206 The Winning of the West 



peaceful, while harboring and giving aid and com- 

 fort to, and occasionally letting their own young 

 men join, bands of avowed murderers. Of course, 

 the large wicked and disorderly element was loud 

 in praise of the deed. The decent people, by their 

 silence, acquiesced. 



A terrible day of reckoning was at hand ; the ret- 

 ribution fell on but part of the real criminals, and 

 bore most heavily on those who were innocent of 

 any actual 1 complicity in the deed of evil. Never- 

 theless it is impossible to grieve overmuch for the 

 misfortune that befell men who freely forgave and 

 condoned such treacherous barbarity. 



In May a body of four hundred and eighty Penn- 

 sylvania and Virginia militia gathered at Mingo 

 Bottom, on the Ohio, with the purpose of marching 

 against and destroying the towns of the hostile 

 Wyandots and Delawares in the neighborhood of 

 the Sandusky River. The Sandusky Indians were 

 those whose attacks were most severely felt by that 

 portion of the frontier; and for their repeated and 

 merciless ravages they deserved the severest chastise- 

 ment. The expedition against them was from every 

 point of view just ; and it was undertaken to punish 

 them, and without any definite idea of attacking the 

 remnant of the Moravians who were settled among 

 them. On the other hand, the militia included in 

 their ranks most of those who had taken part in the 

 murderous expedition of two months before; this 

 fact, and their general character, made it certain that 

 the peaceable and inoffensive Indians would, if en- 



