the other would commit some brutal murder. While
the chiefs and old Indians were delivering long-winded speeches to the
Peace Commissioners, bands of young braves committed horrible ravages
among the lonely settlements. [Footnote: State Dept. MSS., No. 56, pp.
279 and 333; No. 60, p. 297, etc.] Now a drunken Indian at Fort Pitt
murdered an innocent white man, the local garrison of regular troops
saving him with difficulty from being lynched [Footnote: Denny's
Journal, p. 259.]; now a band of white ruffians gathered to attack some
peaceable Indians who had come in to treat [Footnote: State Dept. MSS.,
No. 56, p. 255.]; again a white man murdered an unoffending Indian, and
was seized by a Federal officer, and thrown into chains, to the great
indignation of his brutal companions [Footnote: _Do_., No. 150, vol.
ii., p. 296.]; and yet again another white man murdered an Indian, and
escaped to the woods before he could be arrested. [Footnote: Draper MSS.
Clark, Croghan, and Others to Delawares, August 28, 1785.]

Bloodshed Begun.

Under such conditions the peace negotiations were doomed from the
outset. The truce on the border was of the most imperfect description;
murders and robberies by the Indians, and acts of vindictive retaliation
or aggression by the whites, occurred continually and steadily increased
in number. In 1784 a Cherokee of note, when sent to warn the intruding
settlers on the French Broad that they must move out of the land, was
shot and slain in a fight with a local militia captain. Cherokee war
bands had already begun to harry the frontier and infest the Kentucky
Wilderness Road. [Footnote: State Dept. MSS., No. 48, p. 277.] At the
same time the northwestern Indians likewise committed depredations, and
were only prevented from making a general league against the whites by
their own internal dissensions--the Chickasaws and Kickapoos being
engaged in a desperate war. [Footnote: _Do_., Muehlenberg's Letter.] The
Wabash Indians were always threatening hostilities. The Shawnees for
some time observed a precarious peace, and even, in accordance with
their agreement, brought in and surrendered a few white prisoners; and
among the Delawares and Wyandots there was also a strong friendly party;
but in all three tribes the turbulent element was never under real
control, and it gradually got the upper hand. Meanwhile the Georgians
and Creeks in the south were having experiences of precisely the same
kind--treatie