The Winning of the West, Volume 4: Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807Roosevelt, Theodore
History
The Winning of the West, Volume 4: Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807
Roosevelt, Theodore
Northwest, Old -- History; United States -- Territorial expansion; West (U.S.) -- History
Utter Untrustworthiness of the Indians.
The warriors who had engaged in this raid on their former friends, the
settlers along the Alleghany. retreated two or three days' journey into
the wilderness to an appointed place, where they found their families.
One of the Girtys was with the Indians. No sooner had the last of the
warriors come in, with their scalps and prisoners, including the boy
Brickell, than ten of their number deliberately started back to
Pittsburgh, to pass themselves as friendly Indians, and trade. In a
fortnight they returned laden with goods of various kinds, including
whiskey. Some of the inhabitants, sore from disaster, suspected that
these Indians were only masquerading as friendly, and prepared to attack
them; but one of the citizens warned them of their danger and they
escaped. Their effrontery was as remarkable as their treachery and
duplicity. They had suddenly attacked and massacred settlers by whom
they had never been harmed, and with whom they preserved an appearance
of entire friendship up to the very moment of the assault. Then, their
hands red with the blood of their murdered friends, they came boldly
into Pittsburgh, among the near neighbors of these same murdered men,
and stayed there several days to trade, pretending to be peaceful allies
of the whites. With savages so treacherous and so ferocious it was a
mere impossibility for the borderers to distinguish the hostile from the
friendly, as they hit out blindly to revenge the blows that fell upon
them from unknown hands. Brutal though the frontiersmen often were, they
never employed the systematic and deliberate bad faith which was a
favorite weapon with even the best of the red tribes.
The Federal Authorities Misjudge the Settlers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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