In this deposition McKee states he had a store near the Big Island, and that “on the 12th or 13th of this instant, January, about 7 o’clock in the morning, the Indians of the town came to the deponent’s store and told him they had heard the Dead Halloa and were much surprised at it. Whereupon he, with a servant of his, took a canoe and went over to the island, and in his passage heard the Indians belonging to the town call over to those on the island. To which they answered that the white men had killed some of their men. A council was called, and this deponent attended at the Council House and was admitted.” At the council the leader of the Iroquois war band informed the Shawnee of an attack made upon their war expedition in Virginia, in which four Indians were killed. McKee addressed the council, reminding them that these disorders had not happened in Pennsylvania, and urged them to press in their council a treaty of peace with Pennsylvania. The Shawnee did not receive the suggestion kindly. A short time after McKee was informed by a white woman, who had been taken prisoner, that it was left with the Shawnee to deal with him as they pleased and that they were going to hold a council concerning him at some distance from the town, and that if he did not escape he would certainly be cut off. McKee realized the advice was timely and, with his servant, they departed, leaving all his goods behind. The two traveled three days and three nights before they believed themselves out of danger. Captain Thomas McKee was in command at Fort Hunter in 1756. He died near McKee’s Half Falls, on the eastern side of the Susquehanna, in 1772, leaving two sons, Alexander and James. The former was then at Fort Pitt as an assistant to George Croghan, the deputy Indian agent for the Crown, and where he owned a large tract of land at the mouth of the Chartiers Creek, including McKee’s Rock, still a noted landmark on the Ohio River, just below Pittsburgh. When he deserted from the garrison at Fort Pitt and joined the British in 1777 his possessions in Pennsylvania passed to his brother, whose descendants are still living in Allegheny County. If the woman Captain Thomas McKee had made his wife was the white captive of the Shawnee, who had been adopted into their tribe, it is not hard to understand why her son, Alexander the renegade, should have inherited a half-savage nature. This would be even more true if his mother was a Shawnee squaw. His adherence to the British Government when the Revolution came, a government which had so long been his paymaster, is less to be wondered at than his temporary defection therefrom during the first two years of the struggle. ---------- Work Commenced on Erection of Fort Henry January 25, 1756