oud voice recounted his exploits. Then the music and the dance
began anew, till another warrior caught the martial fire, and bounded
into the circle to brandish his tomahawk and vaunt his prowess.

On the first of March Gist took leave of Pickawillany, and returned
towards the Ohio. He would have gone to the Falls, where Louisville now
stands, but for a band of French Indians reported to be there, who would
probably have killed him. After visiting a deposit of mammoth bones on
the south shore, long the wonder of the traders, he turned eastward,
crossed with toil and difficulty the mountains about the sources of the
Kenawha, and after an absence of seven months reached his frontier home
on the Yadkin, whence he proceeded to Roanoke with the report of his
journey.[18]

[Footnote 18: _Journal of Christopher Gist_, in appendix to Pownall,
_Topographical Description. Mr. Croghan's Transactions with the Indians_
in _N.Y. Col. Docs_., VII. 267.]

All looked well for the English in the West; but under this fair outside
lurked hidden danger. The Miamis were hearty in the English cause, and
so perhaps were the Shawanoes; but the Delawares had not forgotten the
wrongs that drove them from their old abodes east of the Alleghanies,
while the Mingoes, or emigrant Iroquois, like their brethren of New
York, felt the influence of Joncaire and other French agents, who spared
no efforts to seduce them.[19] Still more baneful to British interests
were the apathy and dissensions of the British colonies themselves. The
Ohio Company had built a trading-house at Will's Creek, a branch of the
Potomac, to which the Indians resorted in great numbers; whereupon the
jealous traders of Pennsylvania told them that the Virginians meant to
steal away their lands. This confirmed what they had been taught by the
French emissaries, whose intrigues it powerfully aided. The governors of
New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia saw the importance of Indian
alliances, and felt their own responsibility in regard to them; but they
could do nothing without their assemblies. Those of New York and
Pennsylvania were largely composed of tradesmen and farmers, absorbed in
local interests, and possessed by two motives,--the saving of the
people's money, and opposition to the governor, who stood for the royal
prerogative. It was Hamilton, of Pennsylvania, who had sent Croghan to
the Miamis to "renew the chain of friendship;" and when the envoy
returned, the Assembly reje