rwards printed it.]

Petitions poured in from the miserable frontiersmen. "How long will
those in power, by their quarrels, suffer us to be massacred?" demanded
William Trent, the Indian trader. "Two and forty bodies have been buried
on Patterson's Creek; and since they have killed more, and keep on
killing."[347] Early in October news came that a hundred persons had
been murdered near Fort Cumberland. Repeated tidings followed of murders
on the Susquehanna; then it was announced that the war-parties had
crossed that stream, and were at their work on the eastern side. Letter
after letter came from the sufferers, bringing such complaints as this:
"We are in as bad circumstances as ever any poor Christians were ever
in; for the cries of widowers, widows, fatherless and motherless
children, are enough to pierce the most hardest of hearts. Likewise it's
a very sorrowful spectacle to see those that escaped with their lives
with not a mouthful to eat, or bed to lie on, or clothes to cover their
nakedness, or keep them warm, but all they had consumed into ashes.
These deplorable circumstances cry aloud for your Honor's most wise
consideration; for it is really very shocking for the husband to see the
wife of his bosom her head cut off, and the children's blood drunk like
water, by these bloody and cruel savages."[348]

[Footnote 347: _Trent to James Burd, 4 Oct. 1755_.]

[Footnote 348: _Adam Hoops to Governor Morris, 3 Nov. 1755._]

Morris was greatly troubled. "The conduct of the Assembly," he wrote to
Shirley, "is to me shocking beyond parallel." "The inhabitants are
abandoning their plantations, and we are in a dreadful situation," wrote
John Harris from the east bank of the Susquehanna. On the next day he
wrote again: "The Indians are cutting us off every day, and I had a
certain account of about fifteen hundred Indians, besides French, being
on their march against us and Virginia, and now close on our borders,
their scouts scalping our families on our frontiers daily." The report
was soon confirmed; and accounts came that the settlements in the valley
called the Great Cove had been completely destroyed. All this was laid
before the Assembly. They declared the accounts exaggerated, but
confessed that outrages had been committed; hinted that the fault was
with the proprietaries; and asked the Governor to explain why the
Delawares and Shawanoes had become unfriendly. "If they have suffered
wrongs," said the Quakers, "we a