George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 5, 13th edition.

[221] a firm peace with the Indians on the Ohio it was

chap X.} 1764. Oct.

desirable to show a strong force in the midst of their settlements. The regular army was feeble, and could furnish scarcely five hundred men, most of them Highlanders. Pennsylvania, at her own charge, added a thousand, and Virginia contributed a corps of volunteers. These took up the march, under Bouquet, for the heart of Ohio.

Virginia volunteers formed the advance guard, the axemen followed to clear three paths. At the sides, the soldiers marched in single file; in the centre, two deep, followed by the convoy of well-laden pack horses and droves of sheep and oxen; a party of light horsemen came next; again, Virginia volunteers brought up the rear. With the little army went many who had lost children, or friends, and came to search the wilderness for the captives.

At the fork in the Indian path, where it branches to the lower towns of the Muskingum, blazed forest-trees were found marked with emblematic records of deeds of war—the number of scalps taken in battle, and of prisoners that had been saved.

A little below the mouth of Sandy Creek, beneath a bower erected on the banks of the Tuscarawas, chiefs and warriors of the Senecas, the Delawares, and the Shawnees, came to light the council-fire, to smoke the calumet, and to entreat for peace. At the close of the speech, the Delaware chiefs delivered up eighteen white prisoners and eighty-three small sticks, as pledges for the return of so many more.

To insure the performance of their promises, Bouquet marched farther into their country, till, at the junction of the White Woman and the Tuscarawas, in