In the summer of this year a grand Indian assemblage took place at Chillicothe, a famous central Indian town on the Little Miami.  The Cherokees, Wyandots, Tawas, Pottawattomies, and most of the tribes bordering on the lakes, were represented in it.  Besides their chiefs and some Canadians, they were aided by the counsels of the two Girtys, and McKee, renegado whites.  We have made diligent enquiry touching the biography of these men, particularly Simon Girty, a wretch of most infamous notoriety in those times, as a more successful instigator of Indian assault and massacre, than any name on record.  Scarcely a tortured captive escaped from the northern Indians, who could not tell the share which this villain had in his sufferings—­no burning or murder of prisoners, at which he had not assisted by his presence or his counsels.  These refugees from our white settlements, added the calculation and power of combining of the whites to the instinctive cunning and ferocity of the savages.  They possessed their thirst for blood without their active or passive courage—­blending the bad points of character in the whites and Indians, without the good of either.  The cruelty of the Indians had some show of palliating circumstances, in the steady encroachments of the whites upon them.  Theirs was gratuitous, coldblooded, and without visible motive, except that they appeared to hate the race more inveterately for having fled from it.  Yet Simon Girty, like the Indians among whom he lived, sometimes took the freak of kindness, nobody could divine why, and he once or twice saved an unhappy captive from being roasted alive.

This vile renegado, consulted by the Indians as an oracle, lived in plenty, smoked his pipe, and drank off his whisky in his log palace.  He was seen abroad clad in a ruffled shirt, a red and blue uniform, with pantaloons and gaiters to match.  He was belted with dirks and pistols, and wore a watch with enormous length of chain, and most glaring ornaments, all probably the spoils of murder.  So habited, he strutted, in the enormity of his cruelty in view of the ill-fated captives of the Indians, like the peacock spreading his morning plumage.  There is little doubt that his capricious acts of saving the few that were spared through his intercession, were modified results of vanity; and that they were spared to make a display of his power, and the extent of his influence among the Indians.

The assemblage of Indians bound to the assault of Bryant’s station, gathered round the shrine of Simon Girty, to hear the response of this oracle touching the intended expedition.  He is said to have painted to them, in a set speech, the abundance and delight of the fair valleys of Kan-tuck-ee, for which so much blood of red men had been shed—­the land of clover, deer, and buffaloes.  He described the gradual encroachment of the whites, and the certainty that they would soon occupy the whole land.  He proved the necessity of a vigorous, united, and persevering