[1347] By the treaty at Lancaster, the Indians covenanted to cede to the English, for goods of the money value of £400, the lands between the Alleghanies and the Ohio. See our Vol. V. 566.—Ed.
[1348] These treaties are fully presented, with all the harangues, by Colden, vol. ii.
[1349] The most capable and intelligent interpreter employed by the English for a long period, and who served at the councils for negotiating the most important treaties of this time, was Conrad Weiser. He came with his family from Germany in 1710, and settled at Schoharie, N. Y. His ability and integrity won him the confidence alike of the Indians and the English. In the Collections of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, vol. i. pp. 1-34, are autobiographical, personal, and narrative papers and journals by this remarkable man, equally characterized by the boldest spirit of adventure and by an ardent piety. He gives in full his journal of his mission from the governments of Pennsylvania and Virginia to negotiate with the Six Nations in 1737. [See Vol. V. 566.—Ed.]
[1350] Mahon’s England, ch. 35, and Smollett’s England, Book iii. ch. 9.
[1351] Governor Dinwiddie, in urging the assembly of Virginia, in 1756, to active war measures, warned them of the alternative of “giving up your Liberty for Slavery, the purest Religion for the grossest Idolatry and Superstition, the legal and mild Government of a Protestant King for the Arbitrary Exactions and heavy Oppressions of a Popish Tyrant.” (Dinwiddie Papers, ii. p. 515.)
[1352] In Mr. Parkman’s Montcalm and Wolfe, i. p. 65 and on, is a lively account of the busy zeal of Father Piquet in making and putting to service savage converts of the sort described in the text. [See Vol. V. 571.—Ed.]
[1353] The excellent James Logan, who came over as secretary to William Penn, and who always claimed to be a consistent member of the Society of Friends, took an exception to a position on one point,—that of maintaining the right, and even obligation, of defensive warfare. A letter of very cogent argument to this effect was addressed by him to the Society of Friends in 1741, remonstrating with them for their opposition in the legislature to means for defending the colony. Collections of Historl. Soc. of Penns., i. p. 36. [See Vol V. p. 243.—Ed.]
[1354] It was but a repetition of the passions and jealousies of the colonists of Massachusetts, as maddened by the devastation inflicted upon them in King Philip’s war, when they themselves broke up the settlements, then under hopeful promise, of “Praying Indians,” at Natick and other villages, the fruits of the devoted labors of the Apostle Eliot. The occasion of this dispersion and severe watch over the Indian converts was a jealousy that they had been warmed in the bosom of a weak pity merely for a deadly use of their fangs.
[1355] [See Vol. V. 240.—Ed.]
[1356] Spotswood Papers, published by the Virginia Historical Society. [The events of this period are followed in our Vol. V.—Ed.]