“They in a body left the town without offering any insults to the Inhabitants, & without putting it in the power of any one to take or molest any of them without danger of life to the person attempting it; of which both myself and the Coroner, by our opposition, were in great danger.”
[365] Extract from a Letter—Rev. Mr. Elder to Colonel Burd:—
“Paxton, 1764.
“Lazarus Stewart is still threatened by the Philadelphia party; he and his friends talk of leaving—if they do, the province will lose some of their truest friends, and that by the faults of others, not their own; for if any cruelty was practised on the Indians at Conestogue or at Lancaster, it was not by his, or their hands. There is a great reason to believe that much injustice has been done to all concerned. In the contrariness of accounts, we must infer that much rests for support on the imagination or interest of the witness. The characters of Stewart and his friends were well established. Ruffians nor brutal they were not; humane, liberal and moral, nay, religious. It is evidently not the wish of the party to give Stewart a fair hearing. All he desires, is to be put on trial, at Lancaster, near the scenes of the horrible butcheries, committed by the Indians at Tulpehocken, &c., when he can have the testimony of the Scouts or Rangers, men whose services can never be sufficiently rewarded.”
[366] Papers published by Mr. Conyngham.
Extract from the Declaration of Lazarus Stewart:—
“What I have done was done for the security of hundreds of settlers on the frontiers. The blood of a thousand of my fellow-creatures called for vengeance. As a Ranger, I sought the post of danger, and now you ask my life. Let me be tried where prejudice has not prejudged my case. Let my brave Rangers, who have stemmed the blast nobly, and never flinched; let them have an equitable trial; they were my friends in the hour of danger—to desert them now were cowardice! What remains is to leave our cause with our God, and our guns.”
[367] Loskiel, Hist. Moravian Missions, Part II. 211.
[368] MS. Letter—Bernard Grube to Governor Hamilton, Oct. 13.
[369] Votes of Assembly, V. 284.