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if such a sum is drawn for, at the advanced exchange, as by taking up the greatest part of our paper to reduce the exchange to par, the paper then remaining will be fully appreciated, and the sum due will not nominally, and therefore in the event not actually exceed its real value. But to this mode there are objections: 1. Subsidies by any means equal to our necessities can hardly be expected, while our allies, being engaged in a war, will want all the money they can procure: and 2. Loans cannot probably be obtained without good guarantee, or other security which Ainerica may not perhaps be able to procure or give.-But until our finances can be in a better situation, the war cannot possibly be prosecuted with vigor: and the efforts made, feeble as they must be, will be attended with an oppressive weight of expence, rendering still more weak the confederated states. This will appear from the foregoing observations, and also from hence that the present, and in all probability the future seat of the war, '(that is the middle states) is so exhausted, that unless by the strenuous voluntary exertions of the inhabitants, no great number of men can possibly be subsisted; and such exertions cannot be expected without the temptation of money more valued than ours is at present."

Five days befere the date of the instructions above related Congress, upon the application of the marquis de la Fayette, granted him leave to return to France, and directed the president to write him a letter of thanks for that disinterested zeal which led him to America, and for the services he had rendered to the United States by the exertion of his courage and abilities on many signal occasions. They also ordered Dr. Franklin to cause an elegant sword, with proper devices, to be made and presented hini in the name of the United States: and crowned the whole with a letter recommending him to his most Christian majesty. The marquis took leave of congress, by letter, the 26th of October.

The next day when it was received, a letter from the marquis was read, giving an account of the brave conduct of capt. Tonzar, in taking possession of a piece of artillery from the enemy, in which action he lost his right arm: whereupon congress promoted him to the rank of lieut. colonel in the service of the United States, by brevet, and appointed him a pension for life, of thirty dollars per month.

Let us resume our narration of inilitary operations.

So early as the 8th of February gen. Scuyler wrote to congress-"There is too much reason to believe that an expedition will be formed (by the Indians) against the western frontiers of this state (New-York) Virginia and Pennsylvania." The next month he informed them-" a number of Mohawks, and VOL, II,

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many

many of the Onondagoes, Cayugas and Senecas will come mence hostilities against us. as soon as they can it would be prudent therefore early to take measures to carry the war into their country; it would require no greater body of troops to de stroy their towns than to protect the frontier inhabitants." No effectual measures being taken to repress the hostile spirit of the Indians, numbers joined the tory refugees, and with these commenced their horrid depredations and hostilities upon the back settlers, being headed by col. Butler and Brandt, an half-blooded. Indian, of desperate courage, ferocious and cruel beyond example. Their expeditions were carried on to great advantage, by the exact knowledge which the refugees possessed of every object of their enterprise, and the immediate intelligenc they received from their friends on the spot. The weight of their ho stilities fell upon the fine, new and flourishing settlement of Wyoming situated on the eastern branch of the Susquehannah, in a most beautiful country and delightful climate. It was settled and cultivated with great ardor by a number of people from Connecticut, which claims the territory as included in its original grant from Charles II. The settlement consisted of eight townships, each five miles square, beautifully placed on each side of the river. It had increased so by a rapid population, that they sent a thousand men to serve in the continental army. To provide against the dangers of their remote situation. Four forts were constructed to cover them from the irruptions of the Indians.But it was their unhappiness to have a considerable mixture of royalists among them; and the two parties were actuated by sentiments of the most violent animosity which was not contined to particular families or places; but creeping within the roofs and to the hearths and floors where it was least to be expected, served equally to poison the sources of domestic security and happiness, and to cancel the laws of nature and humanity.

They had frequent and timely warnings of the danger to which they were exposed by sending their best men to so great a distance. Theis quiet had been interrupted by the Indians, joined by marauding parties of their own countrymen, in the preceding year; and it was only by a vigorous opposition, in a course of successful skirmishes, that they had been driven off. Several tories, and others not before suspected, had then and since abandoned the settlement; and beside a perfect knowledge of all their particular circumstances, carried along with them such a stock of private resentment, as could not fail of directing the fury, and even giving an edge to the cruelty of their Indian and other inveterate enemies. An unusual number of strangers had come among them under various pretences, whose behaviour became so suspicious, that upon being taken up and examined, such evidence

dence appeared against several of them, of their acting in con cert with the enemy, on a scheme for the destruction of the settlements, that about twenty were sent off to Connecticut, to be there imprisoned and tried for their lives, while the remain der were expelled. These measures excited the rage of the tories in general to the most extreme degree; and the threats for merly denounced against the settlers, were now renewed with aggravated vengeance.

As the time approached for the final catastrophe, the Indians practised unusual treachery. For several weeks previous to the intended attack, they repeatedly sent small parties to the settlement, charged with the strongest professions of friendship. These parties, beside attempting to lull the people into security, answered the purposes of communicating with their friends, and of observing the present state of affairs. The settlers however, were not insensible of the danger. They had taken the alarm, and colonel Zebulon Butler had several times written letters tó congress and gen. Washington, acquainting them with the danger the settlement was in, and requesting assistance; but the let ters were never teceived, having been intercepted by the Pennsylvania tories. A little before the main attack, some small parties made sudden eruptions, and committed several robberies and murders; and froin ignorance or a contempt of all ties whatever, massacred the wife and five children of one of the persons sent for trial to Connecticut in their own cause.

At length, in the beginning of July, the enemy suddently appeared in full force on the Susquehannah, headed by col. John Butler, a Comecticut tory, and cousin to col. Zeb. Butler, the second in command in the settlement. He was assisted by most of those leaders who had rendered themselves terrible in the present frontier war. Their force was about 1600 men, near a fourth Indians, led by their own chiefs; the others were so disguised and painted as not to be distinguished from the Indians, excepting their officers, who being, dressed in regimentals, carried the appearance of regulars. One of the smaller forts, garrisoned chiefly by tories, was given up, or rather betrayed. Another was taken by storm, and all but the women and children massacred in the most inhuman manner.

[July 3.] Colonel Zeb. Butler, leaving a small number to guard Fort Wilkesborough, crossed the river with about 400 men, and marched into Kingston Fort, whither the women, children and defenceless of all sorts crowded for protection. He suffered himself to be enticed by his cousin to abandon the fortress. He agreed to march out and hold a conference with the -enemy in the open field (at so great a distance from the fort as

to

to shut out all possibility of protection from it) upon their withdrawing according to their own proposal, in order to the holding of a parly for the conclusion of a treaty. He at the same time marched out about 400 men well armed, being nearly the whole strength of the garrison, to guard his person to the place of par ly, such was his distrust of the enemy's designs. On his arrival he found no body to treat with him, and yet advanced toward the foot of the mountain, where at a distance he saw a flag, the holders of which, seemingly afraid of treachery on his side, retired as he advanced; whilst he, endeavoring to re move this pretended ill impression, pursued the flag till his party was thoroughly enclosed, when he was suddenly freed from his delusion by finding it attacked at once on every side. He and his men, notwithstanding the surprise and danger, fought with resolution and bravery, and kept up so continual and heavy a fire for three-quarters of an hour, that they seemed to gain a marked superiority. In this critical moment a soldier, through a sudden impulse of fear, or premediated treachery, cried out aloud, "the colonel has ordered a retreat." The fate of the party was now at once determined. In the state of confusion that ensued, an unresisted slaughter commenced, while the enemy broke in on all sides without obstruction. Colonel Zeb Butler and about seventy of his men escaped; the latter got across the river to Fort Wilkesborough, the colonel made his way to Fort Kingston, which was invested the next day [July 4.] on the land side. The enemy, to sadden the drooping spirits of the weak remaining garrison, sent in for their contemplation the bloody scalps of one hundred and ninety-six of their late friends and comrades. They kept up a continual fire upon the fort the whole day. In the evening the colonel quitted the fort and went down the river with his family. He is thought to be the only officer that escaped.

[July 5.] Colonel Nathan Dennison, who succeeded to the command, seeing the impossibility of an effectual defence, went with a flag to col. John Butler, to know what terms he would grant on a surrender; to which application Butler answered with more than savage phlegm, in two short words-the hatchet.Dennison having defended the fort till most of the garrison were killed or disabled, was compelled to surrender at discretion. Some of the unhappy persons in the fort were carried away alive, but the barbarous conquerors, to save the trouble of murder in detail, shut up the rest promiscuously in the houses and barracks, which having set on fire they enjoyed the savage pleasure of beholding the whole consumed in one general blaze.

They

They then crossed the riverto the only remaining fort, Wilkesborough, which in hopes of mercy surrendered without demanding any conditions. They found about seventy continental soldiers, who had been engaged merely for the defence of the frontiers, whom they butchered with every circumstance of horrid cruelty. The remainder of the men, with the women and chil dren, were shut up as before in the houses, which being set on fire, they perished altogether in the flames.

A general scene of devastation was now spread through all the townships. Fire, sword, and the other different instruments of destructions alternately triumphed. The settlements of the tories alone generally escaped, and appeared as islands in the midst of the surrounding ruin. The merciless ravagers having destroyed the main objects of their cruelty, directed their animosity to every part of living nature belonging to them: shot and destroyed some of their cattle, and cut out the tongues of others, leaving them still alive to prolong their agonies.

The following are a few of the more singular circumstances of the barbarity practised in the attack upon Wyoming. Captain Bedlock, who had been taken prisoner, being stripped naked, had his body stuck full of splinters of pine-knots, and then a heap of pine-knots piled around him; the whole was then set on fire, and his two companions, captains Ranson and Durgee, thrown alive into the flaines, and held down with pitch-forks. The returned tories, who had at different times abandoned the settlement in order to join in those savage expeditions, were the most distinguished for their cruelty; in this they resembled the tories that joined the British forces. One of these Wyoming tories, whose mother had married a second husband, butchered with his own hands, both her, his father-in-law, his own sisters and their infant children. Another, who during his absence had sent home several threats against the life of his father, now not only realized them in person, but was himself, with his own hands, the exterminator of his whole family, mother, brothers and sisters and mingled their blood in one common carnage, with that of the ancient husband and father. The broken parts and scattered relics of families, consisting mostly of women and children, who had escaped to the woods during the different scenes of this devastation, suffered little less than their friends, who had perished in the ruin of their houses. Dispersed and wandering in the forests, as chance and fear directed, without provision or

* Pine-knots are fo replete with turpentine, that they are fired and used at night to illuminate the room; and lighted s, linters are often carried about in the houses of the Carolina planters instead of candles.

covering