ship is very full of chastising them; and the 25th of next month is fixed for attacking the Great Shawanese Town, on Scioto. Your Honour will please to take notice, that the hint I gave you before, of a design to interrupt the trade of this Province, however improbable it might appear, was not without some foundation.

Mr. Hanna returned from Philadelphia yesterday, and gives an account that the Assembly have provided for the men that were raised for the defence of this county to the 10th instant, or longer, if necessary, and that he himself is appointed senior Captain, ab initio, Mr. Cavet the next, and a number of others who have never served an hour. The last part of his intelligence I gave no credit to, as he has no commission, nor any letters from any person about Government; and I do imagine, that as the command of them had been originally committed to me, your Honour would not place him therein to supersede me, without giving me some intimation of it. Nor is it reasonable that these men should take rank of the officers who have, in former wars, faithfully, as I am told, served this Government. Trifling as this affair is, it is likely to create much uneasiness; but I am certain your Honour will not allow those who have done no service, to rob those who have of their just reward; besides, the Association are bound to pay those they employed. I must own I have been remiss, in not fully informing your Honour who they were; but I beg your Honour to reflect upon the severe sickness I have just passed through. Some of them, had there been the least prospect of its being a permanent affair, I should not have recommended to your Honour; but we were under the necessity of employing such people as had influence amongst the mob and could get the men; and you will please to consider that it is by such arts that they must still be managed, as there are no laws by which obedience or discipline cap be enforced. I have told Mr. Hanna peremptorily, that I should retain the direction of the troops till I had your Honour's orders to the contrary; and I fondly hope this explanation will not disoblige you.

Notwithstanding what I said to Mr. Smith, on the subject of joining the Virginians, he thought proper to join a small party of Delawares and Mingoes, with eight men, in the character of volunteers, and proceeded to Wheeling. The Virginia detachment had marched two days before they arrived; and Captain Crawford, who commands them, (the President of our Court,) told him it would fatigue them too much to overtake the party, and that they had better return, which accordingly they did; and by what I learn from him, they seemed equally jealous both of him and the Indians.

I can recollect nothing else at present, and your Honour may probably think I might have spared a great part of what is already written. I have the honour to be, sir, your Honour's most, obedient and most humble servant,

AR. ST. CLAIR.

ARTHUR ST. CLAIR TO GOVERNOUR PENN.

Ligonier, August 25, 1774.

SIR: Agreeable to your request I now enclose you the depositions of some of the inhabitants of Pittsburgh, respecting the treatment they have met with from the Virginia officers. Not any of the persons who saw the Shawanese after they had been fired upon on their return, are now there, so that I would not inquire into that circumstance.

The message to the Delawares, with the belt of wampum, I delivered to some of their principal Chiefs, at Mr. Croghan's, on Sunday last. Mr. Croghan and Mr. McKee were of opinion it would, perhaps, be taken ill by the Six Nations that they were not included. I therefore took the liberty to add them in the address to the message, and had a fair copy made out and given to them with a belt.—They were received seemingly with great satisfaction by both, and they declared the firmest purposes of remaining in peace themselves, and restoring it between the people of Virginia and the Shawanese. At the same time I acquainted them with your orders for erecting a trading place at the Kittaning, for which they are very thankful, as they are in want of many things already, and cannot come to Pittsburgh and purchase; and a number of them will probably be there on Monday next, which is the time I have appointed for laying out the town. Mr. Spear and Mr. Butler set out this day with their goods and other effects.

Instead of sending the message to the Shawanese by a white man, I procured the Pipe, a faithful and sensible Delaware Chief, to go and acquaint them with the message his Nation had received from your Honour; that you had recommended it to them to speak to the Shawanese not to strike the Virginians, and that he had seen a message and belt for them, which, if they were well disposed, some of their people might come and receive it at Appleby. I thought this the most advisable way, as the people at the fort are extremely jealous of any person going amongst them, and had threatened the young men you mention to go with them; and some proposals of accommodation, I understand, have been made them by Mr. Conolly, to which, if they should not listen, they would be very apt to allege it was owing to heir hearing from this Province.

It is impossible to tell what will be the consequence of the Virginia operations. I still hope they will not be able to bring on a war. I think Lord Dunmore must soon see the necessity of peace. The season is now far advanced, and the country is exhausted of provisions. Should another body of men be drawn together, they could not be supported; and I believe their last exploit has not given them much stomach for another. There was, indeed, such confusion amongst the troops, and dissension amongst the officers, that had they met with any number of the enemy, they must certainly have been cut off. Preparations, however, are making, and his Lordship is hourly expected. The 10th of August, which was the time your Honour fixed for keeping up the rangers, was passed before your letter reached me; but as you were pleased to say their standing till the 19th of September, would depend on what intelligence you might receive from Captain Thomson and myself, we thought it best to continue them, being both of opinion that, at this time, it was very necessary, it being, in some measure, the crisis of the dispute with the Shawanese; and that great numbers of people are now gone down to bring back their families, which they removed when they thought themselves in more immediate danger.

I am sorry I troubled your Honour with my foolish grievances. I hope I shall always feel the spirit of the station I may be called to act in; but particular circumstances, I believe, had, in that case, set it rather too much on edge. I will not often offend in the same manner. I must do Mr. Cavet the justice to say he is a very good man, and would fill that or most other places with reputation.

An express arrived a day or two ago from Detroit. Mr. Conolly had applied to the Commanding Officer at that post to stop the trade with the Shawanese; but this he refuses, both as they have no prospect of war, and that for such a step he must have the orders of the Commander-in-chief at least. He says all the Indians in that country seem to be peaceably disposed. A letter by the same messenger, from a merchant at Detroit to a merchant at Pittsburgh, gives a quite contradictory account of matters; says the Indians in that country will all join the Shawanese; that some of them have come in from the frontiers of Virginia, and have brought scalps; that the general rendezvous is appointed on the Wabash, and that they expect but a very short time to have any intercourse with them, and desires him to write to Simons at Lancaster not to send the goods he had ordered.

This moment I have heard from Pittsburgh that Mr. Spear's and Mr. Butler's goods, that were going to Appleby, are seized by Mr. Conolly's orders; and that Mr. Butler, with three young men, his assistants, are in confinement in the common guard-house; and that a woman who kept house for Mr. Butler, has been drummed all round the town, for the great crime of going to see him in his distress. This is a degree of tyranny and oppression beyond every thing that has yet happened. I shall be able to give you a more circumstantial account to-morrow, when Captain Thomson will be here, who, I understand, was present when it happened. It will oblige me to put off my journey to Appleby, as all my stores, provisions, &c., were with Mr. Butler's goods. I have the honour to be, sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,

AR. ST. CLAIR.

The Honourable John Penn, Esq.