disorder. The savages considered this a flight, and commencing a most hideous yell, rushed forward with their rifles and tomahawks, and cut the retiring line to pieces. In this situation it was found impossible to rally and form the troops, and the rout became general throughout the line. The settlers fled in every direction, and were instantly followed by the savages, who killed or took prisoners whoever came within their reach. Some succeeded in reaching the river, and escaped by swimming across, others fled to the mountains, and the savages, too much occupied with plunder, gave up the pursuit. When the first intelligence was received in the village of Wilkesbarre that the battle was lost, the women fled with their children to the mountains, on their way to the settlements on the Delaware, where many of them at length arrived, after suffering extreme hardships. Many of the men who escaped the battle, together with their women and children, who were unable to travel on foot, took refuge in Wyoming fort, and on the following day, (July the 4th,) Butler and Brant, at the head of their combined forces, appeared before the fort, and demanded its surrender. The garrison being without any efficient means of defence, surrendered the fort on articles of capitulation, by which the settlers, upon giving up their fortifications, prisoners, and military stores, were to remain in the country unmolested, provided they did not again take up arms.

In this battle about three hundred of the settlers were killed or missing, and from a great part of whom no intelligence was ever afterward received.

The conditions of the capitulation were entirely disregarded by the British and savage forces, and after the fort was delivered up, all kinds of barbarities were committed by them. The village of Wilkesbarre, consisting of twenty-three houses, was burnt; men and their wives were separated from each other, and carried into captivity; their property was plundered, and the settlement laid waste. The remainder of the inhabitants were driven from the valley, and compelled to proceed on foot sixty miles through the great swamp, almost without food or clothing. A number perished in the journey, principally women and children; some died of their wounds; others wandered from the path in search of food, and were lost, and those who survived called the wilderness through which they passed the shades of death, an appellation which it has since retained.

Catrine Montour, who might well be termed a fury, acted a con. spicuous part in this tragedy. She followed in the train of the victorious army, ransacking the heaps of the slain, and with her arms covered with gore, barbarously murdering the wounded, who in vain. supplicated for their lives. She lived and died in New York state. Halleck, in allusion to the massacre of Wyoming, has the following interesting lines:

"There is a woman, widow'd, gray and old,
Who tells you where the foot of battle stept
Upon their day of massacre. She told

Its tale, and pointed to the spot, and wept,
Whereon her father and five brothers slept
Shroudless, the bright dream'd slumbers of the brave,
When all the land a funeral mourning kept.

And there, wild laurels planted on the grave

By Nature's hand, in air their pale red blossoms wave."

We find in a Connecticut paper, of 1831, an account of the recent decease of Mrs. Esther Skinner, of Torringford, in the one hundredth year of her age. Mrs. S. lost a husband, a brother, and two sons, in the war of the American revolution. She, with her family, was a resident of Wyoming, at the massacre of its inhabitants by the British, and the Indians and tories. Her two sons fell beneath the tomahawk, but the mother, almost by miracle, escaped with six of her children. Her son-in-law was the only man that escaped, out of twenty, who threw themselves into the river, and attempted to hide themselves beneath the foliage that overhung the banks. All the others were successively massacred as they hung by the branches in the river. He alone was undiscovered. The mother travelled back to Torringford, where she has led a useful life ever since—often cheerful, though the cloud of pensiveness, brought on by her sorrows, was never entirely dissipated. But one of her children survives her.

It would seem that Campbell, the poet, did not deem himself justified by the facts in the case, to picture, so severely as he did, the doings of the chieftain Brant, in the tragic massacre. In January, 1822, he addressed a letter to John Brant, Esq., of the Grand river, son of the Indian chief, wherein he makes his apologies for sundry severities upon the memory of the father; upon the ground, that he had been misinformed in following the usual printed stories of the fight; and conceding to the son, that he, the son, had convinced him of sundry misrepresentations. The truth is, that Brant, the chief, was extremely desirous of retaining the character of a humane man, and inculcated the avowal in his family, that he never did any thing savage and cruel personally; and also restrained and checked his adherents, when he could. The son declares that his father was not present at the scene of the massacre at all; but was in the rear at some distance.

When Brant was in England, after the peace of 1783, the most distinguished individuals of all parties and professions treated him with the utmost kindness and attention. In Canada the memorials of his moral character represent him as naturally ingenuous and generous; and from the premises, Campbell concludes with the assurance, that "he deems them sufficient to induce him to believe that he often strove to mitigate the cruelty of Indian warfare, and that, therefore, his opinion about him is changed."

Brant was a full-blooded Mohawk, born on the Mohawk river, and educated at an Indian school in New England.

John Butler, also, often endeavoured to exculpate himself indivi

dually, from the imputation of barbarity, and it was admitted by those who knew him before the war in Sir John Johnson's neighbourhood, that he bore the character of a gentle man, and that his son, an officer under him, who was killed at the crossing of Wood creek, was far more cruel than his father.

The Delaware chief, Tedyuscung, was settled at Wyoming in 1758, at the public expense, intending thereby to place him and his people as a frontier defence. They sent on a force of fifty men, as carpenters, masons and labourers, who erected ten or twelve houses, of fourteen by twenty feet, and one for himself, of sixteen by twenty-four feet. He was an artful, wily chief, of more than common selfishness and intrigue for an Indian, and withal was intemperate and aspiring.

As early as 1742, Count Zinzendorf visited the Shawnese, then settled at Wyoming, with a missionary's wife as his interpreter. He remained among them twenty days, and while there sitting by a fire, and writing in his temporary hut, his leg was crossed by a rattlesnake, seeking to warm itself by the fire.

Wyoming, the name given by the Delaware Indians, expressed the Large plains, and is a corruption of the original name of Maughwau-wame. The Six Nations called it Sgahontowano, the large flats, wano meaning a large ground without trees. It came to be called Wauwaumia, Wiomic, and then Wyoming. The Susquehanna, on which its rests, was so called to express muddy or riley river, the word hanna meaning a stream of water.

The last survivor of those who were in the action of the Wyoming massacre, was Major Roswell Franklin, who after having become the first settler of Aurora, New York, in 1787, died there in 1843. He had fought at that battle along side of his father, and had seen his mother and sister butchered near him, and then himself and his other sister were taken off prisoners, himself, for a service of three years, and his sister for eleven years.

Pittsburg and Braddock.

In the olden time, Fort du Quesne and Fort Pitt, and the thousand tales of "Braddock's defeat," were the talk of all the land, and formed the tales of all the nurseries, scaring the hearers as oft as the tales were told.

"The mind, impressible and soft, with ease

Imbibes and treasures what she hears and sees-
The tale, at first but half received,

Till others have the fearful facts believed!"

Such facts and relations as we have occasionally gathered, and not to be found in the ordinary histories, we purpose now to give in a desultory manner, in the following pages:

Previous to the year 1753, the country west of the Allegheny mountains, and particularly the point which Pittsburg now occupies, was the subject of controversy between Great Britain and France.

In the early part of that year, a party of Frenchmen from Presque Isle, now Erie, seized three English traders at Loggstown, and carried them back with them as prisoners. In the fall of that year, Robert Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, despatched George Washington, then in the 22d year of his age, to the French commander on Le Bœuf, to demand that he should desist from further aggression. In performance of this duty, Washington arrived at "the Forks," on the 23d of November, 1753. While here he examined the site immediately at the junction of the rivers, and recommended it as a suitable position for a fort. On the next day he proceeded from this place, and called on King Shingass, near M'Kee's rocks, who accompanied him on his way to Loggstown, where they met Monakatoocha, and other Indian chiefs, and held several councils with them.

While at Loggstown, it became a question which road he should take on his way to the French commandant at Le Bœuf, and Shingass advised him not to take the road by Beaver, because it was low and swampy. Proceeding on his journey, he arrived at Le Bouf, and learned from the French commandant that they were determined to take possession of the Forks in the spring. With this answer he left the French commandant, in company with Gist, his guide, on foot, and arrived at the Allegheny river, below the mouth of Pine creek, on the 28th of December. The next day they spent in making a raft with tomahawks, and towards evening embarked, and attempted to cross the river; but the ice driving very thick, they made very little progress, and were finally compelled to take refuge upon Herr's or Wainwright's island, where they were nearly frozen.

During the night it froze so hard, that they crossed on the ice in the morning. This circumstance affords a pretty strong inference that it must have been Wainwright's island; it lying close to the eastern shore, the narrow passage between it and the shore would be more likely to freeze in one night, than the wide space opposite Herr's island. Having crossed the river they proceeded without delay to Frazier's, at the mouth of Turtle creek. On the 31st of December, while Gist and the other men were out hunting the horses, Washington walked up to the residence of Queen Allequippa, where M'Keesport now stands. She expressed much regret that he had not called on her as he went out. He made her a present of a watch-coat, and a flask of rum, and in his journal he states that the latter present was much the most acceptable.

We here give a poetic description of first scenes at Pittsburg, viz. :

How changed the scene since here the savage trod,
To set his otter-trap, or take wild honey,

Where now so many humble printers plod,
And faithful CARRIERS hunt a little money!

How things have alter'd in this misty plain,
Since Allequippa hunted and caught fish,
Where Mrs. Oliver and her gentle train

Now read of Indians in the Wish-ton-Wish!

How short the time, but how the scenes have shifted,
Since WASHINGTON explored this western wild-land,
And with his raft, and Gist, his pilot, drifted

Upon the upper end of Wainwright's island!
'Tis seventy years ago, since that bold knight,
With blanket, cap, and leggings, then the tippey,
Attended by his 'squire, the aforesaid wight,
Paid his respects to good Queen Allequippa.
Her warlike majesty was quite unhappy,

To think our courtier had not sooner come:
He soothed her feelings with a blanket capo,
And touch'd her fancy with a flask of rum.
What changes, since from yonder point he scann'd
The meeting streams with his unerring eye,
And, 'mid primeval woods, prophetic scann'd
This great position and its destiny!

Since royal Shingass dwelt upon the cliff,
Which overlooks the foot of Brunot's isle,
And angled in his little barken skiff,

Where now for wood a steamer stops awhile.
When Shingass gave him his advice about
The best and nearest route to Fort Venango,
And then decided for the higher route,

Against the route by Beaver and Shenango.
But good king Shingass, it is very clear,
Was but a royal archer after all,

And not by any means an engineer,

And never heard or dreamt of a canal.

Monakatoocha, and the Delaware band,

Then held their council fires of war and peace, Where RAPP now cultivates the peaceful land,

And sheers his sheep, and wins the golden fleece.

How changed the scene, since merry Jean Baptiste,
Paddled his pereogue on the Belle Riviere,
And from its banks some lone Loyola priest
Echo'd the night hyma of the voyageur!

Since Ensign Ward saw coming down yon stream,
Where all was peace and solitude before,

A thousand paddles in the sunshine gleam,

And countless pereogues that stretch from shore to shore.

The lily flag waved o'er the foremost boat,

And old St. Pierre the motly host commanded:
Then here the flag of France was first afloat,
And here the Gallic cannon first were landed.

Then here began that fatal war, which cost
The lily banner many a bloody stain;
In which a wide empire was won and lost,
And Wolf and Montcalm fell on Abraham's plain

Since a subaltern in old Fort Du Queзne

Begg'd of his chief, ere yet he quit the post,

To give him but a handful of his men

To venture out and meet the British host:
VOL. II-R