there and settle, which he did in 1784, locating on what is now known as the Beisel farm, about one mile from Drums. As there was no road for a vehicle he crossed the mountain, and, on his back, carried all his worldly goods. In the absence of other conveniences he fixed a couple of beegums to carry the children in, and these were swung across a horse's back and thus carried on the journey. It is related that on the way the cord broke and 'down came beegums, babies and all,' but after rolling and tumbling down the mountain side awhile they were again securely tied and across the animals back safely resumed the journey. When Balliett reached his chosen spot a residence was made by placing poles against and around a tree, over which branches and leaves afforded a protection. In time a real log cabin was put up, but after a year of comfort therein this was destroyed, and the contents were a total loss.

The following is an official letter, dated September 20, 1780, and throws some light on the transaction-copied from the Pennsylvania Archives:

I take the earliest opportunity to acquaint your excellency of the distressed and dangerous situation of our frontier inhabitants and the misfortune happened to our volunteers stationed at the Gnaden Hutts; they having received intelligence that a number of disaffected persons live near the Susquehanna at a place called the Scotch Valley, who have been suspected to hold up correspondence with the Indians and the tories in the country. They sat out on the 8th inst. for that place to see whether they might be able to find out anything of that nature, but were attacked on the 10th at noon about eight miles from that settlement, by a large body of Indians and tories (as one had red hair). (Our men numbered 41; the enemy supposed twice that; other estimates placed them at 250 to 300.) * * Twenty out of fortyone have since come in, several of whom are wounded. It is also reported too that Lieut. John Moyer had been made a prisoner, and made his escape from them again and returned to Wyoming.

On the first notice of the unfortunate event, the officers of the militia have exerted themselves to get volunteers out of their respective divisions to go up and bury the dead. Their labors proved not in vain. We collected about 150 men and officers from Col. Giger's and my own command, who would undergo the fatigue and danger to go there and pay that respect to their slaughtered brethren, due to men who fell in support of the freedom of their country. On the 15th we took up our line of march (want of ammunition prevented going sooner). On the 17th we arrived at the place of action, where we found ten of our soldiers dead, scalped, stripped naked and in a most cruel and barbarous manner tomahawked, their throats cut, etc., whom we buried and returned without even seeing any of their black allies and bloody executors of British tyranny. I can not conclude without observing that the Cols. Kern, of the third battalion, and Giger, of the sixth, who is upwards of sixty years of age, together with all the officers and men, have encountered their many and high hills and mountains with the greatest satisfaction and discipline imaginable; and their countenances appeared to be eager to engage with their tyrannical enemies, who are employed by the British court and equipped at their expense, as appeared by a new fuse and several gun barrels, etc., bent and broken in pieces with a British stamp thereon, found by our men. We also have great reason to believe that several of the Indians had been killed by our men, in particular, one by Col. Kern and another by Capt. Moyer, both of whom went voluntarily with the party. We viewed where they said they fired at them and found the grass and weeds remarkably beaten down; they had carried them off. * * SETPHEN BALLIETT, Lieutenant-colonel.

The following extract from a letter written by Col. Samuel Roy, dated Mount Bethel, October 7, 1780:

Col. Balliet informs me that he had given counsel a relation of the killed and wounded he had found and buried near Nescopeck. As he was at the place of action, his account must be as near the truth as any that I could procure, though since Lieut. Myers [Moyers], who was taken prisoner by the enemy in that unhappy action, has made his escape from the savages and reports that Ensign Scoby and one private was taken with him and that the party consisted of thirty Indians and one white savage; that they had thirteen scalps along with them; that several of them were wounded, and supposes some killed.

It is difficult, impossible to reconcile the conflicting figures above given as to the number of our men in the expedition or the number of the enemy. In Col. Stephen Balliett's account it looks as if there were forty-one in the expedition, and twenty returned; but there were not that many is evident. So far only thirteen are accounted for, and yet others, supposed killed, finally returned, having escaped from the scene of slaughter. Altogether sixteen men are really accounted for-ten

lay dead and this number were buried, and six escaped or were taken prisoners. Except Capt. Klader, who were these fallen heroes? No names are now obtainable of the nine, beside the commander, whose dust is in the unmarked graves where they fell. Is it possible the burying party did not know their names, and, therefore, never gave the world the short, bloody list? They were a little band of volunteers, not even enrolled, nor were there any company books or records from which we can transcribe the names for the bright immortality they so richly earned.

Joseph Nutimus, king of Nescopeck, or chief of the Fork Indians, Mr. C. F. Hill informs us, was a Delaware. Toward the end of his life he was known as Old King Nutimus. Mr. Hill maintains he was the chief instigator and actor in the massacre of the Moravians in 1755. The Indians occupied Nescopeck between 1742 and 1763. One of the earliest references to Nutimus was in 1733, when Thomas Penn speaks of an expected visit from him, and expected trouble from him, as, he says, in their last year visit, they "left a bag of bullets."

Nutimus and his tribe had the lands in the forks of the Delaware and Lehigh rivers above Durham, and the tribe made headquarters where Easton now stands. In this territory this chief was supreme, subject only to such restrictions as the Six Nations imposed on the subjugated Delawares.

Nutimus and his tribe always claimed they were the chief sufferers in the landtrade swindle that has gone into history as The Walking Purchase by the Penns. The two sons of William Penn were the proprietaries, and it must be acknowledged that there was shrewd jockeying on their part whereby they got immensely the advantage of the Indians in that trade. And the bloody retaliation, as usual, fell upon the heads of innocent settlers. This Indian chief and his people watched the proceedings of that "walk" and denounced it at the time, and never ceased to proclaim their contempt for the whole thing, and when the settlers began to pour in upon these rich and coveted lands in the forks, the Indians obstinately, and with increasing insolence, held their grounds; they were very angry at the white intruders, and prepared to give them the reception of "hospitable hands to bloody graves. After five years of contention, the Pennsylvanians appealed to the Six Nations to control or punish the insubordination of the Delawares, and a council was called in Philadelphia July 12, 1742, where Cannassatego, a chief of the Six Nations, delivered his famous address to the Delawares. He told them they had sold their lands, given several releases, and warned them that they deserved to be taken by the ears and shaken into some sense. He closed his bitter and taunting speech by peremptorily ordering them to move to the place provided for them at Nescopec, on the Susquehanna river. This order Nutimus and his tribe had to obey, and the Penns were again the winners. No further notice came from the tribe at Nescopeck until 1757, and the Franco-Indian war was on. Conrad Weiser was sent to Nutimus, and reported that his people were much inclined to side with the French, and Nescopeck was now a town where the enemy rendezvoused. Two Indian spies were sent up from Harrisburg, and they reported seeing 150 warriors. at Nescopeck, busy painting and dancing war dances. Gnadenhutten was burned and the people massacred in November, 1755. [Weissport is now built on that spot]. The slaughter of the inoffensive Moravians and the many murders about Nescopeck were simultaneous events largely, and showed an intimate connection with each other, and Mr. Hill has not much doubt but that Nutimus was fully cognizant, if not a participator, in the Moravian massacre.

It is believed that Nutimus, with his family, left Nescopeck about 1763, and finally joined the Delawares in Ohio.

John W. Jordan replied to Mr. Hill's communication in the Record in regard to King Nutimus. He contends that this chief was a true friend of the Moravians at all times, and that it was the Monseys that were engaged in the wanton massacre. He quotes from a diary of a trip down the river by Zeisberger, of date of October

10, 1744, an account of his party reaching Nescopeck and visiting Notimaes' [the correct name of Nutimus] cabin, where he was with his five sons and their wives; that the chief was not at home, but at work with his slaves [he owned five negroes] on his plantation below Nescopeck. Passing down the trail, the party met the chief at Nescopeck creek, and had a cordial and friendly interview.

Peter Hess was cruelly butchered by a band of Indians, said to have been led by Teedyuscung, in November, 1755. The marauders had been south on the river, and had captured Peter Hess, Henry Hess, Nicholas Cileman, Leonard Wesser, William Wesser and others. Returning to Wyoming, they camped for the night on the Pocono mountain. It was so cold they could not sleep, and they drank heavily and made a frolic of cutting Peter Hess literally in pieces, and tied the other prisoners to trees. To those of the prisoners who survived, it may well be said that nobody ever passed a more wretched night and survived.

In April, 1756, the governor and supreme executive council declared war against the Delawares and offered tempting prices for the scalps of Indian bucks and squaws over twelve years of age. The Quakers and Moravians denounced the offer for scalps, but the frontiersmen warmly approved of it. This proclamation of war, after many pow-wows, was suspended and the war averted. Then followed a period of five years when these frontiers were exempt from Indian marauds. Teedyuscung had withdrawn his bold charges of fraud in all the land purchases by the young Penns, except those in reference to the "walking purchase.

The anticipated blessings of peace after the last treaty at Easton-were of short duration. The Moravians re-established their missions at Gnadenhutten, Wyoming and Wyalusing and the frontiers soon recovered their former prosperity. In April, 1763, Teedyuscung's hut was set on fire and he was burned in it. The belief was

spread among the Delawares that the whites had committed the deed. In June following the Delawares and Shawnee murdered several families, and the Wyoming settlement was destroyed and scattered. These unprovoked and unexplained attacks excited the frontier settlers beyond all bounds. The Christian Indians at Conestoga were suspected of, and detected in, harboring hostile savages, and their removal or extermination was resolved upon. A number were killed by the exasperated men of Paxton; others were collected at Bethlehem, and, under the superintendence of David Zeisberger and Jacob Schmick, in April, 1764, they set out for Wyalusing, on the Susquehanna. They rested at Wyoming, and from this place proceeded by water to their place of destination, where they arrived after a journey of five weeks. Here they laid out a town, erected forty log houses and a meeting house, and 'named the place Friedenshutten--tents of peace.

John Penn, one of the proprietaries of Pennsylvania, and grandson of William Penn, arrived in Philadelphia and entered on the duties of governor in the fall of 1763; and in July, 1764, offered the following rewards for Indian scalps: "For every male above ten years of age, captured, $150; for every male above ten years of age, scalped, being killed, $130; for every female above ten years of age, scalped, being killed, $50." The war against the savages was now prosecuted with vigor by Gen. Gage, who sent several regiments of British troops into the western country and destroyed their towns. In November, Col. Bouquet had reduced them to a humiliating submission. The Delawares, Shawnee, and other tribes delivered up at Fort Pitt and other points, 300 prisoners, most of whom were women and children. The Christian Indians at Wyalusing continued to increase, and, in 1767, erected a large and convenient church, with a cupola and bell. This bell was the first that ever sounded over the waters of the North Susquehanna. In 1769 they made an additional settlement at Sheshequin, thirty miles above Wyalusing; but the whites beginning to crowd into Wyoming and along the river, the Indians. became dissatisfied with their location. With Zeisberger at their head they departed, in 1772, for the west, and were united to the Moravian Mission on the Muskingum.