OF LANCASTER COUNTY. • 83 



ti'ial and puiiisliincnt of the offences of slaves, substituting the judgment 

 of the law for the will of their masters. The latter of these bills only- 

 received the legislative sanction. It is difficult to assign reasons for the 

 [■ejection of the former. Its provisions could not reduce the value of 

 slaves as property, nor license insubordination. Perhaps the existing 

 laws against incontinence were deemed adequate to restrain the impro- 

 prieties the bill Avas designed to remedy. 



'"J"'he proprietary also endeavored, though unsuccessfully, to obtain 

 additional legislative restrictions upon the intercourse with the Indians, 

 in order to protect them from the arts of the whites. Nor was lie more 

 happy in his renewed exertions to instruct the aborigines in the doctrines 

 of Christianity ; their language, according to the report of the interpreter^ 

 not alTording terms to convey its mysteries. This reason, however, was 

 not well founded, and was the subterfuge of the agent to cover his own 

 ignorance or ind<ilence. The success of the venerable Elliot, and of the 

 Moravian missionaries, has jjroven that the Indian language is compe- 

 tent for the communication of the most abstract ideas. But, resolute to 

 improve their temporal condition, Penn conferred frequently with the 

 several nations of the province and its vicinity; visiting them familiarly 

 in their forests, participating in their feasts and amusements, and enter- 

 taining them with much hospitality and state at his mansion at Penus- 

 bury. He formed a new treaty with the Susquehanna, the Shawanese, the 

 Oanawese, and tribes of the Five nations. This treaty provided for per- 

 petual peace and good offices between the parties, confirmed to the Indi- 

 ans the benefits and subjected them t(3 the penalties of the English law, 

 in their intercourse with the whites. It stipulated that both parties should 

 refuse credence to unauthorized reports of hostility intended by either : 

 that the Indians should neither aid nor siLffer strange tribes to settle in 

 any part of the province without permission from the governor ; that no 

 European should engage in the Indian trade without the license of the 

 government ; and lastly, that the sale of the lands lately made to the pro- 

 prietary in the neighborhood of the Conestogo should be confirmed. In 

 the spirit of this treaty, the provincial council formed a company of traders 

 exclusively authorized to conduct the Indian trade, and instructed to 

 repress the inebriety of the natives, and to impress upon them a sense of 

 the Christian religion by examples of probity and candor." [1701.] 



In the spring of this year William Penn took a journey into the inte- 

 rior of the province, as appears from a letter of Isaac Norris, who says: 

 " I am just come home from Susquehanna, where I have been to meet the 

 Governor. We had a roundabout journey, having pretty well traversed 

 the wilderness. We lived nohhj at the Kiwfs palace at Conestogo, from 

 thence crossed it to the Schoolkill."^ 



1 .lanney. 



