empt and abhorrence of
civilized life, from the brutality of his father, the lapse from virtue
of his mother, and the corruptions of the community in which he had his
birth and passed his boyhood; that, while acting with the whites against
the Indians on the Virginia border, he was stung to the quick, and
deeply offended by the appointment to a station over his head, of one
who was his junior in years, and had rendered nothing like his services
to the frontiers; and that, when attached as a scout to Dunmore's
expedition, an indignity was heaped upon him which thoroughly soured his
nature, and drove him to the Indians, that he might more effectually
execute a vengeance which he swore to wreak. The last reason assigned
for his defection and animosity is the most probable of the three, rests
upon good authority, and seems sufficient, his character considered, to
account for his desertion and subsequent career among the Indians.

The history of the indignity alluded to, as it has reached the
writer[47] from one who was associated with Girty and a partaker in it,
is as follows: The two were acting as scouts in the expedition set on
foot by Governor Dunmore, of Virginia, in the year 1774, against the
Indian towns of Ohio. The two divisions of the force raised for this
expedition, the one commanded by Governor Dunmore in person, the other
by General Andrew Lewis, were by the orders of the governor to form a
junction at Point Pleasant, where the Great Kenhawa empties into the
Ohio. At this place, General Lewis arrived with his command on the
eleventh or twelfth of September; but after remaining here two or three
weeks in anxious expectation of the approach of the other division, he
received dispatches from the governor, informing him that Dunmore had
changed his plan, and determined to march at once against the villages
on the Scioto, and ordering him to cross the Ohio immediately and join
him as speedily as possible. It was during the delay at the Point that
the incident occurred which is supposed to have had such a tremendous
influence upon Girty's after-life. He and his associate scout had
rendered some two or three months' services, for which they had as
yet drawn no part of their pay; and in their present idleness they
discovered means of enjoyment, of which they had not money to avail
themselves. In this strait, they called upon Gen. Lewis in person,
at his quarters, and demanded their pay. For some unknown cause this
was