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and send him away;" whereat "the great man" is described to have been greatly appalled; and Yeardley's wife taking him by the hand resolutely stood forward in his defence, and pledged her whole property as guarantee for the truth of her assertion, that no harm to the settlement was intended, or was likely to arise from the Indian's alliance. Upon Yeardley's return from Maryland, he dispatched with his brother's assistance, a boat with six hands, one being a carpenter, to build "the great man" an English house, and two hundred pounds for the purchase of Indian territory. The terms of the purchase were soon agreed upon by Yeardley's people; "and they paid for three great rivers and also all such others as they should like of Southerly;" and in due form took possession of the country in the name of the Commonwealth of England; receiving as a symbol of its surrender a turf of earth with an arrow shot into it. The territory thus yielded by the natives, was that which afterwards became the province of North Carolina; and as soon as they had withdrawn from it to a region further South, Yeardley built "the great commander a fair house," which he promised to "furnish with English utensils and chattels." The letter states further that through the same agency Yeardley's people had been introduced to the emperor of the Tuscarawes, (Tuscaroras) who received them courteously, and invited them to a country, of which he spoke in most alluring terms; but owing to the illness of their interpreter, the offer could not be accepted. Upon the completion of the English house for the Roanoke chief, he came with the Tuscarora prince, and forty-five others, to Yeardley's house; presented his wife and son to be baptized with himself, and offered again the same symbol of the surrender of his whole country to Yeardley; and he, tendering the same to the Commonwealth of England, prayed only that his own property and

pains might not be forgotten." The Indian child was then solemnly presented to the minister before the congregation; and having been baptized in their presence was left with Yeardley "to be bred up a Christian which God grant him grace (he prays) to become." Yeardley next goes on to repeat that the charges incurred by him in taking possession of the country had already amounted to more than three hundred pounds; and expresses an earnest hope that he should not want assistance from good patriots either by their good words or purses." He then adds, "If you think good to acquaint the States with what is done by two Virginians born, you will honor our country ;" and in conclusion begs to kiss the hands of his correspondent, with the fair hands of his "virtuous countrywoman, the worthily to be honored Mrs. Virginia Farrar."

THE SHAWNEE EXPEDITION IN 1756.

MR. EDITOR,-In your last July number, you gave us a paper entitled "Morton's Diary," communicated by our able antiquarian friend, and indefatigable laborer in the field of Virginia history, Charles Campbell, Esq., with a brief introduction by him in which he asks, "Is the expedition to which this diary refers the same with that styled the Sandy Creek Expedition?" Now I have no doubt whatever that it is; as I think I can easily show. It is true, indeed, that Withers and several other writers after him, have raised some doubt upon the subject by giving us an account of what they call the Sandy Creek Voyage, which is only another name for the same affair, and which they say occurred in 1757, a year after the date of the Shaw

nee Expedition of 1756; but this date is manifestly an error-originating from the lapse of time in handing down the details by tradition. To show this more particularly, I shall trace the error to its source-as follows:

In the year 1829, Hugh Paul Taylor, of Covington, Alleghany county, Virginia, published in the Fincastle Mirror, over the signature of "SON OF CORNSTALK," a series

papers on the early history of West Virginia, chiefly made up of traditions received from the lips of aged surviving Pioneers. Gathered from such sources, errors not a few, both as to facts and dates, could not otherwise than have crept into the series; and, besides, Mr. Taylor does not appear to have taken any special pains to collate his materials, or sift his authorities. Perhaps by this mode of publishing, he hoped to elicit additional information, and designed giving the whole a thorough revision; be this as it may, he died soon after, and thus perished whatever good intentions he may have cherished of future corrections and improvements.

Soon after Taylor's death; to wit, in 1831, Alexander S. Withers published a work entitled "Chronicles of Border Warfare," in the first seven chapters of which he incorporated Taylor's Notes, and that without the least intimation as to the source from which the information was derived. But Mr. Taylor was then in his grave, and crediting a dead man was not, perhaps, deemed at all necessary, as he could care nothing about it. Still it might have been well for the satisfaction of the readers of that work, and for the author's own credit, that the text should have been fortified by a full reference to authorities. No thanks to Col. Withers that the origin of his statement of the Sandy Creek Voyage is now known. The date of its occurrence, as I have already observed, is there assigned to the year 1757; but this error he took from Taylor, as Taylor had

taken it from some one else. There are other grave errors beside the date in Withers' statement; indeed the whole narrative, tested by authentic unpublished documents, is proved to be wrong in almost every particular. Flint, Darby, Howe, and Monette, have each successively copied the account of the Sandy Creek Expedition, from Withers, and aided very materially in perpetuating the errors of that relation.

But while many of the details of the Sandy Creek Voyage, as given by Taylor and Withers, and others after them, are more or less erroneous, yet the names of the officers enumerated, the general rout down the Sandy, the hunger and suffering of the men, killing horses for food, and the final failure of the expedition, are concurring circumstances so peculiar as to identify it as the same described in Morton's Diary, and Sparks's Life of Washington; and also, I may add, more fully, in Preston's Journal, a cotemporary manuscript, a copy of which I have in my possession, and some extracts from which I may hereafter send you. At present, I will only say that not only the name of Lieut. Morton occurring in Captain Preston's Journal, as that of Preston does in Morton's Diary, but the general facts narrated in both these papers, sufficiently attest that both refer to the same adventurous service; and each serves to corroborate the statements of the other.

I may further state, in support of this view, that the MS. Records of Botetourt county, for 1779-'80, make repeated references to "the Shawanese Expedition in 1756," in the statements of survivors to obtain military lands to which they were entitled, and no similar expedition in 1757, is, in any instance, alluded to; nor is there any notice of such an affair in Sparks's Writings of Washington; and in none of the newspaper files of that day, or border manuscripts of that period, which have come under my

notice, is any such service mentioned as occurring in 1757.

It is true, indeed, (I ought perhaps to state,) that there was such a design on foot, in the beginning of that year, but it was never executed. Col. Clement Read, in a MS. letter before me, dated Lunenburg, March 31, 1757, addressed to Col. John Buchanan, of Augusta county, says: "I am sorry the expedition so well intended against the Shawnesse is likely to be defeated, and all our schemes for carrying it on rendered abortive, by an ill-timed jealousy and malicious insinuations." He then conveys the idea that Col. Nash had been chosen to the command of this newly-formed enterprise; Col. Read, though a militia colonel at home, was to go out as a private soldier; and Major Callaway and Obey Woodson were to figure in it-names unconnected with the former expedition, except perhaps Woodson's, and none of them occur in Taylor and Withers's account. Col. Nash's election was charged by the Augusta men, in a petition to the Council, with being secured by undue means, and insinuations were thrown out that Col. Read was influenced by ambitious or interested motives-which he indignantly repels, and presumes that he and Col. Nash, under the circumstances, can, without censure or reproach, decline having any thing further to do with the proposed Expedition. It seems to have fallen through; I no where find any further reference to it.

I will only further add, (if it can be at all necessary,) that I can confirm my opinion on this point, by a high authority. The late Mr. Perkins, in his invaluable and discriminating "Annals of the West," speaking of Major Lewis's Expedition of 1756, observes: "Of this expedition, however, we have no details, unless it be, as we suspect, the same with "the Sandy Creek Voyage," described by Withers in his "Border Warfare," as occurring in 1757,

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