Nemacolin

The son of Checochinican (Chickoconecon), chief of the Fish Clan of the Turtle tribe, Nemacolin was born near the Brandywine Creek, probably close to the Swedish trading post at Fort Christina that later became Wilmington, Delaware. By a treaty with William Penn in 1726, various tribes either rented or gave up their land on both sides of Brandywine Creek. Nemacolin likely grew up near Shamokin, Pennsylvania, a village near the Susquehanna River to which the Delaware had retreated when faced with disease and colonization of their traditional lands by white settlers. His family grew to know trader Thomas Cresap, and moved south and west with the Cresap family, likely after a controversy between groups of settlers aligned with the colonies of Maryland and Pennsylvania known as Cresap's War.^[1]

Circa 1750, Cresap received instructions to improve the Native American path across the Appalachian Mountains through the Cumberland Narrows. He hired Nemacolin and his two sons, among others, to complete the task between Will's Creek (a trading post on a tributary of the Potomac River later the site of Fort Cumberland) and the mouth of Redstone Creek on the Monongahela River (a tributary of the Ohio River) which later became Redstone Old Fort and even later Brownsville, Pennsylvania.^[2] A side trail led to the residence of Christopher Gist. Gist led George Washington along Nemacolin's Path in 1753 and 1754. It was later improved to permit supply wagons for General Edward Braddock's army, and the General ultimately died on the route in 1755 after the disastrous Battle of the Monongahela near present-day Pittsburgh. About 1759, as the war ended, Nemacolin reblazed the path to the residence of James Burd which became Fort Burd and later renamed Redstone Old Fort.^[3] Another branch went to Uniontown, Pennsylvania.^[4]