In the meantime, the colonies were not indifferent to the increasing difficulties of the times. Massachusetts already assumed a military aspect. The congress, which, spite of the opposition of the governor, continued to hold its sittings, seeing that the military stores were already seized by the governor, proceeded themselves to take measures for the defence of the province. £20,000 were voted for this purpose, and the collectors of taxes received orders no longer to forward their moneys to the government treasurer, but to a new one of their own appointment. Further, it was ordained that a number of the inhabitants should be enrolled as a militia of 12,000 men, ready to march at a minute’s notice; officers were chosen, and committees of supplies and safety held their regular sittings. Gage denounced their proceedings, but no notice was taken of his denunciations; “he had no support except in his own troops and a few trembling officials, while the zealous co-operation of an intelligent, firm, energetic, and overwhelming majority of the people, gave to the provincial congress all the strength of an established government.”[14] In November, at the very time when the king and the British parliament were resolving to keep terms no longer with the colonies, Massachusetts sent agents to New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut, to inform them of her measures, and to solicit their co-operation in raising an army of 20,000 men, ready to act in case of need. In the midst of all these growing internal excitements, and while the colonists were deeply occupied in the maintenance of their rights, the frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia were again visited by the miseries of Indian warfare. It was at this time that the family of the famous chief Logan, an old and faithful friend of the whites, was murdered in cold blood; and this and other atrocities committed by the explorers of Ohio and Kentucky, led to the sorrows of the present Indian war. Daniel Boone, the hunter of the Kentucky plains, was placed in command of a frontier fort by Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia, and a war of extermination was carried on against the Indians. At length, negotiations of peace were entered into, and it was on this occasion that Logan made his celebrated speech: “I appeal to any white man,” spoke the eloquent chief of the forest, “if he ever entered the cabin of Logan hungry, and he gave him not meat; if he ever came cold and naked, and he clothed him not. During the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin; and such was his love for the whites, that his countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, ‘Logan is the friend of the white men!’ I even thought to live with you, but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresop, last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relatives of Logan, not sparing women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature!