next, to charge and command them to love the Christians, and particularly to live in peace with me; that many governors had been in the river, but that no governor had come himself to live and stay here before; and having now such a one that treated them so well, they should never do him or his people any wrong. At every sentence of which they shouted and said, 'Amen,' in their way.

"The justice they have is pecuniary. In case of any wrong or evil fact-be it murder itself-they atone by feasts and presents of their wampum, which is proportioned to the of fense or person injured, or of the sex they are of; for, in case they kill a woman, they pay double, and the reason they render is that she can raise children, which men can not do. It is rare that they fall out, if sober; and, if drunk, forgive it, saying it was the drink and not the man that abused them.

"We have agreed that, in all differences between us, six of each side shall settle the matter. Do not abuse them, but let them have justice, and you win them. The worst is that they are the worse for the Christians, who have propagated their views, and yielded them tradition for ill and not for good things. But, as low an ebb as these people are at, and as inglorious as their own condition looks, the Christians have not outlived their right, with all the pretensions to a higher manifestation. What good, then, might not a good people ingraft, where there is so distinct a knowledge left between good and evil?

"I beseech God to incline the hearts of all who come into these parts to outlive the knowledge of the natives by fixed obedience to the greater knowledge of the will of God; for it were miserable, indeed, for us to fall under the just censure of the poor Indians' consciences, while we make professions of things so far transcending.

"For the original, I am ready to believe them of the Jewish race; I mean of the stock of the ten tribes-and that for the following reasons: First. They were to go to a land not planted or known, which, to be sure, Asia and Africa were, if not Europe; and he that intended that extraordinary judgment upon them, might make the passage not uneasy to them, as it is not impossible in itself, from the eastermost part of

Asia to the westermost part of America. In the next place, I find them of like countenance, and their children of so lively resemblance that a man would think himself in Duke's place or Berry street, in London, when he seeth them. But this is not all. They agree in rites; they reckon by moons; they offer their first fruits; they have a kind of feast of tabernacles; they are said to lay their altar upon twelve stones; their mourning a year; customs of women; with many other things that do not now occur."

CHAPTER III.

EVENTS IMMEDIATELY PRECEDING AND FOLLOWING THE TREATY OF PARIS, IN 1763.-CESSIONS BY FRANCE AND SPAIN OF THEIR RIGHTS TO TERRITORY EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI.-CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC.-TROOPS RAISED IN PENNSYLVANIA AND VIRGINIA.-BOUNTY FOR INDIAN SCALPS.-WHITES OCCUPY THE OHIO VALLEY.-ENTER KENTUCKY AND THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY.-RUPTURE BETWEEN GREAT BRITAIN AND HER COLONIES.— BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR, ETC.

As the colonies grew in numbers and increased in population, complications and wars with the Indian tribes increased. The peaceful relations existing in the Province of Pennsylvania between the races, from 1682 to about 1740, are an exception. In all the other provinces or colonies the Indian was regarded as an undesirable neighbor. His lands were coveted and wrested from him. To trace in the briefest detail the various conflicts that arose between the whites and Indians, from the time of the landing of the Pilgrims to our Revolutionary era, would fill a massive volume. It is not deemed necessary that these early annals be reproduced in order to a proper understanding of the Indian question.

We shall not go further back than the end of the struggle in which the French and English were engaged in war in relation to their territorial possessions in America. We should not go back thus far, were it not to allude to a remarkable character that appeared among the Indians at that time, and made a masterly effort in their behalf.

By the treaty of Paris, concluded February 10, 1763, the war between France and England terminated, and France renounced all pretensions to the possessions she had claimed east of the Mississippi, and made over the same to Great Britain. About the same time Spain ceded Florida to England, and thus the latter was vested with the ownership and sovereignty, so far as that depended on the consent of her rivals, of the entire eastern half of North America. In all the

years in which controversies and conflicts existed between European powers, touching their territorial rights on this continent, the Indians were involved, their natural love of war cultivated, and, as a consequence, they were demoralized. The few who sought their reclamation and civilization were powerless.

After the fall of Fort Du Quesne, in 1759, settlers from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia began to press across the mountains to possess themselves of the lands on the eastern or southern shore of the Ohio river and the valleys bordering on its tributaries, many looking ultimately to a home in Kentucky or in the "Territory northwest of the river Ohio." With the reverses of the French, the Iroquois went over to the side of the English, while numerous tribes in the west, who had fought on the side of the French, retired into the forest and remained on their hunting grounds. Hence, the settlers referred to were emboldened to go out and found new homes. There were many adverse claims to the lands, by companies holding under grants from the crown, or claiming on contracts of various kinds, and there were soldiers' claims under the proclamation of Dinwiddie, governor of the colony of Virginia. Notwithstanding these facts, thousands were preparing and in motion to go out and possess the country, taking no notice of the rights of the Indians inhabiting it. At the same period there was an incipient movement among the various western tribes, who, in the war, had followed the fortunes of France, to recover the possessions which England had won from her. This was called the "Conspiracy of Pontiac." This man was an Ottawa chief, and one of the most remarkable men that appeared in his time. By his skill, ability, and strategy, he had prearranged a combined movement upon the military and trading posts at Detroit, Michilimackinac, Lebeuf, Presque Isle, Sandusky, Miami, St. Joseph, Green Bay, Niagara, Fort Pitt, and other frontier posts, and had enlisted in the enterprise the Miamis, Ottawas, Chippewas, Wyandots, Pottawatomies, Delawares, Shawnees, and other tribes. The attack was to be made about the last of May, 1763. Each tribe was to surprise the garrison or post in its own locality, slaughter the

soldiers and other inmates, and then all were unitedly to turn upon the frontier settlements. The messengers of Pontiac bore from him to the different tribes the following speech: "Why, says the Great Spirit, do you suffer these dogs in red clothing to enter your country and take the land I have given you? Drive them from it! Drive them! When you are in distress I will help you."

In the language of the author of the Annals of the West: "This voice was heard, but not by the whites. The unsuspecting traders journeyed from village to village; the soldiers in the forts shrunk from the sun of early summer, and dozed away the day; the frontier settler, singing in fancied security, sowed his crop, or, watching the sun set through the girdled trees, mused upon one more peaceful harvest, and told his children of the horrors of the ten years' war, now, thank God, over. From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi the trees had leaved, and all was calm, life, and joy. But through that great country, the bands of sullen red men were journeying from the central valleys to the lakes and eastern hills. Bands of Chippewas gathered about Michilimackinac. Ottawas filled the woods near Detroit. The Maumee post, Presque Isle, Niagara, Pitt, Legonier, and every English fort was hemmed in by mingled tribes, who felt that the great battle drew nigh which was to determine their fate, and the possession of their noble lands. At last the day came. The traders every-where were seized, their goods taken from them, and more than one hundred of them put to death. Nine British forts yielded instantly, and the savages drank the blood of many a Briton. The border streams of Pennsylvania and Virginia ran red again. We hear, says a letter from Fort Pitt, of scalping every hour.' In western Virginia and Pennsylvania more than twenty thousand people. were driven from their homes. Fort Pitt, Niagara,

and Detroit were attacked, but not taken. [These were regular fortified forts. Pontiac commanded in person at Detroit, and would undoubtedly have taken it, but the plot was communicated to the commander in advance by an Indian girl, and hence he was prepared to defend his position. Pontiac, however, environed the fort for several months, keeping the