[Footnote 343:  Morris to Sir Thomas Robinson, 28 Aug. 1755.]

[Footnote 344:  Colonial Records of Pa., VI. 584.]

[Footnote 345:  Message of the Assembly to the Governor, 29 Sept. 1755 (written by Franklin), in Colonial Records of Pa., VI. 631, 632.]

[Footnote 346:  Writings of Franklin, III. 447.  The Assembly at first suppressed this paper, but afterwards printed it.]

Petitions poured in from the miserable frontiersmen.  “How long will those in power, by their quarrels, suffer us to be massacred?” demanded William Trent, the Indian trader.  “Two and forty bodies have been buried on Patterson’s Creek; and since they have killed more, and keep on killing."[347] Early in October news came that a hundred persons had been murdered near Fort Cumberland.  Repeated tidings followed of murders on the Susquehanna; then it was announced that the war-parties had crossed that stream, and were at their work on the eastern side.  Letter after letter came from the sufferers, bringing such complaints as this:  “We are in as bad circumstances as ever any poor Christians were ever in; for the cries of widowers, widows, fatherless and motherless children, are enough to pierce the most hardest of hearts.  Likewise it’s a very sorrowful spectacle to see those that escaped with their lives with not a mouthful to eat, or bed to lie on, or clothes to cover their nakedness, or keep them warm, but all they had consumed into ashes.  These deplorable circumstances cry aloud for your Honor’s most wise consideration; for it is really very shocking for the husband to see the wife of his bosom her head cut off, and the children’s blood drunk like water, by these bloody and cruel savages."[348]

[Footnote 347:  Trent to James Burd, 4 Oct. 1755.]

[Footnote 348:  Adam Hoops to Governor Morris, 3 Nov. 1755.]

Morris was greatly troubled.  “The conduct of the Assembly,” he wrote to Shirley, “is to me shocking beyond parallel.”  “The inhabitants are abandoning their plantations, and we are in a dreadful situation,” wrote John Harris from the east bank of the Susquehanna.  On the next day he wrote again:  “The Indians are cutting us off every day, and I had a certain account of about fifteen hundred Indians, besides French, being on their march against us and Virginia, and now close on our borders, their scouts scalping our families on our frontiers daily.”  The report was soon confirmed; and accounts came that the settlements in the valley called the Great Cove had been completely destroyed.  All this was laid before the Assembly.  They declared the accounts exaggerated, but confessed that outrages had been committed; hinted that the fault was with the proprietaries; and asked the Governor to explain why the Delawares and Shawanoes had become unfriendly.  “If they have suffered wrongs,” said the Quakers, “we are resolved to do all in our power to redress them, rather than entail upon ourselves and our posterity the calamities of a cruel Indian war.”  The Indian records were searched, and several days spent in unsuccessful efforts to prove fraud in a late land-purchase.