Page:Messages and Letters of William Henry Harrison Vol. 1.djvu/63

Rh  July 15th, 1801 Dawson, Harrison, 10-11

For the last ten or twelve weeks I have been constantly engaged in receiving visits from the Chiefs of most of the Indian nations which inhabit this part of the Territory. They all profess and I believe that most of them feel a friendship for the United States—but they make heavy complaints of ill treatment on the part of our Citizens. They say that their people have been killed—their lands settled on—their game wontonly destroyed—& their young men made drunk & cheated of the peltries which formerly procured them necessary articles of Cloathing, arms and amunition to hunt with. Of the truth of all these charges I am well convinced. The Delaware Chiefs in their address to me mentioned the loss of six persons of their nation, since the treaty of Greenvill having been killed by the White people—& I have found them correct as to number. In one instance however the White boy who killed the Indian was tried and acquitted as it was proved that it was done in self defence. In another instance the Murderrer was tried and acquitted by the Jury, altho it was very evident that it was a cruel and unprovoked murder. About twelve months ago a Delaware was killed in this Town by a Citizen of the Territory against whom a bill has been found by the grand. He has however escaped and it is reported that he has gone to Natchez or New Orleans. [See May 5, 1802, below.] But the case which seems to have affected the Indians more than any other is the murder of two men and one woman of this same nation about three years ago. This cruel deed was perpetrated on this side of the Ohio, forty or fifty miles below the falls & is said to have been attended with circumstances of such atrocity as almost to discredit the whole story—were it not but too evident that a great many of the Inhabitants of the Fronteers consider the murdering of Indians in the highest degree meritorious—the story is this. About three years ago two Delaware men and a woman were quietly hunting in the neighbourhood of the Ohio—I believe on the waters of Blue river their Camp was discovered by two men I think of the name of Williams—brothers—and these Williams mutually determined to murder