Biography
Little is known about Alliquippa's early life. Her date of birth has been estimated anywhere from the early 1670s to the early 18th century.
By the 1740s, she was the leader of a band of Mingo Seneca living along the three rivers (the Ohio River, the Allegheny River, and the Monongahela River) near what is now Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
By 1753, she and her band were living at the junction of the Monongahela and Youghiogheny Rivers near the present site of McKeesport, Pennsylvania.
George Washington wrote of his visit to Alliquippa in December 1753 stating:
"As we intended to take horse here, and it required some time to find them, I went up about three miles to the mouth of the Youghiogheny to visit Queen Alliquippa, who had expressed great concern that we passed her in going to . I made her a present of a match-coat and a bottle of rum, which latter was thought much the better present of the two."
Queen Alliquippa was a key ally of the British leading up to the French and Indian War. Alliquippa, her son Kanuksusy, and warriors from her band of Mingo Seneca traveled to Fort Necessity to assist George Washington but did not take an active part in the Battle of the Great Meadows on July 3–4, 1754.
After the British defeat at the Battle of the Great Meadows and the evacuation of Fort Necessity, Alliquippa moved her band to the Aughwick Valley of Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania for safety. She died there on December 23, 1754.
Read more about this topic: Queen Alliquippa
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“A biography is like a handshake down the years, that can become an arm-wrestle.”
—Richard Holmes (b. 1945)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)