[Footnote 15:  This is stated by Count Zinzendorf, who visited her among the Senecas.  In a plan of the “Route of the Western Army,” made in 1779, and of which a tracing is before me, the village where she lived is still called “French Catharine’s Town.”]

[Footnote 16:  Journal of Zinzendorf, quoted in Schweinitz, Life of David Zeisberger, 112, note.]

After leaving Muskingum, Gist, Croghan, and Montour went together to a village on White Woman’s Creek,—­so called from one Mary Harris, who lived here.  She was born in New England, was made prisoner when a child forty years before, and had since dwelt among her captors, finding such comfort as she might in an Indian husband and a family of young half-breeds.  “She still remembers,” says Gist, “that they used to be very religious in New England, and wonders how white men can be so wicked as she has seen them in these woods.”  He and his companions now journeyed southwestward to the Shawanoe town at the mouth of the Scioto, where they found a reception very different from that which had awaited Celoron.  Thence they rode northwestward along the forest path that led to Pickawillany, the Indian town on the upper waters of the Great Miami.  Gist was delighted with the country; and reported to his employers that “it is fine, rich, level land, well timbered with large walnut, ash, sugar trees and cherry trees; well watered with a great number of little streams and rivulets; full of beautiful natural meadows, with wild rye, blue-grass, and clover, and abounding with turkeys, deer, elks, and most sorts of game, particularly buffaloes, thirty or forty of which are frequently seen in one meadow.”  A little farther west, on the plains of the Wabash and the Illinois, he would have found them by thousands.

They crossed the Miami on a raft, their horses swimming after them; and were met on landing by a crowd of warriors, who, after smoking with them, escorted them to the neighboring town, where they were greeted by a fusillade of welcome.  “We entered with English colors before us, and were kindly received by their king, who invited us into his own house and set our colors upon the top of it; then all the white men and traders that were there came and welcomed us.”  This “king” was Old Britain, or La Demoiselle.  Great were the changes here since Celeron, a year and a half before, had vainly enticed him to change his abode, and dwell in the shadow of the fleur-de-lis.  The town had grown to four hundred families, or about two thousand souls; and the English traders had built for themselves and their hosts a fort of pickets, strengthened with logs.