had removed to Wyoming still retained their hatred to the English, a formal proposition was made to them to leave Wyoming and rejoin their brethren on the Ohio. To this proposition one difficulty offered itself: a portion of the Shawanese had embraced the Christian religion, and being attached to the Moravian Church, were determined to remain on the Susquehanna. An event however soon transpired which caused the removal of the Shawanese, and however trifling in its origin, produced an effect more powerful than the wishes of their Ohio brethren and the threats of the Six Nations. Disturbances had occasionally arisen between the Shawanese and the Delawares at Wyoming, and their mutual animosity had become so great as to break out into hostilities upon the least provocation. While the warriors of the Delawares were engaged upon the mountains in a hunting expedition, a number of Squaws, or female Indians, from Maughwauwame, were gathering wild fruits along the margin of the river below the Town, where they found a number of Shawanese Squaws and their children who had crossed the river in their canoes

apon the same business. A child belonging to the Shawanese having taken a large Grasshopper, a quarrel arose among the children for the possession of it in which their mothers soon took a part, and as the Delaware Squaws contended that the Shawanese had no privileges upon that side of the river the quarrel soon became general, but the Delawares being the most numerous, soon drove the Shawanese to their canoes, and to their own bank; a few

having been killed on both sides. Upon the return of the warriors both tribes prepared for battle to revenge the wrongs which they considered their wives had sustained.

The Shawanese upon crossing the river found the Delawares ready to receive them and oppose their landing. A dreadful conflict took place between the Shawanese in their canoes and the Delawares on the bank. At length after great numbers had been killed, the Shawanese effected a landing and a battle took place about a mile below Maughwauwame, in which many hundred warriors are said to have been killed on both sides; but the Shawanese were so much weakened in landing that they were not able to sustain the conflict, and after the loss of about half their tribe the remainder were forced to flee to their own side of the river: shortly after which, they abandoned their Town and removed to the Ohio. The Delawares were now masters of Wyoming Valley, and the fame of their triumph which was supposed to have driven the Shawanese to the West, tended very much to increase their numbers by calling to their settlement many of those unfriendly Indians near the || Delaware who remained on good terms with their Christian neighbors.

As the conduct of the French and Indians assumed a more hostile appearance, the Government of Pennsylvania established a Fort* on the eastern

*This Fort is said to have been built by Dr. Franklin in person.

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bank of the Lehigh River above the blue mountains, which received the name of Fort Allen, in honor of a gentleman then forming a settlement below the mountain on the bank of the same river. Opposite to this fort, and a small distance up the Mahoning Creek which falls into the Lehigh at this place, the United Brethren from Bethlehem about the same time built a Town, which they called "Gnaddenhulten," (huts of mercy,) and which was principally intended for the protection and residence of the Indians who had become members of their Society. These Indians were a part of the Delawares, and a constant intercourse was kept up between Gnaddenhutten and Wyoming, by means of a warriors' path which led across the mountains. The hostile Indians from the north were occasionally discovered in parties lurking about the settlements of the Christian Indians, and some treacherous person having murdered TADAME, the Chief of the Delawares at Wyoming, a General Council was assembled and TADEUSCUND, sometimes called Tedyuscung, a chieftain residing at Gnaddenhutten, was proclaimed Chief Sachem, who soon after removed to Wyoming, at that time the principal settlement of the Delawares. Not long after this event a body of hostile Indians among whom were supposed to be many whites disguised as Indians, surprised the Garrison of Fort Allen while incautiously skating upon the ice of the Lehigh at the mouth of Mahoning Creek, and having murdered most of them, the Fort and the Town of Gnaddenhutten fell a prey to the victors. The

Town was attacked in the night and set on fire; many of the inhabitants perished in the flames, while others were carried away captives. Those who escaped fled to Wyoming.

Such was the posture of affairs in 1754 when all hopes of a reconciliation between the Courts of Versailles and St. James being at an end, M. de Contraceur, Commander of the French forces in the West, arrived at the Forks of the Monongahela with a thousand men and eighteen pieces of cannon, in three hundred canoes from Venango, (a Fort which the French had built upon the bank of the Ohio,) and took by surprise a British Fort which the Virginians had built at that place.*

Orders were now received from England by the Governors of the several Colonies, directing them to form a political confederacy for their mutual defence, and to repel force by force. It was also enjoined upon them to conciliate as much as possible the Indians, and particularly the Six Nations, being directed "At so critical a juncture to put the latter upon their guard against any attempts which might be made to withdraw them from his Majesty's interests." A General Congress was accordingly appointed to be held at Albany, to which place the Indian tribes were invited, and where Commissioners attended from the British settlements. At this Congress a number of Indian tribes assembled, and having entered into new engagements to cultivate peace and friendship with the

English, made several very extensive sales of lands to the agents of the different Governments.

The Nanticokes, who still remained at Wyoming, and who retained too much animosity against the English to form an alliance with them, removed from the Valley during the year 1755 and began a settlement at Chemunk further up the river. part of them also migrated to Chenenk where they were under the more immediate protection of the Six Nations.

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Hostilities having now actually commenced along the whole frontier of the British Colonies; a party of Indians from the Six Nations fell upon the settlement at Shamokin,* murdered fourteen whites and made some prisoners, and having plundered a few farms returned to their own territories. During the same season the Nanticokes, who, having established themselves at Chenenk and being unwilling that the bones of their brethren remaining in Maryland should be exposed to the operations of English agriculture, sent a deputation from their tribe who removed them from the place of their de posit, and conveyed them to Chenenk where they were interred with all the rites and ceremonies of savage sepulture. The French continued their unremitted exertions to detach the Delawares from the interests of the English, and to strengthen their works on the northern and western frontiers, and built a fort which they called Du Quesne, at

*A settlement at the confluence of the W. & E. branches of the Susquehanna.