At Logstown, Colonel Crogan, and the officers of the fort returned up the river, and left the adventurers to pursue their voyage into the solitary realms beyond. About seventy-five miles below Fort Pitt they came to quite an important Indian village, called Mingotown. Here again, amid all these scenes of peace and beauty, where man might enjoy almost the bliss of Eden, they came to the sad evidences of our fallen race. The whole population was in turmoil. Sixty warriors, hideously painted and armed to the teeth, were just setting out on the warpath. Their savage natures were roused to the highest pitch of hatred against the Cherokees, for some real or imagined wrong. With demoniac rage they were going to rush upon some Cherokee village, at midnight; to apply the torch, to dash out the brains of women and children, to tomahawk the men; and, having made such captives as they could, to bring them back to their villages, and there, burning them at the stake, to inflict upon them the most fiend-like torture. It was also said that, about forty miles farther down the river, two white men had been recently killed. Who their murderers were was not known, or whether their object was plunder or revenge. This troubled state of affairs led Washington to hesitate whether to continue his voyage. He, however, decided to proceed, though with great circumspection. Having arrived at the spot, at the mouth of Captema creek, where the murder were said to have taken place, he found a small Indian village, two women only being there, as the men were all absent hunting. Here he learned that rumor had, as usual, been exaggerating the facts. Two traders had attempted to cross the Ohio, on the backs of their horses, swimming them; and one of them had been drowned. This was all. The voyage of two additional days, through unbroken solitudes, brought the party to an Indian hunting camp, at the mouth of the Muskingum river. An illustrious chieftain resided here, by the name of Kiashuta. He was a sachem of the Senecas, and was considered head chief of the river tribes.[71] Kiashuta was a renowned warrior. He had been one of the most energetic of the Indian chieftains in Pontiac’s conspiracy for the extermination of the English. The chief instantly recognized Washington. Seventeen years before, in 1753, he had formed one of the escort of the youthful Washington, across the wilderness country, to the French posts near Lake Erie.