ooner 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.

The people who were out of reach of the Indian tomahawk, and especially
the Federal officers, were often unduly severe in judging the borderers
for their deeds of retaliation, Brickell's narrative shows that the
parties of seemingly friendly Indians who came in to trade were
sometimes--and indeed in this year 1791 it was probable they were
generally--composed of Indians who were engaged in active hostilities
against the settlers, and who were always watching for a chance to
murder and plunder. On March 9th, a month after the Delawares had begun
their attacks, the grim backwoods captain Brady, with some of his
Virginian rangers, fell on a party of them who had come to a block-house
to trade, and killed four. The Indians asserted that they were friendly,
and both the Federal Secretary of War and the Governor of Pennsylvania
denounced the deed, and threatened the offenders; but the frontiersmen
stood by them. [Footnote: State Department MSS., Washington Papers, Ex.
C., p. 11, etc. Presly Neville