Besides the numerous outcroppings of coal which, in their journeyings, they must have crossed and recrossed for centuries, there were many places where the coal seams, having been cut through by creeks and rivers, were exposed fully to view. In this way, in the Wyoming district, the seven feet vein along the Nanticoke Creek had been disclosed, and the nine feet vein on Ransom’s Creek at Plymouth; while at Pittston the Susquehanna River had bared the coal seams in the faces of its rocky banks, and up the Lackawanna the black strata were frequently visible. But whatever knowledge the Indians had on the subject was, with proverbial reticence, kept to themselves. It is said that about the year 1750 a party of Indians brought a bag of coal to a gunsmith living near Nazareth in Pennsylvania, but refused to say where they had obtained it. The gunsmith burned it successfully in the forge which he used for the purpose of repairing their guns. The presumption that the Indians knew something of the uses of coal, and actually mined it, is borne out by the following incident: In the year 1766 a trader by the name of John Anderson was settled at Wyoming, and carried on a small business as a shopkeeper, trading largely with the red men. In September of that year a company of six Nanticoke, Conoy, and Mohican Indians visited the governor at Philadelphia, and made to him the following address:―― “Brother,――As we came down from Chenango we stopped at Wyoming, where we had a mine in two places, and we discovered that some white people had been at work in the mine, and had filled three canoes with the ore; and we saw their tools with which they had dug it out of the ground, where they had made a hole at least forty feet long and five or six feet deep. It happened formerly that some white people did take, now and then, only a small bit and carry it away, but these people have been working at the mine, and have filled their canoes. We desire that you will tell us whether you know anything of this matter, or if it be done by your consent. We inform you that there is one John Anderson, a trader, now living at Wyoming, and we suspect that he, or somebody by him, has robbed our mine. This man has a store of goods there, and it may happen when the Indians see their mine robbed they will come and take away his goods.” There is little doubt that the mines referred to were coal mines. The presence of coal on the same side of the river a few miles below Wyoming was certainly known, if not at that time then very soon afterward; for in 1768 Charles Stewart made a survey of the Manor of Sunbury opposite Wilkes Barre for the “Proprietaries’” government, and on the original map of the survey “stone coal” is noted as appearing on the site of what is now called Rosshill. This valley of Wyoming, the seat of such vast mineral wealth, was first settled by people from Connecticut in 1762, and in the fall of that year they reported the discovery of coal.