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Chapter VI. The French And Indian War

There was no great change in political conditions in Pennsylvania until
about the year 1755. The French in Canada had been gradually developing
their plans of spreading down the Ohio and Mississippi valleys behind
the English colonies. They were at the same time securing alliances with
the Indians and inciting them to hostilities against the English. But
so rapidly were the settlers advancing that often the land could not
be purchased fast enough to prevent irritation and ill feeling. The
Scotch-Irish and Germans, it has already been noted, settled on lands
without the formality of purchase from the Indians. The Government, when
the Indians complained, sometimes ejected the settlers but more often
hastened to purchase from the Indians the land which had been occupied.
"The Importance of the British Plantations in America," published in
1731, describes the Indians as peaceful and contented in Pennsylvania
but irritated and unsettled in those other colonies where they had
usually been ill-treated and defrauded. This, with other evidence,
goes to show that up to that time Penn's policy of fairness and good
treatment still prevailed. But those conditions soon changed, as the
famous Walking Purchase of 1737 clearly indicated.

The Walking Purchase had provided for the sale of some lands along the
Delaware below the Lehigh on a line starting at Wrightstown, a few miles
back from the Delaware not far above Trenton, and running northwest,
parallel with the river, as far as a man could walk in a day and a half.
The Indians understood that this tract would extend northward only to
the Lehigh, which was the ordinary journey of a day and a half. The
proprietors, however, surveyed the line beforehand, marked the trees,
engaged the fastest walkers and, with horses to carry provisions,
started their men at sunrise. By running a large part of the way, at
the end of a day and a half these men had reached a point thirty miles
beyond the Lehigh.

The Delaware Indians regarded this measurement as a pure fraud and
refused to abandon the Minisink region north of the Lehigh. The
proprietors then called in the assistance of the Six Nations of New
York, who ordered the Delawares off the Minisink lands. Though they
obeyed, the Delawares became the relentless enemies of the white man and
in the coming years revenged themselves by massacres and murder. They
also broke the control which the Six Nati