" And he gave them the belt with the request
that they would send it to their friends and allies, and invite them to
take hold also of the chain of friendship. Accordingly all present
agreed on a joint message of peace to the tribes of the Ohio.[657]
[Footnote 657: _Minutes of Conferences at Easton, October, 1758._]
Frederic Post, with several white and Indian companions, was chosen to
bear it. A small escort of soldiers that attended him as far as the
Alleghany was cut to pieces on its return by a band of the very warriors
to whom he was carrying his offers of friendship; and other tenants of
the grim and frowning wilderness met the invaders of their domain with
inhospitable greetings. "The wolves made a terrible music this night,"
he writes at his first bivouac after leaving Loyalhannon. When he
reached the Delaware towns his reception was ominous. The young warriors
said: "Anybody can see with half an eye that the English only mean to
cheat us. Let us knock the messengers in the head." Some of them had
attacked an English outpost, and had been repulsed; hence, in the words
of Post, "They were possessed with a murdering spirit, and with bloody
vengeance were thirsty and drunk. I said: 'As God has stopped the mouths
of the lions that they could not devour Daniel, so he will preserve us
from their fury.'" The chiefs and elders were of a different mind from
their fierce and capricious young men.
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