Who was Queen Alliquippa?

Queen Aliquippa was a leader of the Seneca tribe of American Indians during the early part of the eighteenth century.

The story of Queen Aliquippa begins long before white trappers had ventured into western Pennsylvania, so no accurate record of her early life exists. The information that can be found is
extremely fragmented.

By the 1740s, she was the leader of a band of Mingo Seneca living along the three rivers – the Ohio, the Allegheny, and the Monongahela – near what is now Pittsburgh. In the words of another Seneca chief of the era, it was not unusual for women to occupy a position of power with the Iroquois. “Women have great influence on our young warriors,” he said. “It is no new thing to take women into our councils, particularly among the Seneca.”

By 1753, Aliquippa and her band were living at the junction of the Monongahela and Youghiogheny. 
These were rivers near the present site of McKeesport, Pennsylvania.

At a mere 20 years of age, Major George Washington of the Virginia colonial militia, was sent to the Ohio Valley to ask the French troops to leave the region. After completing his mission, Washington heard that the Seneca queen was angry that he had bypassed her on the first leg of his trip. The young major took a side trip to pay tribute to Aliquippa.

His journal entry of the visit to her in January 1754 was short and to the point, “I made her a present of a match coat; and a bottle of rum, which was thought much the better present of the two.” Washington
could never have imagined that this tongue-in-cheek comment would eventually be immortalized in
song and would be the best remembered event of Aliquippa’s life.

Queen Aliquippa was a key ally of the British leading up to the French and Indian War. She died
December 23, 1754.