Kittanning (village)

Kittanning Village
Kit-Han-Nee
Historic Native American village
Plaque at the site of Kittanning Village
Plaque at the site of Kittanning Village
Etymology: Unami: kithanink kit- 'big' + hane 'mountain river' + -ink (suffix used in place names). "The main river"[1]: 356 
Location of Kittanning Village in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania
Location of Kittanning Village in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania
Location of Pennsylvania in the United States
Location of Pennsylvania in the United States
Coordinates: 40°49′12″N 79°31′17″W / 40.820085°N 79.521398°W / 40.820085; -79.521398
StatePennsylvania
Present-day CommunityKittanning, Pennsylvania
Founded1724-1725
Demolished8 September 1756
Population
 • Estimate 
(1754)
300−400[2]: 46 [3]: 9 
Kittanning (top right) and other Native American villages and points of interest, most circa 1750s

Kittanning (Lenape Kithanink; pronounced [kitˈhaːniŋ]) was an 18th-century Native American village in the Ohio Country, located on the Allegheny River at present-day Kittanning, Pennsylvania. The village was at the western terminus of the Kittanning Path, an Indian trail that provided a route across the Alleghenies between the Ohio and Susquehanna river basins.[1]: 183 

Together with Logstown, Pickawillany, Sandusky, and Lower Shawneetown, Kittanning was one of several large multiethnic and autonomous "Indian republics" made up of a variety of smaller disparate social groups: village fragments, extended families, or individuals, often survivors of epidemics and refugees from conflicts with other Native Americans or with Europeans.[4]

Kittanning served as a staging area for Delaware and Shawnee raids on British colonial settlements during the French and Indian War, until Pennsylvania provincial troops under the command of Colonel John Armstrong destroyed the village on 8 September 1756.

  1. ^ a b Charles Augustus Hanna, The Wilderness Trail: Or, The Ventures and Adventures of the Pennsylvania Traders on the Allegheny Path, Volume 1, Putnam's sons, 1911
  2. ^ Grimes, Richard S. The Western Delaware Indian Nation, 1730–1795: Warriors and Diplomats. Lehigh University Press, 2017.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Barr was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815 Cambridge studies in North American Indian history, Cambridge University Press, 1991. ISBN 1139495682