he Indians.[15]

In this eighteenth-century Dunkirk, the West Branch Valley was
practically cleared of settlers.

The Indians, it is true, proved troublesome to the entire advancing
American frontier; but unlike the French, whose menacing forts had been
removed in the recent wars, the Indians were unable to halt the westward
penetration. An expedition under the leadership of Colonel Thomas
Hartley was sent out expressly for the purpose of boosting morale in the
West Branch Valley following the Wyoming Massacre and the Great Runaway.
Colonel Hartley's letter to Thomas McKean, chief justice of Pennsylvania
and a member of the Continental Congress, gives bitter testimony to the
conditions which he observed in September of 1778:

You heard of the Distresses of these Frontiers they are truly
great--The People which we found were Difident and timid The Panick
had not yet left them--many a wealthy Family reduced to Poverty &
without a home, some had lost their Husbands their children or
Friends--all was gloomy.... the Barbarians do now and then attack an
unarmed man a Helpless Mother or Infant....

The colonel indicated, however, that strong militia support and some
offensive action would restore confidence and cause the people to return
to the valley. His interpretation of the significance of his mission is
quite clearly stated in the conclusion of his letter: "We shall not have
it in our Power to gain Honour or Laurels on these Frontiers but we have
the Satisfaction to think we save our Country...." Hartley's solution to
the Indian problem, which had driven off the settlers, was to expel them
"beyond the Lakes" excepting only the more civilized Tuscaroras and
Oneidas.[16]

Despite the danger from the Indians, the Fair Play settlers began
trickling back to their homes, or what was left of them, toward the end
of the Revolutionary War. Once the war was ended and the Fair Play
territory was annexed by subsequent purchase, the mass movement of
settlers to the West Branch Valley resumed.

Incidentally, Dr. Wallace in his _Conrad Weiser_ assesses one John Henry
Lydius with the major responsibility for the Indian massacres in central
and northeastern Pennsylvania. Wallace notes that Lydius' Connecticut
purchase from the Indians in 1754 caused "war between Pennsylvania and
Connecticut and ... [precipitated] the Massacre of Wyoming in 1778."
This massacre, as West Branch historians know, had its subseque