They made Andrew Montour a counselor for the Six Nations, presented him with a belt in token of their confidence and gave notice in a speech that a horn had been set upon his head as evidence of Indian respect for one of their number who served the English.
Franklin thus speaks of this treaty in his autobiography: “Being commissioned, we went to Carlisle and met the Indians accordingly. As these people are extremely apt to get drunk, and when so are very quarrelsome and disorderly, we strictly forbade the selling of any liquor to them; and when they complained of this restriction, we told them, if they would continue sober during the treaty, we would give them plenty of rum when the business was over. They promised this, and they kept their promise, because they could get no rum, and the treaty was conducted very orderly and concluded to mutual satisfaction. They then claimed and received the rum; this was in the afternoon.
“They were near one hundred men, women and children, some were lodged in temporary cabins, built in the form of a square, just without the town. In the evening, hearing a great noise among them, the commissioners walked out to see what was the matter.
“We found they had made a great bonfire in the middle of the square; they were all drunk, men and women quarreling and fighting. Their dark-colored bodies, seen only by the gloomy light of the bonfire, running after and beating one another with firebrands, accompanied by their horrid yellings, formed a scene the most resembling our ideas of an inferno that could be well imagined.
“There was no appeasing the tumult, and we retired to our lodgings. At midnight a number of them came thundering at our door, demanding more rum, of which we took no notice. The next day, sensible they had misbehaved themselves in giving us that disturbance, they sent three of their old counselors to make their apology.”
He concludes: “That if it be the design of Providence to extirpate these savages in order to make room for the cultivators of the earth, it seems not impossible that rum may be the appointed means. It has already annihilated all the tribes who formerly inhabited the seacoast.”
Boundary Dispute with Virginia Ended
When Assembly Ratified Agreement,
September 23, 1780
Besides the Connecticut claims, which took in almost the entire half of the Province of Pennsylvania, Virginia laid claim to a large portion of the western part. The origin of this claim dates very far back in the history of the country.