traveled along the Connoquenessing Creek and then east to Kittanning.

Washington’s journey was emblematic of the colonial conflicts between the French and the British on this continent which drew in the Native American tribes. The genesis of the conflict was when the French began construction of a series of forts intending to connect Canada with Louisiana. The French built a fort on Presque Isle in Erie and Fort LeBoeuf at what would become Franklin.

According to Sipe’s history, the governor of Virginia sent George Washington in the fall of 1753 to Fort LeBoeuf to assert British sovereignty over the area, a claim which was rejected by the French. This led to the French and Indian War which raged between 1754 and 1763.

In his mission north the young Washington took the Venango Trail through the heart of what would become Butler County, crossing the Connoquenessing Creek near Amberson’s Bridge, passing through Prospect and the future townships of Jackson, Lancaster, Muddy Creek, Franklin, Brady, Slippery Rock, Cherry and Marion.

According to Sipe, on his way back to Virginia, Washington passed through Muderingtown near the southwest corner of Butler County “obviously a locale where murder was common or had been common.”

Washington and his guide Christopher Gist met a Native American who offered to lead them to the forks of the Ohio River. But after a few miles march, the Native American turned and fired his musket at Washington. The shot missed and the two subdued the would-be assassin. The incident is believed to have happened at a site in Forward Township.

After the Revolutionary War, the fledgling American government took arms against the tribes allied with the British who were not part of the American-British peace treaty.

In October 1791, Gen. Arthur St. Clair with 1,800 men was ordered to subjugate the Native American tribes in what is now Ohio. On Nov. 4, 1791, his force was ambushed on the banks of the Wabash River by a force of Delawares, Shawnees and Miami tribes and half his command was killed, wounded or captured. One of the casualties was his second-in-command, Gen. Richard Butler, who gave the future county and county seat their name.

Later, in April 13, 1793, Gen. “Mad Anthony” Wayne and a force of 3,600 militia and 1,600 mounted Kentucky volunteers soundly defeated the Native Americans, including Shawnees and Ottawas, at the Battle of Fallen Timbers in what is now Maumee, Ohio.

This led to the 1795 treaty of Greenville, which ceded to the United States 25,000 square miles of land west of the Allegheny River and forced Native Americans tribes to northwestern Ohio.

However, as late as 1796 there was a small band of Native Americans living in a village in Bruin. And in 1812, a village of Moravian Native Americans lived near West Liberty. They had by converted by Moravian missionary Charles Frederick Post, who traveled into the region in 1758.