TREATY WITH THE INDIANS.

While this armament had been employed in the conquest of Guadaloupe, North America exhibited still more sanguinary scenes of war and devastation; which, in order properly to introduce, it will be necessary to explain the steps that were taken on this continent, previous to this campaign. In October of the preceding year, a grand assembly was held at Easton, about ninety miles from Philadelphia; and there, peace was established, by a formal treaty, between Great Britain and the several nations of Indians inhabiting the country between the Apalachian mountains and the lakes. The Twightwees, however, settled between the river Ohio and the lakes, did not assist at this treaty, though some steps had been taken towards an alliance with that people. The conferences were managed by the governors of Pennsylvania and new Jersey, accompanied by sir William Johnston’s deputy for Indian affairs, four members of the council of Pennsylvania, six members of the assembly, two agents for the province of New Jersey, a great number of planters and citizens of Philadelphia, chiefly Quakers. They were met by the deputies and chiefs of the Mohawks, Oneidoes, Onondagoes, Cayugas, Senecas, Tuscaroras, Nanticoques, and Conoys; the Tuteloes, Chugnues, Delawares, and Unamies; the Minisinks, Mohicans, and Wappingers; the whole number, including their women and children, amounting to five hundred. Some of the Six Nations, thinking themselves aggrieved by the British colonists, who had imprisoned certain individuals of their nation, and had killed a few, and treated others with contempt, did not fail to express their resentment, which had been artfully fomented by the French emissaries, even into an open rapture. The Delewares and Minisinks, in particular, complained that the English had encroached upon their lands, and on that account were provoked to hostilities: but their chief, Teedyuscung, had made overtures of peace; and in the character of ambassador from all the Ten Nations, had been very instrumental in forming this assembly. The chiefs of the Six Nations, though very well disposed to peace, took umbrage at the importance assumed by one of the Delawares, over whom, as their descendants, they exercise a kind of parental authority; and on this occasion they made no scruple to disclose their dissatisfaction. The business, therefore, of the English governors at this congress, was to ascertain the limits of the lands in dispute, reconcile the Six Nations with their nephews the Delawares, remove every cause of misunderstanding between the English and the Indians, detach these savages entirely from the French interest, establish a firm peace, and induce them to exert their influence in persuading the Twightwees to accede to this treaty. Those Indians, though possessed of few ideas, circumscribed in their mental faculties, stupid, brutal, and ferocious, conducting themselves nevertheless, in matters of importance to the community, by the general maxims of reason and justice; and their treaties are always founded upon good sense, conveyed in a very ridiculous manner. Their language is guttural, harsh, and polysyllabical; and their speech consists of hyperbolical metaphors and similies, which invest it with an air of dignity and heighten the expression. They manage their conferences by means of wampum, a kind of bead formed of a hard shell, either in single strings, or sewed in broad belts of different dimensions, according to the importance of the subject. Every proposition is offered, every answer made, every promise corroborated, every declaration attested, and every treaty confirmed, by producing and interchanging these belts of wampum. The conferences were continued from the eighth to the twenty-sixth day of October, when every article was settled to the mutual satisfaction of all parties. The Indian deputies were gratified with a valuable present, consisting of looking-glasses, knives, tobacco-boxes, sleeve-buttons, thimbles, sheers, gun-locks, ivory combs, shirts, shoes, stockings, hats, caps, handkerchiefs, thread, clothes, blankets, gartering, serges, watch-coats, and a few suits of laced clothes for their chieftains. To crown their happiness, the stores of rum were opened; they drank themselves into a state of brutal intoxication, and next day returned in peace to their respective places of habitation.