late Robert Coleman, who amassed a great fortune thereby. Thi place was for many years pre-eminent for making and furnishing rifles for the western settlers and Indians. They also made and furnished pack-saddles for the carriers westward.

Where Lancaster now stands was once an Indian wigwam town; a hickory tree stood in its centre, not far from a spring; under this tree the councils met, and from one of these councils a deputation was once sent to confer with William Penn at Philadelphia. The Indian nation was called Hickory, as well as their town. When the whites began to build there, they still called it by the same name; and Gibson, at his inn, about the year 1722, had a hickory tree painted upon his sign. It was situated near where Slaymaker's hotel is now built, and the spring was in its cellar. The town, under the name of Lancaster, was not laid out until 1730; and the courts were not taken to it from Postlewaite, until the year 1734. In excavating the canal at the north side of the town, they came across the bones of the Indians massacred at the prisons, by the Paxton boys.

An Indian town once stood on a flat of land north-east of Hardwiche, the seat of William Coleman, Esq. A poplar tree was the emblem of the tribe, from whence their name was derived. Its location, and that of the town, was near the bank of the Conestoga. The Conestoga Indians were once numerous and influential. As early as 1701, we read of an embassy from Philadelphia "round about through the woods," to the "palace of the king," "where they were cordially received and well entertained at a considerable town." In the year 1721, Sir W. Keith, and his council and thirty gentlemen, went to Conestoga, to hold there a treaty with the heads of the Five Nations. An original deed from Wiggoneeheenah, of 1725, to Edmund Cartlidge, grants, "in behalf of the Delaware Indians concerned," the tract of land formerly his plantation, "lying in a turn of Conestoga creek, called Indian Point." Those Indians, under the general name of Conestogoes, continued to dwell along the Conestoga creek, until the year 1764, when fourteen of their number having been maliciously killed by the Irish settlers, the rest took shelter in Lancaster, and for their better security were placed under the bolts and bars of the prison; where, however, they were afterwards assailed and massacred-men, women and children—at midday, by an armed band of lawless ruffians, calling themselves the "Paxton boys!" The Roman Catholics, under the Jesuits, were the first who opened religious worship among the people.

In the year 1754, Lancaster had so much increased as to have then contained five hundred houses and two thousand inhabitants. A great proportion of them, then, were of German origin. The best lands of Lancaster county, and deemed, in general, the finest farms in the state, are those possessed by the German families.

Reading is of much later origin, and had, when it began, a very rapid progress having, for instance, but one house there in 1749

and in 1752 in contained one hundred and thirty dwellings! It was raised into alluring repute by the agents of the Penn family, calling for settlers in it, as "a new town of great natural advantages of location, and destined to be a prosperous place."

The first hotel there was that of Conrad Weiser, seen in 1833, as the little white store of General Keim, on the corner of Callowhill and Penn streets, and since replaced by a great new house of fashion. It was at that place that Conrad Weiser, as Indian agent, used to deliver the Indian presents-there the war-song of the savage was sung, the war dance wound down, and the calamet of peace was smoked. The house was built earlier than the town. Lively and business like as is the present Pottsville, the man is now living there, in 1842, John Boyer by name, an old revolutionary soldier, now in his eighty-seventh year-born and reared at the present Schuylkill Haven, in which neighbourhood, he had often been engaged in resisting the predatory invasions of the Indians. The country around him was long a wilderness, and was often the scene of bloody massacres, much of which he had seen with his own eyes.

An old Indian war-path leading from the tribes north of the Susquehanna, crossed the mountains at Pottsville, and the few settlers. who had braved all danger, and had pitched their cabins in the midst of such perils, were forced to struggle desperately at times, to save the scalps of their families from the knife. Fort Henry once stood at the head of the Swatara, at the foot of Kittatiny.

Bethlehem and Easton, formed the frontier towns on the north. The former was begun in 1743, under Count Zinzendorf, by forming there his Moravian town. As late as the year 1755, the inhabitants of the neighbouring country were driven in from their farms to the towns of Bethlehem and Easton, filled with panic and dread from marauding Indians! It was near to Lehighton, that there then stood Fort Allen, fronting on the Lehigh opposite to the mouth of Mahony creek, where the garrison was surprised and massacred by Indians. About the same time, Captain Wetherhold, who commanded a scouting party, and who used to make Allentown and Bethlehem his places of rendezvous, was surprised about six miles from the latter place, and he and his whole party were shot and scalped. On the same day a party, with one Henry Jenks, was also surprised and cut off. There was a fort there, made of logs-in command of Colonel Burd, who built his house opposite to it-the same now held by Peter Newhard, Esq., member of congress. The main street, on which it stands, now runs over the site of that fort. About the year, 1765, there used to be several skirmishes thereabout with the Indians. Mr. Newhard's father had told P. N. of these things. As late as the year 1755, the year of Braddock's defeat and alarm, there was a block-house at Harris' ferry, the present Harrisburg, and hostile Indians prowled about Shearman's valley, not far off, committing sundry depredations. Since the war of the revolution, such is the march of improvement, that Harrisburg is made the

seat of government, other towns are erected in every direction, and distant places are made nigh to us in effect, by numerous turnpikes, rail-roads, and canals!

It strongly marks the rapid progress of inland improvement, to say, that several members of a family of the name of Gilbert are now living, who dwelt near the Lehigh, on this side of the present celebrated Mauch Chunk coal mines, who were captured in open day by a band of hostile Indians, in the year 1778, and borne off unmolested to the Niagara frontier. One of the females so captured, I have seen and conversed with only a few months before the present writing. She is a Friend, dwelling in Byberry. They then travelled through a wilderness country, unperceived by any white inhabitants, five hundred miles in twenty-six days. Now splendid stage-coaches roll over graded turnpikes, and pass through numerous prosperous towns and villages, through all the intermediate space!

A MS. journal, which I have seen, of C. F. Post, an Indian interpreter and agent, who died at Germantown, in 1785, and who made an excursion from that place, in 1758, to the Susquehanna river with sundry Indians, shows incidentally how very wild and Indian-like the intermediate country must then have been. His first stage of one day from Bethlehem was to Hay's; the next day to Fort Allen, where he met Indians from Wyoming; thence he went to Fort Augusta, on the Susquehanna, where he met sundry Indians from Diehogo, now called Tioga, at the head of the same river, and saw also some Indians from Shamokin. Coursing along the river, he came to Wekeeponall, and at night rested at Queenashawakee. The next day they crossed the river at the Big island, above Williamsport. In the region on the opposite side, westward, they came to several places where they saw two poles, painted red, set up as pillars, to which the Indians tied their prisoners for the night. Now how different are all those regions, brought about in a term of sixty years? Persons were lately alive in Tulpehocken, near Womelsdorf, who saw in that country the dreadful Indian massacre in 1755. I saw myself some that had been captured then. For further facts, see Appendix, p. 528.

INDIANS.

"A swarthy tribe

Slipped from the secret hand of Providence,
They come, we see not how, nor know we whence;
That seem'd created on the spot-though born,
In transatlantic climes, and thither brought,

By paths as covert as the birth of thought!”

THERE is in the fate of these unfortunate beings much to awaken our sympathy, and much to disturb the sobriety of our judgment much in their characters to incite our involuntary admiration. What can be more melancholy than their history! By a law of their nature, they seem destined to a slow but sure extinction. Every where, at the approach of the white man, they fade away. We hear the rustling of their footsteps, like that of the withered leaves of autumn; and themselves, like "the sear and yellow leaf," are gone for ever!

Once the smoke of their wigwams, and the fires of their councils, rose in every valley, from the ocean to the Mississippi and the lakes. The shouts of victory and the war-dance rang through the mountains and the glades. The light arrows and the deadly tomahawk whistled through the forest; and the hunter's trace, and the dark encampment, startled the wild beasts in their lairs. The warriors stood forth in their glory. The young listened to songs of other days. The mothers played with their infants, and gazed on the scene with warm hopes of the future. Braver men never lived-truer men never drew the bow. They had courage and fortitude, and sagacity and perseverance, beyond most of the human race. They were inured, and capable of sustaining every peril, and surmounting every obstacle for sweet country and home. But with all this, inveterate destiny has unceasingly driven them hence!

"Forced from the land that gave them birth,
They dwindle from the face of earth!"

If they had the vices of savage life, they had the virtues also. They were true to their country, their friends and their homes. If they forgave not injury under misconceptions of duty, neither did they forget kindness

"Faithful alike to friendship or to hate."

If their vengeance was terrible, their fidelity and generosity were unconquerable also. Their love, like their hate, stopped not on this side the grave. But where are they now? Perished! consumed!

"The glen or hill,

Their cheerful whoop has ceased to thrill!"

The wasting pestilence has not alone done this mighty work; no, nor famine, nor war. There has been a mightier power-a moral canker which hath eaten into their vitals-a plague which the touch of the baser part of our white men has communicated-a poison which betrayed them into a lingering ruin. Already the last feeble remnants of the race are preparing for their journey beyond the Mississippi. I see them leave their long cherished homes; "few and faint, yet fearless still," they turn to take a last look of their deserted village, a last look at the graves of their fathers. They shed no tears; they utter no cries; they heave no groans. There is something in their hearts which surpasses speech; there is something in their looks, not of vengeance or submission, but of hard necessity, which stifles both-which chokes all utterance— which has no aim or method. It is courage absorbed in despair.

If such be the traces we may draw of Indian character, being ourselves the judges, what might it not be, if told by themselves, had they but our art of letters and the aid of an eloquent press! Few or none among themselves can tell their tale of " wrong and outrage." Yet a solitary case does exist, which, while it shows their capability of mental improvement, shows also, in affecting terms, their just claims to our generosity and kindness.

The beautiful and energetic letter, of April, 1824, to the people and congress of the United States, by the Cherokee natives and representatives at Washington city, has some fine touches of refined eloquence to this effect-saying, of their communications, they have been "the lonely and unassisted efforts of the poor Indian; for we are not so fortunate as to have such help-wherefore this letter and every other letter was not only written but dictated by an Indian. The white man seldom comes forth in our defence. Our rights are in our own keeping, and the proofs of our loneliness, of our bereaved and helpless state, unknown to the eye of prejudice, having set us upon our resources, is known to those benevolent white brothers who came to our help with letters, and the lights of civilization and Christianity. Our letters (we repeat it) are our own, and if they are thought too refined for 'savages,' let the white man take it for proof, that, with proper assistance, Indians can think and write for themselves." Signed-John Ross, and three others.

The Indians were always the friends of Miquon, of Onas-of our forefathers! It was their greatest pleasure to cultivate mutual good will and kindness." None ever entered the cabin of Logan hungry, and he gave him no meat; or cold, or naked, and he gave him no clothes!" Grateful hearts must cherish kindly recollections of a too often injured race. We are therefore disposed, as Pennsylvanians, to treasure up some few of the facts least known of them, in the times by-gone of our annals.

We begin with their primitive character and habits as seen by

These introductory sentiments are generally from the leading ideas of Judge Story.