In answer to Sir William Johnson's opinion about the Government of Pensilvania raising Forces

and building Forts on the Susquehana River |

Vol. 1.

--

PAPERS RELATING TO THE SUSQUEHANNAH RIVER.

" The Proprietors say this Insinuation is without any sort of Foundation, as it never would have

been attempted had not the Chiefs of the Indians living on the Susquehannah and Delaware River on their own Motion entirely desired they should be built at Shamokin and near "Wyoming for their own security.

" In tliis the Proprietors must certainly be misinformed for none of the Indians on Susquehanna or Delaware ever requested any Forts to be built there.

Indeed after the defeat of General Braddock, Scarayade, Cayseuntenego, and two or three more Ohio Indians who had left their country on the first approach of the French in the year 1753 did desire the Government of Pensilv a to build a

Fort at Shamokin, in order to protect their interest with the Susquehanna Indians, but the request of those four or five dispossessed Indians can never be fairly construed as an authority of application

from the Six Nations, or any other Bodies of Indians.

However this request for a Fort was not

complied with at that time." In a Message winch Sir William Johnson received the 23 d May 1756 from the Onondaga Indians they say as follows

:

" Tell our Brother farther that since

we took the hatchet out of the hands of the Delaware and

Shawanese they have told us there is an army of the English coming against them, (they mean the Provincial Troops of Pensilvania under Colonel Clapham) and that they think it unreasonable and unnatural for us to hold them in our arms, and preventing them defending themselves