44 The Winning of the West 



could not and ought not to submit patiently to the 

 cruelties and depredations of the savages ; "they are 

 in the habit of retaliation, perhaps without attending 

 percisely to the nations from which the injuries are 

 received," said he. A long course of such aggres- 

 sions and retaliations resulted, by the year 1791, in 

 all the Northwestern Indians going on the warpath. 

 The hostile tribes had murdered and plundered the 

 frontiersmen; the vengeance of the latter, as often 

 as not, had fallen on friendly tribes; and these 

 justly angered friendly tribes usually signalized their 

 taking the red hatchet by some act of treacherous 

 hostility directed against the settlers who had not 

 molested them. 



In the late winter of 1791 the hitherto friendly 

 Delawares who hunted or traded along the western 

 frontiers of Pennsylvania and Virginia proper took 

 this manner of showing that they had joined the 

 open foes of the Americans. A big band of war- 

 riors spread up and down the Alleghany for about 

 forty miles, and on the 9th of February attacked 

 all the outlying settlements. The Indians who de- 

 livered this attack had long been on intimate terms 

 with the Alleghany settlers, who were accustomed 

 to see them in and about their houses ; and as the 

 savages acted with seeming friendship to the last 

 moment, they were able to take the settlers com- 

 pletely unawares, so that no effective resistance was 

 made. 15 Some settlers were killed and some cap- 

 tured. Among the captives was a lad named John 



15 "American Pioneer," I, 44; Narrative of John Brickell. 



