., 58.] that they could
not and ought not to submit patiently to the cruelties and depredations
of the savages; "they are in the habit of retaliation, perhaps without
attending precisely to the nations from which the injuries are
received," said he. A long course of such aggressions and retaliations
resulted, by the year 1791, in all the Northwestern Indians going on the
war-path. The hostile tribes had murdered and plundered the
frontiersmen; the vengeance of the latter, as often as not, had fallen
on friendly tribes; and these justly angered friendly tribes usually
signalized their taking the red hatchet by some act of treacherous
hostility directed against the settlers who had not molested them.

Treachery of the Friendly Delawares.

In the late winter of 1791 the hitherto friendly Delawares who hunted or
traded along the western frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia proper
took this manner of showing that they had joined the open foes of the
Americans. A big band of warriors spread up and down the Alleghany for
about forty miles, and on the 9th of February attacked all the outlying
settlements. The Indians who delivered this attack had long been on
intimate terms with the Alleghany settlers, who were accustomed to see
them in and about their houses; and as the savages acted with seeming
friendship to the last moment, they were able to take the settlers
completely unawares, so that no effective resistance was made. [Footnote:
"American Pioneer," I., 44; Narrative of John Brickell.] Some settlers
were killed and some captured. Among the captives was a lad named John
Brickell, who, though at first maltreated, and forced to run the
gauntlet, was afterwards adopted into the tribe, and was not released
until after Wayne's victory. After his adoption, he was treated with the
utmost kindness, and conceived a great liking for his captors, admiring
their many good qualities, especially their courage and their kindness
to their children. Long afterwards he wrote down his experiences, which
possess a certain value as giving, from the Indian standpoint, an
account of some of the incidents of the forest warfare of the day.

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 s