46 The Winning of the West 



up to the very moment of the assault. Then, their 

 hands red with the blood of their murdered friends, 

 they came boldly into Pittsburg, among the near 

 neighbors of these same murdered men, and stayed 

 there several days to trade, pretending to be peace- 

 ful allies of the whites. With savages so treacher- 

 ous and so ferocious it was a mere impossibility for 

 the borderers to distinguish the hostile from the 

 friendly, as they hit out blindly to revenge the blows 

 that fell upon them from unknown hands. Brutal 

 though the frontiersmen often were, they never em- 

 ployed the systematic and deliberate bad faith which 

 was a favorite weapon with even the best of the red 

 tribes. 



The people who were out of reach of the Indian 

 tomahawk, and especially the Federal officers, were 

 often unduly severe in judging the borderers for 

 their deeds of retaliation. Brickell's narrative 

 shows that the parties of seemingly friendly Indians 

 who came in to trade were sometimes and indeed 

 in this year 1791 it was probable they were gener- 

 ally composed of Indians who were engaged in 

 active hostilities against the settlers, and who were 

 always watching for a chance to murder and plun- 

 der. On March Qth, a month after the Delawares 

 had begun their attacks, the grim backwoods cap- 

 tain Brady, with some of his Virginian rangers, fell 

 on a party of them who had come to a block-house 

 to trade, and killed four. The Indians asserted that 

 they were friendly, and both the Federal Secretary 

 of War and the Governor of Pennsylvania de- 



