Having now accomplished his errand, Post wished to return home; but the Indians were seized with an access of distrust, and would not let him go.  This jealousy redoubled when they saw him writing in his notebook.  “It is a troublesome cross and heavy yoke to draw this people,” he says; “they can punish and squeeze a body’s heart to the utmost.  There came some together and examined me about what I had wrote yesterday.  I told them I writ what was my duty.  ’Brothers, I tell you I am not afraid of you.  I have a good conscience before God and man.  I tell you, brothers, there is a bad spirit in your hearts, which breeds jealousy, and will keep you ever in fear.’” At last they let him go; and, eluding a party that lay in wait for his scalp, he journeyed twelve days through the forest, and reached Fort Augusta with the report of his mission.[656]

[Footnote 656:  Journal of Christian Frederic Post, July, August, September, 1758.]

As the result of it, a great convention of white men and red was held at Easton in October.  The neighboring provinces had been asked to send their delegates, and some of them did so; while belts of invitation were sent to the Indians far and near.  Sir William Johnson, for reasons best known to himself, at first opposed the plan; but was afterwards led to favor it and to induce tribes under his influence to join in the grand pacification.  The Five Nations, with the smaller tribes lately admitted into their confederacy, the Delawares of the Susquehanna, the Mohegans, and several kindred bands, all had their representatives at the meeting.  The conferences lasted nineteen days, with the inevitable formalities of such occasions, and the weary repetition of conventional metaphors and long-winded speeches.  At length, every difficulty being settled, the Governor of Pennsylvania, in behalf of all the English, rose with a wampum belt in his hand, and addressed the tawny congregation thus:  “By this belt we heal your wounds; we remove your grief; we take the hatchet out of your heads; we make a hole in the earth, and bury it so deep that nobody can dig it up again.”  Then, laying the first belt before them, he took another, very large, made of white wampum beads, in token of peace:  “By this belt we renew all our treaties; we brighten the chain of friendship; we put fresh earth to the roots of the tree of peace, that it may bear up against every storm, and live and nourish while the sun shines and the rivers run.”  And he gave them the belt with the request that they would send it to their friends and allies, and invite them to take hold also of the chain of friendship.  Accordingly all present agreed on a joint message of peace to the tribes of the Ohio.[657]

[Footnote 657:  Minutes of Conferences at Easton, October, 1758.]