Page:The youth of Washington (1910).djvu/116

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XV

While at Greenway Court I had other teachers besides his lordship, for many Indians, frontier traders, and trappers came to claim food and shelter, which were never denied them. Often the woods were lighted up by their fires, and I found it of use, and interesting, to hear what was said and to learn something of the uncertain ways of the savages.

I heard how the Delawares, Shawnees, and Iroquois had wandered from the north and taken to the lands about the Ohio, and how the French protected them and claimed all the country up to the Alleghanies.

To these camps came the rude, lawless traders from Pennsylvania, who had stories to tell of the Indians and of the French beyond the Ohio. These men foresaw a war on the frontier when scarce any others did, and, by their accounts of the fertility of the wide savannas beyond the Ohio, filled