situated, having a fine creek bordering on the east side of the river in front, and a large mountain in the rear, which forms this place a triangular form."1

The following account of an extraordinary adventure and escape of a messenger, coming from Sullivan's camp to Easton, illustrates how little pleasure there was in traveling then, even in the rear of his army :

S',

Sunday Morning.

Sullivan's Stores, 1st July, 1779.

This will inform you of the most singular event that perhaps you ever met with.-One of my Expresses, (Viz',) James Cook on his return from Weyoming this day, about the middle of the afternoon, in the Swamp was fired upon by the Indians & Tories-he supposes between Thirty & Fifty Shot. One Shot went thro' his Canteen, one thro' his Saddle, one thro' his Hunting Shirt, one was shot into his Horse. Two Indians or Tories being yet before him, both discharged their Pieces at him, threw down their Firelocks with a determination to Tomahawk him-advanced within Eight Yards of him, at which Time he, with a Bravery peculiar to himself, fired upon them, killed one of them on the spot and wounded the other, notwithstanding he threw his Tomahawk at the Express, missed him, but cut the Horse very deep upon the Shoulder. He got hold of Cook, thought to get him from his Horse, tore his Shirt, which is stained much with the Indian's Blood; the Horse being fretted by his Wound raised upon his hind Feet, Trampled the Indian or Torie under him, who roared terribly, at which time Cook got clear; the other Indians on seeing him get off, raised the Whoop as if all Hell was broke loose. He supposes he rode the Horse afterwards near four Miles, but by the loss of Blood began to Stagger, when he alighted, took

1 Report of Geo. Grant, Serg. Maj. to ye 3d Reg. of N. J., under Maj. Sullivan,

in 1779.

off his Saddle & Letters, ran about a Mile on foot, where he fortunately found a stray Continental Horse, which he mounted & rode to this Place.

It is easy to account for his getting the Horse as there are numbers of them astray about the Swamp. Mr Cook's Firelock was loaded with a Bullet & Nine Buck shot, & the Indians being close together when he fired is the reason why the one might be killed and the other Wounded.

From a Perfect knowledge of the mans Sobriety, Integrity and Soldierism, no part of this need be doubted. I am sir,

(Copy.)

Your most obt Humble serv',

ALEX'R PATTERSON. Directed,-To His Excellency Joseph Reed, Esq', Present.

Smarting under the chastisement given by General Sullivan, bands of Indians, which had returned, dexterous and wary, prowled around the cabin of the valley husbandman, and their tomahawks struck alike the laborer in the field and the child in the cradle; and yet, in spite of such adverse danger, besetting every hour with blighted hopes and ruined prospects, the settlement began to fill up with many of the former returning occupants.

In the fall of 1778, the region of Capoose, depopulated so completely of every white inhabitant, began to receive back some of the more resolute of its former denizens. A small portion of the fall crop, escaping destruction by mere accident or caprice, was thus secured, which, by the aid of bear-meat and venison, easily obtained, as every pioneer was a hunter, enabled them to pass through the winter with comparative comfort, unmolested by Tories or Indians. In March, however, 1779, the last predatory band, hoping for conquest, yet rejoicing in the ruin they had wrought, after attacking Wilkes Barre in vain, turned up the old Lackawanna to the settlement at Capoose. Isaac Tripp was shot in his own house on the flats, and

three men, named Jones, Avery, and Lyons, were carried away in the forest, and never heard of afterward.

GENERAL HISTORY RESUMED.

Instead of the repose hoped for by the inhabitants of Wyoming at the close of the American Revolution, the temporarily suspended animosities between Pennsylvania and Connecticut, gathering strength by the intervention of the Great War, broke out afresh with all the venom and violence begotten by a dispute involving every impulse of passion and every consideration of selfishness.

Connecticut, through its General Assembly, "holden at Hartford, Oct. 9, 1783, asserted its undoubted and exclusive right of jurisdiction & Pre-emption to all the Lands lying West of the Western limits of the State of Pennsylvania, & East of the Mississippi River, and extending througout from the Latitude 41° to Latitude 42° 2 north, by virtue of the Charter granted by King Charles the second to the late Colony of Connecticut bearing date the 25 day of April, A. D. 1662,"1 while it relinquished all claim to Wyoming after the unexpected decision of the Commissioners at Trenton.

Soon

flints'

after the promulgation of the Trenton Decree, "two boxes of musket cartridges, and two hundred riflewere ordered to Wyoming with Northampton militia, to look after persons not readily acquiescing in a decision known to be adverse to every principle of common sense and equity. Because the inhabitants refused to be ground into ashes unmurmuringly, they were re

ported "

wrangling" and full of a "Letegious Spirit.”

Toward the Lackawanna people, more defenseless-and exposed, because fewer in number, proceedings were instituted by the Pennymites more tyrannical and oppress

1

See Pennsylvania Archives, 1783, p. 116.

'Ibid., pp. 47-9.

ive than elsewhere, simply from the fact that this weakness could offer no resistance. Families were turned forcibly out of their houses, regardless of age or sex; the sick and the feeble, the widow and the orphan, were alike thrust rudely from their sheltering homes, while fields of grain, and all personal property, were stolen or destroyed by a band of men armed with guns and clubs, in the interest of the Pennsylvania land-jobbers.1

The decision of the Trenton court, looked upon as a simple question of jurisdiction only, without affecting the right of soil, was accepted in good faith by the people generally. "We care not," said they in an address to the General Assembly, "under what State we live in, if we live protected and happy."

The land-jobbers, in their passion for self-aggrandizement and emolument, not content to allow an interpretation of this decision favorable to the settlers, yet so foreign to their own selfish purposes, urged troops upon Wyoming, upon the arrival of which "the inhabitants suffered little less than when abandoned to their most cruel and

savage enemies. The unhappy husbandman saw his cattle driven away, his barns on fire, his children robbed of their bread, and his wife and daughters a prey to licentious soldiery." Memorials and petitions, couched in respectful tone and language, sent repeatedly to the Assembly, met with open derision or contemptuous silence. It was well for Wyoming, feeble yet unshrinking, to stand alone in the war-path in time of massacre and bloodshed, and grapple with the blows otherwise aimed at the lower inland settlements of Pennsylvania, but not to enjoy even the desolation of wild-woods without insult and disfranchisement. "The inhabitants," says Chapman, "finding at length that the burden of their calamities was too great to be borne, began to resist the illegal proceed

ings of their new masters, and refused to comply with the decisions of the mock tribunals which had been established. Their resistance enraged the magistrates, and on the 12th of May (1784), the soldiers of the garrison were sent to disarm them, and under this pretense one hundred and fifty families were turned out of their dwellings, many of which were burnt, and all ages and sexes reduced to the same destitute condition. After being plundered of their little remaining property, they were driven from the valley and compelled to proceed on foot through the wilderness by way of the Lackawaxen to the Delaware, a distance of about eighty miles. During this journey the unhappy fugitives suffered all the miseries which human nature appears to be capable of enduring. Old men, whose children were slain in battle, widows with their infant children, and children without parents to protect them, were here companions in exile and sorrow, and wandering in a wilderness where famine and ravenous beasts continued daily to lessen the number of the sufferers. One shocking instance of suffering is related by a survivor of this scene of death; it is the case of a mother whose infant having died, roasted it by piecemeal for the daily subsistence of her remaining children!"1

Elisha Harding, Esq., who was one of the exiles, says "it was a solemn scene; parents, their children crying for hunger-aged men on crutches-all urged forward by an armed force at our heels. The first night we encamped. at Capoose, the second at Cobb's, the third at Little Meadows so called, cold, hungry, and drenched with rain, the poor women and children suffering much."

In fact, the mutual hatred of each party, cherished from Capoose to Wyoming with every expression of bitterness, was so intense and general, and the settlers up the lesser valley shown so little clemency by the nomadic hordes of Pennymites sent up from Sunbury and elsewhere, that

1 Chapman's History of Wyoming, p. 138.