the other a steep range, picturesque with the
wildness of cliff, forest, and ravine. There is
a pretty lake; there is the river winding
through the vale, receiving mountain
torrents by creeks named after the Indian
chiefs who once dwelt on their banks; and
the river is sometimes glittering in the sun,
reflecting hill and sky in its clear water;
sometimes buried under green bowers of
willow, sycamore, and maple.

Delaware Indians were masters of this
valley when the white men found it. For
a little time, on opposite banks of the Susquehanna,
Delawares and Shawanese lived under
shelter of the same hills; but one day, when
the men of the tribes were away hunting,
their women and children were together by
the stream, gathering wild fruits. A Shawanese
child caught a grasshopper, and a
Delaware child quarrelled with him for it; the
quarrel spread among the children, and from
them to the mothers. There was a fight, with
some loss of life. When the braves came
home, there was war; and the end of the
war was the driving of the Shawanese out
of the valley; where, at some time known
only to the poet,

     With timbrel underneath the forests brown,
     The lovely maidens would the dance renew;
     And aye those sunny mountains half-way down
     Would echo flageolet from some romantic town.

The first white man who came into the
valley, one hundred and sixteen years ago,
was Count Zinzendorf, the Moravian
Missionary. Warriors who had agreed to slay
him crept one night into his tent, and saw
him writing quietly, unconscious of peril,
while a huge rattlesnake crawled over his
feet. They supposed him to be under the
protection of the Great Spirit, and retired to
tell what they had seen. To this incident
the good Moravian was indebted for the
influence he soon obtained over the
Delawares.

Eight years later, a few adventurers from
New England crossing the mountains, saw
the beautiful valley garnished with wild
fruits and flowers, and the vines heavy with
grapes, waving about the trees to which they
clung. The travellers went home and said
that they had found a paradise upon the
Susquehanna. Plans were immediately formed
for early emigration. The offended Indians
during the next year came occasionally upon
a sharp Yankee who was mapping out their
lands and streams; and presently they found
themselves between two parties of white
men, who were contesting with each other
for possession of the Indian soil. The
Delawares had, therefore, to put themselves out
of the question, and to regard only the rival
claims of Pennsylvania and Connecticut.
Under the Yankee government most occupants
were freeholders; under the Pennsylvanian
they were leaseholders; and the
difference between the two tenures was great
enough to cause one Connecticut soldier who
begged for an army of freeholders when he
had men to lead into battle, to tell to a
Pennsylvanian the story of the dying slave,
by whose bed the master stood and asked
whether he was not sorry to die. "Not I,"
he replied. "The loss is yours." Finally the
men of Connecticut prevailed; although three
times driven from the valley, and obliged to
wander back to their old homes with their
wives and children, through two hundred
miles of an unbroken wilderness. They had
possession of the soil when all domestic strife
was lost in, or made part of, the great
struggle of the War of Independence.
Wyoming, containing about two thousand
inhabitants, then became the town of
Westmoreland, and was attached to Litchfield
county.

The members of the Johnson family, at
Johnson Hall, near Johnstown in Tryon
county, were the chief representatives of
King George, and they had unbounded
influence over the Indians. The founder of
the family in the Mohawk valley, Sir William
Johnson, had been fascinated by a beautiful
young Indian squaw, named Molly Brant,
whose power over him was great; she was
the mother of his children, and became, at
last, his wife. Joseph Brant,

The mammoth comes—the foe the monster Brandt—
    With all his howling, desolating band;
These eyes have seen their blade, and burning pine
    Awake at once, and silence half your land.
Red is the cup they drink; but not with wine;
    Awake, and watch to-night, or see no morning shine.

the accursed Brandt of English tradition,
and of Campbell's verse, was a younger
brother to Molly, and he was bound by more
than this tie to the Johnson family. Sir
William Johnson sent him, when young, to a
school at Connecticut for Indian boys, where
he was found to be very clever, served as
interpreter, and even assisted in translating
Saint Mark's Gospel into Mohawk. Molly
procured his recal from school, and he soon
afterwards, at the head of a band of Mohawks,
became a powerful combatant with the
Johnsons in the cause called loyal. Doctor
Peck, who has heaped together for us all the
recollections of the district, drawn from men
and women who have suffered terribly from
Indian war, and who have no love whatever
for the Indian, shows that the English tory
chief is more remembered for his cruelty
than the Mohawk; shows, also, that Brandt
took no part in the worst scenes of
massacre, that he himself made no war upon
women and children, and that sometimes the
Indian temper showed in him more generosity
than belonged to the tory prejudice of
his companions. The cruelty of the Indians
as a mass against the men with whom they
combated, was terrible indeed; but beyond
plundering them of all, even of their little
ones, they seldom harmed the white women,