Mountain Biking To High Rock - Where Chief Ho-non-waw and Simeon Shaffer Were Killed

My Mt Bike Journey starts at this marker and goes due south, up the Bald Eagle Mountain where McElhattan Run and Spring Run join together.
This Pyramid was erected here in 1913 and says.

"This Marks The Site Of An Indian Town.
The Ancient Capital Of The Lenni Lenape, Canasorgu".

  

The Pyramid can be located along Spook Hollow Road, running west along the West Branch Of The Susquehanna River near McElhattan, Pennsylvania.  

At a altitude of 800 feet from Spring Run this dangerous rock cliff is where the local natives held signal fires "smoke signals" and where Simeon Shaffer and Chief Ho-non-waw both fell to their death's during a fight.

Chief John Logan Sign, on Reservoir Road.

It was originally an Indian path and a well known path used by Chief John Logan.  

A beautiful water fall can be seen at Zindel Park along Logans Path.

Photo by J Michael Mann

Spring Run has a good amount of Native Trout in it as does McElhattan Run.

Photo by J Michael Mann

I camped out below High Rocks, so in the morning, I could get a good 800 foot climb in.

 

An impressive rock covered mountain awaited me early the next morning.

It's a spooky yet wonderful place to be, thats for sure.

I was saddened not to find any Timber Rattlers while I was exploring High Rock, the face is on the shadow side facing west, Rattlers prefer to den on the morning sunny side of mountains. 
It was also a bit chilly that morning so maybe my Serpentine friends slept in? 

 

THE FATE OF SIMEON SHAFFER.

WHERE the McElhattan and Spring Runs come together in a turbulent medley of bubbling ripples, and birches and quaking asps thrive where the forests of ever greens once prevailed, there rises a perpendicular cliff of yellow, uneven stone to the altitude of eight hundred feet.

The sides are so steep that the few stunted trees stand out horizontally. On top of the forbidding cliff, which is dubbed by the mountaineers the High Rocks, a grove of pitch pines flourish, which in days gone by sheltered the Indian councils held on this natural fortress. Here it was that the powerful chief, Ho-non-waw, would sit on every clear morning, smoking his twisted pipe, and dream of perpetual victories. 

And here, also, the Indian signal fires blazed forth when the relentless race war was waging between the white man and red.

 In the peaceful lowlands, a couple of miles from the High Rocks, Simeon Shaffer, a young pioneer, had built a cabin and cleared a few acres of the dark, rich soil. With his beautiful wife and three small children he was perfectly content, and refused to be drawn into the dispute between the settlers and the aborigines.
 Frequently the Indians came to his cabin door to have their knives sharpened or to buy small lots of ammunition, and he seemed to be living among them on terms of honest peace.

In the last days of September, young Shaffer would be gone from home a day at a time on hunting expeditions, as he wished to lay in a stock of dried venison for the winter. He always left a loaded gun with his wife in case of an unexpected attack, but there really appeared to be no use for such precautions. 

But one night, when he returned from a successful hunt, he perceived that the door was wide open and no fire threw out its glow from the hearth. Inside the door lay the body of his wife, shot through the head (with perhaps the very ammunition he had sold the redskins) and scalped. The children were gone, carried off by the cruel savages. 

The heart-broken pioneer, in the presence of the moon and stars, vowed he would avenge the devastation of his home, and from a peaceful builder of a homestead he became a merciless enemy of the Indians, joining the Brady brothers in many skirmishes of the most desperate kind. Six months after the death of his wife he had killed eleven Indians, including Sa-lon-ah, son of Chief Ho-non-waw, and his ambition would have no rest until he had slaughtered the great chief himself. From a distance he had seen Ho-non-waw smoking on the High Rocks, but to approach him was no easy matter, as Indian pickets swarmed about the approaches to the mountain. 

He knew that if he shot at one of these scouts whom he might meet on his way to the chief's retreat,
it would bring the others to him, so he decided to make the climb unarmed, save for a hunting knife.

Stealthily he passed several sentries unnoticed, and onward and upward he crawled on the far side of the rocks, until daylight found him on the level bench, where he lay in a thicket of hog berries until the dignified chief strode to his favorite ledge and sat down to smoke his twisted pipe.
The time had come! Springing from his concealment, Shaffer rushed up behind his foe and gave him a mighty shove. There was a crunching of gravel, a tearing of garments, and as Ho-non-waw fell from the cliff, with diabolical presence of mind he seized the leg of the pioneer, and together they went down, down, eight hundred feet, tumbling over each other, and lit with a crash in the topmost branches of a chestnut tree. 

The Indians soon discovered their loss, and reverently removed the chieftain's body and gave it burial. 

But as for Simeon Shaffer, his bones were left to bleach and crumble in the chestnut tree. 

From the book Pennsylvania Mountain Stories by Henry W. Shoemaker.