The historian of the western region of our country cannot help regarding Pittsburg, the present flourishing emporium of the northern part of that region, and its immediate neighborhood, as classic ground, on account of the memorable battles which took place for its possession in the infancy of our settlements. Braddock's defeat, Maj. Grant's defeat, its conquest by Gen. Forbes, the victory over the Indians above related by Maj. Bouquet, serve to show the importance in which this post was held in early times, and that it was obtained and supported by the English government, at the price of no small amount of blood and treasure. In the neighborhood of this place, as well as in the war-worn regions of the old world, the plowshare of the farmer turns up, from beneath the surface of the earth, the broken and rusty implements of war, and the bones of the slain in battle.

It was in the course of this war that the dreadful massacre at Wyoming took place, and desolated the fine settlements of the New-England people along the Susquehanna.

The extensive and indiscriminate slaughter of both sexes and all ages by the Indians, at Wyoming and other places, so exasperated a large number of men, denominated the "Paxton boys," that they rivaled the most ferocious of the Indians themselves in deeds of cruelty, which have dishonored the history of our country, by the record of the shedding of innocent blood without the slightest provocation-deeds of the most atrocious barbarity.

The Conestoga Indians had lived in peace for more than a century in the neighborhood of Lancaster, Pa. Their number did not exceed forty. Against these unoffending descendants of the first friends of the famous William Penn, the Paxton boys first directed their more than savage vengeance. Fifty-seven of them, in militury array, poured into their little village, and instantly murdered all whom they found at home, to the number of fourteen men, women and children. Those of

them who did not happen to be at home at the massa cre, were lodged in the jail of Lancaster for safety. But alas! this precaution was unavailing. The Paxton boys broke open the jail door, and murdered the whole of them, in number about fifteen to twenty. It was in vain that these poor defenseless people protested their innocence and begged for mercy on their knees. Blood was the order of the day with those ferocious Paxton boys. The death of the victims of their cruelties did not satisfy their rage for slaughter; they mangled the dead bodies of the Indians with their scalping knives and tomahawks in the most shocking and brutal manner, scalping even the children and chopping off the hands and feet of most of them.

The next object of those Paxton boys was the murder of the christian Indians of the villages of Wequetank and Nain. From the execution of this infernal design they were prevented by the humane interference of the government of Pennsylvania, which removed the inhabitants of both places under a strong guard to Philadelphia for protection. They remained under guard from November 1763, until the close of the war in December 1764: the greater part of this time they occupied the barracks of that city. The Paxton boys twice assembled in great force, at no great distance from the city, with a view to assault the barracks and murder the Indians; but owing to the military preparations made for their reception, they at last reluctantly desisted from the enterprise.

While we read, with feelings of the deepest horror, the record of the murders which have at different periods been inflicted on the unoffending christian Indians of the Moravian profession, it is some consolation to reflect, that our government has had no participation in those murders; but on the contrary, has at all times afforded them all the protection which circumstances allowed.

The principal settlements in Greenbrier were those of Muddy creek and the Big Levels, distant about fifteen

or twenty miles from each other. Before these settlers were aware of the existence of the war, and supposing that the peace made with the French comprehended their Indian allies also, about sixty Indians visited the settlement on Muddy creek. They made the visit under the mask of friendship. They were cordially received and treated with all the hospitality which it was in the power of these new settlers to bestow upon them; but on a sudden, and without any previous intimation of any thing like an hostile intention, the Indians mur dered, in cold blood, all the men belonging to the settlement, and made prisoners of the women and children.

Leaving a guard with their prisoners, they then marched to the settlements in the Levels, before the fate of the Muddy creek settlement was known. Here, as at Muddy creek, they were treated with the most kind and attentive hospitality, at the house of Archibald Glendennin, who gave the Indians a sumptuous feast of three fat elks, which he had recently killed. Here a scene of slaughter similar to that which had recently taken place at Muddy creek, occurred at the conclusion of the feast. It commenced with an old woman, who having a very sore leg, showed it to an Indian, desiring his advice how she might cure it. This request he answered with a blow of the tomahawk, which instantly killed her. In a few minutes all the men belonging to the place shared the same fate. The women and children were made prisoners.

In the time of the slaughter, a negro woman at the spring near the house where it happened, killed her own child for fear it should fall into the hands of the Indians, or hinder her from making her escape.

Mrs. Glendennin, whose husband was among the slain, and herself with her children prisoners, boldly charged the Indians with perfidy and cowardice, in taking advantage of the mask of friendship to commit murder. One of the Indians exasperated at her boldness, and stung, no doubt, at the justice of her charge

against them, brandished his tomahawk over her head, and dashed her husband's scalp in her face. In defiance of all his threats, the heroine still reiterated the charges of perfidy and cowardice against the Indians.

On the next day, after marching about ten miles, while passing through a thicket, the Indians forming a front and rear guard, Mrs. Glendennin gave her infant to a neighbor woman, stepped into the bushes without being perceived by the Indians, and made her escape. The cries of the child made the Indians inquire for the mother. She was not to be found. "Well," says one of them, "I will soon bring the cow to her calf;" and taking the child by the feet, beat its brains out against a tree. Mrs. Glendennin returned home in the course of the succeeding night, and covered the corpse of her husband with fence rails. Having performed this pious office for her murdered husband, she chose, as a place of safety, a cornfield, where, as she related, her heroic resolution was succeeded by a paroxysm of grief and despondency, during which she imagined she saw a man with the aspect of a murderer standing within a few steps of her. The reader of this narrative, instead of regarding this fit of despondency as a feminine weakness on the part of this daughter of affliction, will commisserate her situation of unparalleled destitution and distress. Alone, in the dead of night, the survivor of all the infant settlements of that district, while all her relatives and neighbors of both settlements were either prisoners or lying dead, dishonored by ghastly wounds of the tomahawk and scalping knife of the savages, her husband and her children amongst the slain.

It was some days before a force could be collected in the eastern part of Botetourt and the adjoining country for the purpose of burying the dead.

Of the events of this war, on the southwestern frontier of Virginia, and in the country of Holstein, the then western part of North Carolina, the author has not been informed, farther than that, on the part of the Indians, it was carried on with the greatest activity, and its course

marked with many deeds of the most atrocious cruelty, until late in the year 1764, when a period was put to this sanguinary contest, by a treaty made with the Indian nations by Sir William Johnston, at the German Flats.

The perfidy and cruelties practiced by the Indians during the war of 1763 and 1764, occasioned the revolting and sanguinary character of the Indian wars which took place afterwards. The Indians had resolved on the total extermination of all the settlers of our north and southwestern frontiers, and being no longer under the control of their former allies, the French, they were at full liberty to exercise all their native ferocity, and riot in the indulgence of their innate thirst for blood.

[Next follows, in Dr. Doddridge's work, his account of Dunmore's war, which the author of this history has transferred to the chapter under that head in the preceding pages. See pp. 157-187. The chapter which follows relates an event which occurred during that war.]

CHAPTER III.

The death of Cornstalk.

This was one of the most atrocious murders committed by the whites during the whole course of the war. [Dunmore's war.]

In the summer of 1777, when the confederacy of the Indian nations, under the influence of the British government, was formed, and began to commit hostilities along our frontier settlements, Cornstalk, and a young chief of the name of Red-hawk, with another Indian, made a visit to the garrison at the Point, commanded at that time by Capt. Arbuckle. Cornstalk stated to the