1764, Oct.] MILITARY ENCAMPMENT. 221 



chastise the first attempt at deceit or evasion. The 

 principal chiefs of each tribe had been forced to 

 accompany him as hostages.^ 



For the space of a day, hundreds of axes were 

 busy at their work. The trees were felled, the 

 ground cleared, and, with marvellous rapidity, a 

 town sprang up in the heart of the wilderness, 

 martial in aspect and rigorous in discipline ; with 

 storehouses, hospitals, and works of defence, rude 

 sylvan cabins mingled with white tents, and the 

 forest rearing its sombre rampart around the whole. 

 On one side of this singular encampment was a 

 range of buildings, designed to receive the expected 

 prisoners ; and matrons, brought for this purpose 

 with the army, were appointed to take charge of 

 the women and children among them. At the 

 opposite side, a canopy of branches, sustained on 

 the upright trunks of young trees, formed a rude 

 council-hall, in keeping with the savage assembly 

 for whose reception it was designed. 



And now, issuing from the forest, came warriors, 



1 The following is from a letter of Bouquet dated Camp near Tusca- 

 rawas, 96 miles west of Fort Pitt, 21st Oct. 1764 : " They came accor- 

 dingly on the IS'*' and met me here, to where I had moved the camp. 

 Time does not permit me to send you all the messages which have passed 

 since, and the conferences I have had with them, as we are going to 

 march. I shall for the present inform you that they have behaved with 

 the utmost submission, and have agreed to deliver into my hands all their 

 prisoners, who appear to be very numerous, on the 1^* of November ; and, 

 as I will not leave any thing undone, they have not only consented that 

 I should march to their towns, but have given me four of their men to 

 conduct the Army, This is the only point hitherto settled with them. 

 Their excessive fear having nearly made them run away once more, that 

 circumstance and the Treaty of Colonel Bradstreet, of which they pro- 

 duce the original, added to the total want of government among them, 

 render the execution of my orders very intricate." 



