were, fourteen years ago. Such a situation, contrast-
ed with a land of
peace, and the security of life,
liberty, and property, may enable us to
make some
estimate of the blessings we enjoy, and the princi-
ples which
lead to a permanent security of them.
This morning the Ottoway, Capt. Cowan,
sailed
for Fort Erie, to go by the way
of Miami Bay, hav-
ing provisions on board
for McKee and the Indians
at the Rapids. With whom Capt.
Elliott, deputy
Indian agent for the British, embarked, to
join
McKee at the council. We acquainted him repeat-
edly with our
design in coming to this country, and
our prospects of the importance of the
business in
agitation, and engaged him to use his influence as
speedily
as possible, to open the way for a treaty. I
sent by this vessel some
intelligence to Philadelphia,
and sailed
up the river past Hog Island and Pearl
Island, into the lower end of Lake St. Clair, which
is about thirty-six miles
long, and eighteen broad.
After taking a prospect of Gross Point, the residence
of Commodore Grant, viewed N.
Williams’s stone
wind mill, dined at his house, and returned
eight or
nine miles to our lodgings. William
Savery and
William
Hartshorn, in our absence, were visited by
a Shawnese warrior, who
announced to them what had
before been frequently suggested to us by divers
per-
sons, that if the commissioners did not immediately
agree, that all
the land west of the Ohio, should
be
evacuated, and given up by the United States, or
even hinted any
thing to the contrary, by offering
gifts or money as purchase, of which they
under-
stood they had brought abundance with them, that
none of them, or
their company, would ever go off
the ground alive — for their fathers, who
are now all