Pierre Chartier (abt. 1690 - 1774)

Born about 1690 in French Lick (Nashville), Tennessee

Ancestors

Died 24 Oct 1774 at about age 84 in Chartiers, Washington, Pennsylvania Colony

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Biography

Peter Chartier (1690—c.1759) (Anglicized version of Pierre Chartier, sometimes written Chartiere, Chartiers, Shartee or Shortive) was a fur trader of French and Shawnee parentage who became a tribal chief and was an early advocate for Native American civil rights, speaking out against the sale of alcohol in indigenous communities in Pennsylvania. He first attempted to limit the sale of rum in Shawnee communities in the Province of Pennsylvania, then launched a movement to prohibit it altogether. Conflict with the colonial government motivated him to lead his community of over 400 Pekowi Shawnees on a four-year odyssey through Ohio, Kentucky, Alabama and Indiana, eventually resettling in Illinois. He later fought on the side of the French during the French and Indian War.

Two communities (Chartiers Township and Chartiers (Pittsburgh)), several rivers including Chartiers Creek, Chartiers Run (Allegheny River) and Chartiers Run (Chartiers Creek), and two school districts (Chartiers-Houston School District and Chartiers Valley School District) are named after him.

Peter Chartier, son of Martin, followed his father's model, and married a Shawnee woman. After his father's death in 1718, he was granted 300 acres on the Susquenna River, land that his father had settled on. He traded with the Shawnee and later settled with them at the mouth of Shawnee (now Yellow Britches) Creek. He later removed to Conococheague. In 1730, he was licensed as an Indian Trader. He removed to the Allegheny after 1734.^[1]

"Peter Chartier, the half-breed French-Shawnee Indian Trader of the Cumberland Valley, who formerly lived among the Shawnees on the Susquehanna, opposite of Harris's Ferry, began trading at Allegheny as early, at least, as 1732. Some time after that year, he joined a band of Shawnees who were already on the Allegheny, or who had accompanied him thither from the Cumberland Valley; and had built the village which later took his name, on this place. Chartier himself appears to have become either a chief or a very influential leader of this band."^[2]

After an unsuccessful effort to convince Pennsylvania to limit the unlicensed traders from selling their wares (including undesirable rum) to the Shawnee, and by April 1745, Chartier appears to have switched allegiance from the "English" to the French:

"I have just received information that Peter Chartier, after disposing of his effects in this Government, has gone over to the enemy. His conduct for some years past has rendered him generally suspected; and it seems my reprimanding him for some exceptional parts of it is made use of, among other things, to excuse his infidelity. Had he been punished, as he deserved, for the villainous report he spread two years ago among the back inhabitants, in order to spirit them up against such of the Six Nations as travel through those parts of the country, he would not have been at this time with the enemy; but the apprehension that the Shawnee (whose perfidious blood runs partly through Chartier's veins), might resent upon our Traders any severities to him, restrained me from making use of such, and induced me to choose the gentle method of reproof, which his brutish disposition has construed into an affront. I am likewise informed that he had persuaded a number of the Shawnee to remove from their old town to a greater distance upon another river, and it is not to be doubted that a person of his savage temper will do us all the mischief he can."^[3]

In July 1745, Chartier, apparently with a commission from the King of France, and a group of armed Shawnee reportedly took a few traders as prisoners, and stole furs and skins worth 1,600 pounds.

"Chartier’s Creek in present Washington Co., Pa., is named for Peter Chartiere. He was alive as late as 1745. There is a suggestive document in 1778, when oaths of allegiance were given at Vincennes, Indiana Territory—among the mostly-French names was Piere Cartiee Charles M. Franklin, Indiana Territorial Pioneer Recs 1801-1815 (1983), 45. The son of Martin was probably not alive this late, but this could be a grandson. Among those who migrated with Peter Chartiere from Maryland to western Pennsylvania was Loyparcowah, son of Opehassah (Opessa) in the 1730’s (Charles A. Hanna, The Wilderness Trail (1911), 1: 190). Loyparcowah later went to Ohio."^[4]

From Wikipedia:

"Pierre [Peter] Chartier was born in 1690 at French Lick on the Cumberland River in northeastern Tennessee, near the present-day site of Nashville, where his father [Martin] ran a trading post.

His mother gave Pierre the Shawnee name of Wacanackshina, meaning "White one who reclines". Around 1697 his family moved to Pequea Creek in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

Pierre Chartier married his first cousin, Blanceneige-Wapakonee Opessa (1695-1737), daughter of Opessa Straight Tail and his wife, about 1710. They had three children together:

1. François "Pale Croucher" (b. 1712)
2. René "Pale Stalker" (b. 1720),
3. Anna (b. 1730).[15]

In 1717, Governor William Penn granted his father Martin a 300-acre tract of land along the Conestoga River in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. (One source says the grant was for 500 acres). Together the father and son established a trading post in Conestoga Town. In 1718 they moved to Dekanoagah on Yellow Breeches Creek near the Susquehanna River.

Peter Chartier was last seen in 1758 in a village on the Wabash River.

There is some evidence that Chartier [and his mother Sewatha Straight Tail] died in an outbreak of smallpox that had originated in 1757 in Quebec. It spread through Native American communities across North America.

Sources

1. ↑ The Wilderness Trail, vol. 1, p 171
2. ↑ The Wilderness Trail, vol 1, p 307
3. ↑ Governor to (Philadelphia?) Assembly, April 1745, quoted in The Wilderness Trail, vol 1, p 311
4. ↑ Corinne Hanna, "Early Traders on the Upper Potomac," link

See also:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Chartier Peter Chartier Wikipedia page

Historical Register: Notes and Queries, Biographical and Genealogical. VOl 2  N.p., n.p, 1884. Accessed December 2022, Google Books https://www.google.com/books/edition/Historical_Register/wdIUAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0