[417] MS. Letter—Morris to Bradstreet, 18 Sept. 1764.
The journal sent by Morris to Bradstreet is in the State Paper Office of London. This journal, and the record of an examination of Morris’s Indian and Canadian attendants, made in Bradstreet’s presence at Sandusky, were the authorities on which the account in the first edition of this work was based. Morris afterwards rewrote his journal, with many additions. Returning to England after the war, he lost his property by speculations, and resolved, for the sake of his children, to solicit a pension, on the score of his embassy to the Illinois. With this view it was that the journal was rewritten; but failing to find a suitable person to lay it before the King, he resolved to print it, together with several original poems and a translation of the fourth and fourteenth satires of Juvenal. The book appeared in 1791, under the title of Miscellanies in Prose and Verse. It is very scarce. I am indebted to the kindness of Mr. S. G. Drake for the opportunity of examining it.
The two journals and the evidence before Bradstreet’s court of inquiry agree in essentials, but differ in some details. In this edition, I have followed chiefly the printed journal, borrowing some additional facts from the evidence taken before Bradstreet.
[418] “8th. His going away, leaving at Sandusky Two Jersey Soldiers, who were sent out by his Orders to Catch Fish for his Table & Five Principal Inds. who were Hunting, notwithstanding several spoke to him abt. it & begged to allow a Boat to stay an hour or two for them; his Answer was, they might stay there & be damned, not a Boat should stay one Minute for them.”—Remarks on the Conduct, etc., MS.
Another article of these charges is as follows: “His harsh treatment at Setting off to the Inds. and their officers & leaving some of them behind at every encampment from his flighty and unsettled disposition, telling them sometimes he intended encamping, on which some of the briskest Inds. went to kill some Game, on their return found the Army moved on, so were obliged to march along shore without any necessarys, and with difficulty got to Detroit half starved. At other times on being asked by the Indn officers (when the Boats were crowded) how they and ye Inds. should get along, His answer always verry ill natured, such as swim and be damned, or let them stay and be damned, &c.; all which was understood by many & gave great uneasiness.”
[419] Mante, 535.
[420] MS. Letter—Johnson to the Board of Trade, December 26.
[421] The provincial officers, to whom the command of the Indian allies was assigned, drew up a paper containing complaints against Bradstreet, and particulars of his misconduct during the expedition. This curious document, from which a few extracts have been given, was found among the private papers of Sir William Johnson.
A curious discovery, in probable connection with Bradstreet’s expedition, has lately been made public. At McMahon’s Beach, on Lake Erie, eight or ten miles west of Cleveland, a considerable number of bayonets, bullets, musket-barrels, and fragments of boats, have from time to time been washed by storms from the sands, or dug up on the adjacent shore, as well as an English silver-hilted sword, several silver spoons, and a few old French and English coins. A mound full of bones and skulls, apparently of Europeans hastily buried, has also been found at the same place. The probability is strong that these are the remains of Bradstreet’s disaster. See a paper by Dr. J. P. Kirtland, in Whittlesey’s History of Cleveland, 105.
[422] The following is an extract from the proclamation:—