The Indians in the French interest, always greedy for
presents, had not of late got enough to satisfy them. Many of those
destined for them had been taken on the way from France by British
cruisers, and the rest had passed through the hands of official knaves,
who sold the greater part for their own profit. Again, the goods
supplied by French fur-traders were few and dear; and the Indians
remembered with regret the abundance and comparative cheapness of those
they had from the English before the war. At the same time it was
reported among them that a British army was marching to the Ohio strong
enough to drive out the French from all that country; and the Delawares
and Shawanoes of the West began to waver in their attachment to the
falling cause. The eastern Delawares, living at Wyoming and elsewhere on
the upper Susquehanna, had made their peace with the English in the
summer before; and their great chief, Teedyuscung, thinking it for his
interest that the tribes of the Ohio should follow his example, sent
them wampum belts, inviting them to lay down the hatchet. The Five
Nations, with Johnson at one end of the Confederacy and Joncaire at the
other,--the one cajoling them in behalf of England, and the other in
behalf of France,--were still divided in counsel; but even among the
Senecas, the tribe most under Joncaire's influence, there was a party so
far inclined to England that, like the Delaware chief, they sent wampum
to the Ohio, inviting peace.
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