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Early Western Travels
[Vol. 1

26th. Hired a Cannoe; paid 1,000 Black Wampum for the loan of it to Logs Town. Our Horses being all tyred, we went by Water & came that Night to a Delaware Town; the Indians used us very kindly.[1]

27th. Sett off again in the morning early; Rainy Wheather. We dined in a Seneka Town, where an old Seneka Woman Reigns with great Authority;[2] we dined at her House, & they all used us very well; at this & the last-mentioned Delaware Town they received us by firing a great many Guns; especially at this last Place. We saluted the Town by firing off 4 pair of pistols; arrived that Evening at Logs Town, & Saluted the Town as before; the Indians returned about One hundred Guns;[3] Great Joy appear'd in their Countenances.

  1. This was the Delaware village known as Shannopin's Town, from a chief of that name, who died in 1749. It was situated on the Allegheny River in the present city of Pittsburg, and contained about twenty wigwams, and fifty or sixty natives. See Darlington, Gist's Journals (Pittsburg, 1893), pp. 92, 93—Ed.
  2. The reference is to Queen Aliquippa, whose town, directly at the Forks of the Ohio, was called by Céloron "the written rock village." The writings proved on examination to be but names of English traders scrawled in charcoal on the rocks. See Father Bonnécamps's Relation, Jesuit Relations (Thwaites's ed., Cleveland, 1896-1902), lxix, p. 175. Céloron says of the Seneca queen: "She regards herself as a sovereign, and is entirely devoted to the English." Upon the advent of the French, she removed her village to the forks of the Monongahela and Youghiogheny, where she told Gist in 1753 she would never go back to the Allegheny to live, unless the English built a fort. Céloron says of the site of her first village: "This place is one of the most beautiful I have seen on the Beautiful River [la Belle Rivière, the French name for the Ohio]."—Ed.
  3. Logstown (French, Chinnigné, Shenango) was the most important Indian trading village in that part of the country. It was a mixed village composed of Indians of several tribes—chiefly Iroquois, Mohican, and Shawnee. When Céloron visited it a year after Weiser's sojourn, he spoke of it as "a very bad village, seduced by the desire for the cheap goods of the English." He was near being attacked here, being saved by discovering the plot, and displaying the strength of his forces. Like Weiser, he was received with a salute of guns, but feared it was more a sign of enmity than amity. Later, the Indians of this village returned to the French alliance, and after the founding of Fort