Frederic Post, with several white and Indian companions, was chosen to bear it.  A small escort of soldiers that attended him as far as the Alleghany was cut to pieces on its return by a band of the very warriors to whom he was carrying his offers of friendship; and other tenants of the grim and frowning wilderness met the invaders of their domain with inhospitable greetings.  “The wolves made a terrible music this night,” he writes at his first bivouac after leaving Loyalhannon.  When he reached the Delaware towns his reception was ominous.  The young warriors said:  “Anybody can see with half an eye that the English only mean to cheat us.  Let us knock the messengers in the head.”  Some of them had attacked an English outpost, and had been repulsed; hence, in the words of Post, “They were possessed with a murdering spirit, and with bloody vengeance were thirsty and drunk.  I said:  ’As God has stopped the mouths of the lions that they could not devour Daniel, so he will preserve us from their fury.’” The chiefs and elders were of a different mind from their fierce and capricious young men.  They met during the evening in the log-house where Post and his party lodged; and here a French officer presently arrived with a string of wampum from the commandant, inviting them to help him drive back the army of Forbes.  The string was scornfully rejected.  “They kicked it from one to another as if it were a snake.  Captain Peter took a stick, and with it flung the string from one end of the room to the other, and said:  ’Give it to the French captain; he boasted of his fighting, now let us see him fight.  We have often ventured our lives for him, and got hardly a loaf of bread in return; and now he thinks we shall jump to serve him.’  Then we saw the French captain mortified to the uttermost.  He looked as pale as death.  The Indians discoursed and joked till midnight, and the French captain sent messengers at midnight to Fort Duquesne.”

There was a grand council, at which the French officer was present; and Post delivered the peace message from the council at Easton, along with another with which Forbes had charged him.  “The messages pleased all the hearers except the French captain.  He shook his head in bitter grief, and often changed countenance.  Isaac Still [an Indian] ran him down with great boldness, and pointed at him, saying, ‘There he sits!’ They all said:  ‘The French always deceived us!’ pointing at the French captain; who, bowing down his head, turned quite pale, and could look no one in the face.  All the Indians began to mock and laugh at him.  He could hold it no longer, and went out."[658]

[Footnote 658:  Journal of Christian Frederic Post, October, November, 1758.]