1763, Mat.] LETTER OF ECUYER. 5 



is not necessary at present to indicate minutely 

 the position of their scattered settlements, and the 

 small posts intended to protect them.' Along 

 these borders all had remained quiet, and nothing 

 occurred to excite alarm or uneasiness. Captain 

 Simeon Ecuyer, a brave Swiss officer, who com- 

 manded at Fort Pitt, had indeed received warnings 

 of danger. On the fourth of May, he wrote to 

 Colonel Bouquet at Philadelphia : " Major Glad- 

 wyn writes to tell me that I am surrounded by ras- 

 cals. He complains a great deal of the Delawares 

 and Shawanoes. It is this canaille who stir up the 

 rest to mischief." At length, on the twenty-seventh, 

 at about dusk in the evening, a party of Indians 

 was seen descending the banks of the Alleghany, 

 with laden pack-horses. They built fires, and 

 encamped on the shore till daybreak, when they all 

 crossed over to the fort, bringing with them a great 

 quantity of valuable furs. These they sold to the 

 traders, demanding, in exchange, bullets, hatchets, 

 and gunpowder ; but their conduct was so peculiar as 

 to excite the just suspicion that they came either as 

 spies or with some other insidious design.^ Hardly 

 were they gone, when tidings came in that Colonel 

 Clapham, with several persons, both men and 

 women, had been murdered and scalped near 

 the fort ; and it was soon after discovered that the 

 inhabitants of an Indian town, a few miles up the 



1 The authorities for the foregoing topographical sketch are drawn 

 from the Pennsylvania Historical Collections, and the Olden Time, an excel- 

 lent antiquarian work, published at Pittsburg; together with various 

 maps, plans, and contemporary papers. 



2 Gordon, Hist. Pa. 622. MS. Letter — ^cwj/er to Bouquet, 29 May, 

 1763. 



