The generally-received versions are tissues of exaggerations and absurdities from first to last. Wyoming has been uniformly represented as a terrestrial paradise; as a sort of Occidental Arcadia where the simple-hearted pious people lived and served God after the manner of patriarchal times. Stripped of the halo of romance which has been thrown around it, Wyoming is merely a pleasant, fertile valley on the Susquehanna, in the north-eastern part of the State of Pennsylvania. In the year 1765 it was purchased from the Delaware Indians by a company in Connecticut, consisting of about forty families, who settled in the valley shortly after completing their purchase. Upon their arrival they found the valley in possession of a number of Pennsylvanian families, who disputed their rights to the property, and between whom and themselves bickerings and contests were long the order of the day. Their mode of life was as little Arcadian as can well be imagined. Neither party was powerful enough to permanently oust the other; and although their warlike operations were conducted upon a small scale, they were carried on with a petty meanness, vindictiveness and treachery that would have disgraced the Hurons themselves. From time to time one party would gain the upper hand, and would drive the other from the Valley in apparently hopeless destitution; but the defeated ones, to whichsoever side they might belong, invariably contrived to re-muster their forces, and return to harass and drive out their opponents in their turn. The only purpose for which they could be induced to temporarily lay aside their disputes and band themselves together in a common cause, was to repel the incursions of marauding Indians, to which the valley was occasionally subject. When the war broke out between Great Britain and the colonies, the denizens of the valley espoused the colonial side, and were compelled to unite vigorously for purposes of self-defence. They organized a militia, and drilled their troops to something like military efficiency; but not long afterwards these troops were compelled to abandon the valley, and to join the colonial army of regulars under General Washington. On the 3rd of July, 1778, a force made up of four hundred British troops and about seven hundred Seneca Indians, under the command of Col. John Butler, entered the valley from the north-west. Such of the militia as the exigencies of the American Government had left to the people of Wyoming arrayed themselves for defence, together with a small company of American regular troops that had recently arrived in the valley, under the command of Colonel Zebulon Butler. The settlers were defeated and driven out of the valley. In spite of all efforts on the part of the British to restrain them, the Indian troops massacred a good many of the fugitives, and the valley was left a smoking ruin. But the massacre was not nearly so great as took place on