e adjutant general. A
member of congress in 1784-85, he was in 1790 a member of the
constitutional convention of Pennsylvania, and died at
Rockford, Lancaster County, Pa., September 3, 1802--R. G. T.

[20] See p. 172, _note_ 2, for sketch of life and death of
Cornstalk.--R. G. T.

[156] CHAPTER IX.

While Cornstalk was detained at Point Pleasant, as surety for the
peace and neutrality of the Shawanees, Indians, of the tribes already
attached to the side of Great Britain, were invading the more
defenceless and unprotected settlements. Emerging, as Virginia then
was, from a state of vassalage and subjection, to independence and
self-government--contending in fearful inferiority of strength and the
munitions of war with a mighty and warlike nation--limited in
resources, and wanting in means, essential for supporting the unequal
conflict, she could not be expected to afford protection and security
from savage inroad, to a frontier so extensive as hers; and still less
was she able to spare from the contest which she was waging with that
colossal power, a force sufficient to maintain a war in the Indian
country and awe the savages into quiet. It had not entered into the
policy of this state to enlist the tomahawk and scalping knife in her
behalf; or to make allies of savages, in a war with Christians and
civilized men. She sought by the force of reason and the conviction of
propriety, to prevail on them to observe neutrality--not to become her
auxiliaries. "To send forth the merciless cannibal, thirsting for
blood, against protestant brethren," was a refinement in war to which
she had not attained. That the enemy, with whom she was struggling for
liberty and life as a nation, with all the lights of religion and
philosophy to illumine her course, should have made of them allies,
and "let loose those horrible hell-hounds of war against their
countrymen in America, endeared to them by every tie which should
sanctify human nature," was a most lamentable circumstance--in its
consequences, blighting and desolating the fairest portions of the
country, and covering the face of [157] its border settlements, with
the gloomy mantle of sorrow and woe.

There is in the Indian bosom an hereditary sense of injury, which
naturally enough prompts to deeds of revengeful cruelty towards the
whites, without the aid of adventitious stimulants. When these are
superadded, they become indeed, the most ruthl