Ckimkini: : Ti-nnsn i.\ am a IIoindakn' Con ruovKusv. 513 



To explain the origin of X'irginia's usurpation ol' lerrilor\- upon the 

 Monongahela and Ohio, the writer digressed from the building of Fort 

 Pitt, near the mouth of the Monongahela, in 1759, followed by the ces- 

 sion of the French claims by the treaty of 1763. Soon after that treaty 

 occurred what is known as the Conspiracy of Pontiac, in the summer 

 of 1763. This was an effort set on foot in 1762, at Detroit, by that 

 great chieftain Pontiac, who organized all the Indian tribes under a 

 common purpose to drive the hated F^nglish entirely out of the country. 

 It is said that, to raise means to supply his forces in their incursions 

 eastward he issued promissory notes on birch bark, signed with the 

 figure of an otter, and that, moreover, they were all subse<iucntly re- 

 deemed by him. In the spring of 1763 Pontiac appeared with his 

 savage forces in the neighborhood of Fort Pitt, moved across the 

 mountains, and almost desolated the setdements on the east, even 

 through the valley of the Susquehanna. During this Indian war, ter- 

 minated by Bouquet's expedition, and the desperate battle of Bushy 

 Run, on Turtle Creek, in Westmoreland county, on August 5, 1763, and 

 the relief of Fort Pitt thereby, there was no opportunity for an imme- 

 diate conflict of civil jurisdiction west of the Alleghanies. F>om 1764 

 to 1774, however, there was peace with the tribes, the pioneers being 

 disturbed only at times by the occasional depredations of savages intent 

 upon plunder rather than moved by the havoc of war. And George 

 Washington, then a colonel, turned his attention to the acquisition of 

 lands west of the mountains. In 1770, on October 17th, with Dr. 

 Craik, who had been his companion in arms at the battle of Great 

 Meadows and in Braddock's defeat, he arrived at Fort Pitt, and in his 

 journal - he mentions his meeting at Semple's tavern, where he stopped. 

 Dr. John Connolly, "nephew to Col. Croghan, a very sensible and 

 intelligent man, who had traveled over a good deal of this western 

 country, both by land and water." This Dr. John Connolly, thus 

 introduced to us by no less a {personage than Col. George Wash- 

 ington, was soon to play an important part in the civil history of the 

 country west of the mountains ; for he became the leader of the 

 Virginia adherents in the contest to establish the Virginia jurisdiction 

 along our rivers, and, as will be seen, a justice of one of her courts. 

 In 1772, John Murray, the fourth Earl of Dunmore, one of the 

 Peers of Scotland, became Governor of Virginia; and early in 1773 

 he made a visit to Fort Pitt, where he met Dr. John Connolly, hereto- 



8 Olden Time, Vol. I., p. 416. 



