Repeated efforts were made by the American Government, during these three years, for the conclusion of a treaty of peace. Several of the Senecas, and other New-York Indians were employed as mediators to this end. To some extent they succeeded, or at least were thought to have done so,--it being announced, late in the fall of 1792, that the Miamies had consented to a truce till the next spring; but at the end of that term, if not before, hostilities were renewed with as much vigor as ever. Only a few months previous, three Americans, sent to the enemy with flags and proposals of peace, were murdered in cold blood,--an act for which some palliating provocations were alleged by those who committed it, but which never was deliberately justified by their leaders. [FN] * * * * * [FN] "When the news was carried to the town (a Shawanese village) that a white man with a peace-talk had been killed at the camp, it excited a great ferment, and the murderers were much censured," &c.--_Marshall's Kentucky._ The brave Colonel Hardin, of Kentucky, was one of the messengers. But the successes of the enemy were drawing to a close. General Wayne had been appointed to the command of the American army, than whom perhaps no man in the country was better qualified to meet the emergencies of an Indian warfare in the woods. The Indians were themselves, indeed, sensible of this fact, and the mere intelligence of his approach probably had its effect on their spirits. They universally called him the Black Snake, from the superior cunning which they ascribed to him; and even allowed him the credit of being a fair match for Buckongahelas, Blue-Jacket, or the Turtle himself.