Having shewn the bad state of our affairs among the remotest parts of the Cheerake country, and the causes.—I shall now relate their plea, for commencing war against the British colonies; and the great danger we were exposed to by the incessant intrigues of the half-savage French garrisons, in those hot times, when all our northern barriers were so prodigiously harrassed. Several companies of the Cheerake,[131] who joined our forces under General Stanwix at the unfortunate Ohio, affirmed that their alienation from us, was—because they were confined to our martial arrangement, by unjust suspicion of them—were very much contemned,—and half-starved at the main camp: their hearts told them therefore to return home, as freemen and injured allies, though without a supply of provisions. This they did, and pinching hunger forced them to take as much as barely supported nature, when returning to their own country. In their journey, the German inhabitants, without any provocation, killed in cool blood about forty of their warriors, in different places—though each party was under the command of a British subject.[132] They scalped all, and butchered several, after a most shocking manner, in imitation of the barbarous war-custom of the savages; some who escaped the carnage, returned at night, to see their kindred and war companions, and reported their fate. Among those who were thus treated, some were leading men, which had a dangerous tendency to disturb the public quiet. We were repeatedly informed, by public account, that those murderers were so audacious as to impose the scalps on the government for those of French Indians; and that they actually obtained the premium allowed at that time by law in such a case. Although the vindictive disposition of Indians in general, impetuously forces them on in quest of equal revenge for blood, without the least thought of consequences; yet as a misunderstanding had subsisted some time, between several distant towns, and those who chanced to lose their people in Virginia, the chiefs of those families being afraid of a civil war, {245} in case of a rupture with us, dissuaded the furious young warriors from commencing hostilities against us, till they had demanded satisfaction, agreeable to the treaty of friendship between them and our colonies; which if denied, they would fully take of their own accord, as became a free, warlike, and injured people. In this state, the affair lay, for the best part of a year, without our using any proper conciliating measures, to prevent the threatening impending storm from destroying us: during that interval, they earnestly applied to Virginia for satisfaction, without receiving any; in like manner to North-Carolina; and afterwards to South-Carolina, with the same bad success. And there was another incident at Fort Prince-George, which set fire to the fuel, and kindled it into a raging flame: three light-headed, disorderly young officers of that garrison, forcibly