himself under General Forties, saved Fort
Pitt.

* For an account of Pontiac's conspiracy, see "The Old Northwest"
by Frederic A. Ogg (in "The Chronicles of America").

At this time the Scotch-Irish frontiersmen suddenly became prominent.
They had been organizing for their own protection and were meeting with
not a little success. They refused to join the expedition of regular
troops marching westward against Pontiac's warriors, because they wanted
to protect their own homes and because they believed the regulars to be
marching to sure destruction. Many of the regular troops were invalided
from the West Indies, and the Scotch-Irish never expected to see any
of them again. They believed that the salvation of Pennsylvania, or at
least of their part of the province, depended entirely upon themselves.
Their increasing numbers and rugged independence were forming them
also into an organized political party with decided tendencies, as it
afterwards appeared, towards forming a separate state.

The extreme narrowness of the Scotch-Irish, however, misled them. The
only real safety for the province lay in regularly constituted and
strong expeditions, like that of Bouquet, which would drive the main
body of the savages far westward. But the Scotch-Irish could not see
this; and with that intensity of passion which marked all their
actions they turned their energy and vengeance upon the Quakers and
semicivilized Indians in the eastern end of the colony. Their preachers,
who were their principal leaders and organizers, encouraged them in
denouncing Quaker doctrine as a wicked heresy from which only evil
could result. The Quakers had offended God from the beginning by making
treaties of kindness with the heathen savages instead of exterminating
them as the Scripture commanded: "And when the Lord thy God shall
deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them and utterly destroy
them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor show mercy unto them."
The Scripture had not been obeyed; the heathen had not been destroyed;
on the contrary, a systematic policy of covenants, treaties,
and kindness had been persisted in for two generations, and as a
consequence, the Ulstermen said, the frontiers were now deluged in
blood. They were particularly resentful against the small settlement of
Indians near Bethlehem, who had been converted to Christianity by the
Moravians, and another little village of half civilized basketmaking
Indians at