CHAPTER XIII

KUSKUSKIES ON THE BEAVER

KUSKUSKA, Kishkuskes, Kishkuske, Kuskuskies, the Cuscuskoes, Coscosky, the Kaskuskies, Kuskusky, Cushcushking, Cuscuskey, Kiskuskis, Cascaski, Kaskaskunk, Cachekacheki, etc., as it was variously spelled by George Washington, Lewis Evans, Thomas Hutchins, John Mitchell,  George Croghan,  Conrad Weiser, Christopher Gist, Richard Peters, Frederick Post, William Irvine, John Armstrong, John Heckewelder, David Zeisberger, and the Marquis de Vaudreuil, was not one town, but three or four contiguous towns of the Mingoes, located along the Beaver River, at and above the junction of its east and west branches   the Mahoning and the Shenango.   This being the case, the writer prefers the plural form of the name, as given by Evans, Mitchell, Croghan,  Gist,  and Armstrong; that is   Kuskuskies.   In Durant's History of Lawrence County, Pennsylvania (the, site of the town is in that county), the author erroneously assumes that Kaskaskunk (a Delaware form of the word), and Kushkushkee were two distinct names for different localities, instead of being, as they were, two forms of the same word, which was originally applied to three or four contiguous towns of the Mingo or Six Nations Indians along the Beaver,1 occupied by the Delawares from Kittanning after 1756.2   Mr. Durant writes: "Two villages . . . were in this locality: one at the mouth of Mahoning River, called Kas-kas-kunk; the other upon the site of Newcastle, and called New Kas-kas-kunk. . . . Another famous Indian town was located on the Mahoning, near to the present town of Edenburg, and known as Kush-kush-kee. . . . There are various opinions as to the location of this village.   Some authorities locate it at the mouth of the

1 It is unfortunate that the National Bureau of Ethnology has made a similar mistake, in its map of the "Indian Cessions in Pennsylvania to the United States," published in the Bureau's Eighteenth Report. This map locates "Kaskaskunk" in what is now Butler County, twenty miles east of its true site; while "Kushkushking" is placed several miles above " Kaskaskunk," and likewise within the territorial limits of Butler County.

'Penna. Col. Rec, vii., 515.

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