Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. WILLIAM WILSON’S INDIAN TOUR. The men of the border did not feel themselves in danger from the British armies landed on the Atlantic coast, but from the beginning of the Revolution their homes and families were menaced by a more dreaded foe?the savage tribes of the wilderness. The quickly revealed plottings of Connolly at Ft. Pitt, to incite the Indians against the settlements, were believed to be a sample of what the British government would attempt on a general scale. As early as July, 1775, the second Colonial Congress, initiated measures to secure the friendship of the savages. The frontier was divided into three Indian departments, of which the middle department included the tribes west of Pennsylvania and Virginia, and three members of Congress, Benjamin Franklin and James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, and Patrick Henry, of Virginia, were appointed to hold a treaty with the Indians at Ft. Pitt.1 This treaty was held in October, with a few chiefs of the Senecas, Dela- wares, Shawnees and Wyandots. Guyasuta was the principal Seneca chief in attendance, representing the Iroquois dwelling in the Allegheny valley and in the Ohio country. As an Iroquois, he assumed to speak for the western tribes, and thereby aroused White Eyes, the Delaware orator, to declare the absolute independence of the Delawares. The- council was not harmonious, but the chiefs protested theirintentions to remain neutral, and Guyasuta promised to use his influence with the great council of the Iroquois in New York, to obtain a decision in favor of peace.3 1 American Archives, Fourth Series, vol. ii., pp. 1879, 1883. The Indians remained quiet during 1775 and the following winter, but it was not long until the agents of the British government outbid the colonists for a savage alliance. …
