Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 8).djvu/194

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190
MILITARY ROADS

fifty miles away. The last message from the Indians was sent August 13. Its important paragraph read: "At our general council, held at the Glaize last fall, we agreed to meet commissioners from the United States, for the purpose of restoring peace, provided they consented to acknowledge and confirm our boundary line to be the Ohio: and we determined not to meet you, until you gave us satisfaction on that point: that is the reason we have never met."[1] On the sixteenth day of August the commissioners replied that the above message was a virtual declaration of war, and declared that "impartial judges will not attribute the continuance of the war to them."[2]

A glimpse into the council of Indians at the rapids is afforded us in the deposition made by an unknown Pennsylvanian youth, who was captured by Wea Indians in 1783 and who had lived among the Indians throughout the ten years since that time. He attended the treaty. On the tenth of July there were fourteen hundred Indians

  1. Id., p. 356.
  2. Id., p. 375.