Before day Mr. Thompson shut it up, to prevent them from passing down, in order to let the Indians have some diversion in killing them in daylight.

"When the news of the fish came to town, the Indians all collected and with surprise beheld the large heap of fish, and applauded the ingenuity of the Virginian. When they saw the number of them that were confined in the water above the tree, the young Indians ran back to the town, and in a short time returned with their spears, gigs, bows and arrows, &c., and were the chief part of that day engaged in killing rock fish, insomuch that we had more than we could use or preserve. As we had no salt or any way to keep them, they lay upon the banks, and after some time great numbers of turkey-buzzards and eagles collected together and devoured them."

But enough of our Ohio Crusoe. His remaining adventures, before his restoration to his friends in 1760, consisted of a trip to Detroit, another hunt up Sandusky and down Scioto, and a journey to Caughnewaga, "a very ancient Indian town about nine miles above Montreal," besides an imprisonment of four months in Montreal. This picture of northern Ohio, a century since, has the merit of novelty at least. That it is authentic, there can be no doubt, for in several historians of authority occur frequent and respectful reference to the narrative from whose pages we have drawn so copiously.

The geography of the last foregoing paragraphs, is less difficult of explanation than in the first portion of the chap ter. The falls of Sandusky are doubtless the same as the rapids mentioned in the treaty of Greenville, near the site of Fremont, and the Sandusky plains, which were burnt over by the ring hunt, are in Marion, Wyandot and Crawford counties.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE SURRENDER OF THE WESTERN POSTS TO ENGLAND.

THE fall of Fort Du Quesne, in 1758, terminated French dominion upon the Ohio, but the narrative of Forbes' expedition against that important stockade is incomplete, if the adventures of Charles Frederic Post, the Moravian envoy of Pennsylvania to the Ohio tribes, were entirely omitted. The Moravian annals first mention Post as laboring at Shekomeko, in 1743, near the present site of Poughkeepsie, in Eastern New York. He married a baptized Indian woman, was imprisoned in 1745, on an unfounded charge of instigating the New York tribes to join the French, suggested by efforts to learn their dialects; resumed his missionary labors among the Connecticut Indians, and finally sojourned in Pennsylvania, when his influence with the Delaware chiefs was at length recognized by the colonial authorities as their most efficient mediation with the Western tribes. He was accordingly induced to make two expeditions into the heart of the enemy's country in the summer and autumn of 1758, and by his conferences with the representatives of eight nations, withheld them from an attack upon Forbes' expedition, and finally concluded a peace. His route ascended the Susquehanna, crossed to the Alleghany, opposite French creek, and thence to a town. on the Big Beaver creek, called "Kushkushkee," containing ninety houses and two hundred Delaware warriors. The decisive conference was held, however, opposite Fort Du 1) History of Moravian Missions, Part ii, p. 37.

Quesne, whither the savages assured Post "they would carry him in their bosom, and he need fear nothing "—a pledge which was honorably redeemed. On the 24th of August, the Moravian, with his Indian protectors, reached the point opposite the fort, where followed a series of speeches, explanations and agreements. At this interview, though resulting in favor of an union with England, the Indians still complained bitterly of the disposition which the whites showed in claiming and seizing their lands. "Why did you not fight your battles at home, or on the sea, instead of coming into our country to fight them?" they asked again and again, and were mournful when they thought of the future. "Your heart is good," they said to Post, "you speak sincerely; but we know there is always a great number who wish to get rich; they never have enough; look! we do not want to be rich, and take away what others have." we have no brains in our head; that they are big, and we a little handful; but remember, when you hunt for a rattlesnake you cannot find it, and perhaps it will bite you before you see it."

"The white people think

The humble Moravian played no unimportant part in restoring to His British Majesty the key of western America -Fort Du Quesne, and certainly warded an Indian attack upon Forbes' army.2

It is probable that French garrisons remained at Sandusky, and the forts on French creek, for a while after the occupation of Fort Du Quesne by the English; but as the contest in Canada approached its crisis, the troops were gradually withdrawn.

We have already given the 8th of September, 1760, as

2) Perkins' Writings, vol. ii, pp. 216-17; see also Post's Journals in Craig's Olden Time, vol. i, pp. 98, 145

the date of the surrender of Canada to the English by the French Governor, Vaudrueil. Maj. Robert Rogers, a native of New Hampshire and an associate of Putnam and Stark, was ordered to take possession of the Western forts. He left Montreal on the 13th of September, with two hundred rangers, who were "half hunters, half woodsmen, trained in a discipline of their own, and armed, like Indians, with hatchet, gun and knife." Rogers is described as follows: "their commander was a man tall and vigorous in person and rough in feature. He was versed in all the arts of woodcraft, sagacious, prompt and resolute, yet so cautious withal that he sometimes incurred the unjust charge of cowardice. His mind, naturally active, was by no means uncultivated, and his books. and unpublished letters bear witness that his style as a writer was not contemptible. But his vain, restless, grasping spirit, and more doubtful honesty, proved the ruin of an enviable reputation. Six years after his Western expedition, he was tried by a court martial for a meditated act of treason, the surrender of Fort Michillimacinac into the hands of the Spaniards, who were at that time masters of Upper Louisiana. Not long after, if we may trust his own account, he passed over to the Barbary States, entered the service of the Dey of Algiers, and fought two battles under his banners. At the opening of the war of independence, he returned to his native country, where he made professions of patriotism, but was strongly suspected by many, including Washington himself, of acting the part of a spy. In fact, he soon openly espoused the British cause, and received a colonel's commission from the crown. His services, however, proved of little consequence. In 1778, he was proscribed and banished, under the act of New Hampshire, and the remainder of his

life was passed in such obscurity that it is difficult to determine when and where he died.3

On the 4th of November, Rogers left Presque Isle, and thence went slowly up Lake Erie in fifteen whale boats. From this point we prefer to give his own words. In 1765 he published in London a Journal of his Military Life, and also a "Concise Account of North America," from which we gather the particulars of his voyage along the southern coast of Lake Erie :

"We left Presque Isle," says Rogers, in his Journal, “the 4th of November, kept a western course, and by night had advanced twenty miles.

"The badness of the weather obliged us to lie by all the next day; and as the wind continued very high, we did not advance more than ten or twelve miles the 6th, on a course west-south-west.

"We set out very early on the 7th, and came to the mouth of Chogage River;4 here we met with a party of Attawawa Indians, just arrived from Detroit. They were an embassy from Ponteack,5 of some of his warriors, and some of the chiefs of the tribes that are under him; the purport of which was, to let me know that Ponteack was at a small distance, coming peaceably, and that he desired me to halt my detachment till such time as he could see me with his own eyes. His ambassadors had also orders to inform me that he was Ponteack, the king and lord of the country I was in.

3) Parkman's Pontiac, 145.

4) This is probably Geauga, or Grand River.

5) In a previous paragraph, Pontiac is described as the head of an Indian Confederacy of the lakes. "He puts on an air of majesty and princely grandeur, and is greatly honored and revered by his subjects," having certainly "the largest empire and greatest authority of any Indian chief that has appeared on the continent since our acquaintance with it.”