OF LANCASTER COUN'TV. 27 



perception or their comprcliensioii, come to us now oyer a tract of nearly 

 a century of time. While, therefore, we yield something to that proba- 

 bility of truth which locality or integrity may create, we have little reason 

 to prefer any account orally transmitted, in circumstances and during an 

 interval of time such as have existed in the present case, if that account is 

 inconsistent with the general testimony of writers upon the subject. Per- 

 haps, in this respect, no part of our State was more unfavorably situated 

 than Lancaster county, prior to the year 1750. Ten years before this, 

 the Indians had been embarrassed by the advance of the borderers ; and 

 probably still earlier there were apparent symptoms of that antipathy, 

 which has generally marked the intercourse of frontiermen and savages. 

 At least four or five considerable villages of different tribes were within 

 the county; smaller villages were scattered around these. Different 

 dialects, different customs, were in close proximity. That must be a sin- 

 gularly fortunate tradition which, faithful to its original, could convey to 

 x\s living at the middle of the nineteeenth century, accurate details of the 

 customs of one of those villages — uncorrupted specimens of one of those 

 dialects as they were in the first quarter of the eighteenth century." 



