The Humble Petition of Your Most Obedient Servant Sheweth, Sir, may it pleas Your Excellancy, Hearing me in Your Clemancy a few Words. I, One of the Bereaved of my Wife and five Children, by Savage War at the Captivity of the Great Cove, after Many & Long Journeys, I Lately went to an Indian Town, viz., Tuskaroways, 150 miles Beyond Fort Pitts, & Entrested in Co^l. Bucquits & Co^l. Croghan's favor, So as to bear their Letters to King Beaver & Cap^t. Shingas, Desiring them to Give up One of my Daughters to me, Whiles I have Yet two Sons & One Other Daughter, if Alive, Among them--and after Seeing my Daughter with Shingas he Refused to Give her up, and after some Expostulating with him, but all in vain, he promised to Deliver her up with the Other Captives to y^r Excellency.
Sir, y^r Excellency's Most Humble Serv^t, Humbly & Passionately Beseeches Y^r Beningn Compassion to interpose Y^r Excellencies Beneficent influence in favor of Y^r Excellencies Most Obedient & Dutiful Serv^t.
After the march of General Forbes from Raystown, and immediately preceding it, no Indian depredations were committed in the Cove up to the commencement of hostilities between the Colonies and Great Britain. The Indians in the French interest were constantly on the alert; and their spies prowling on the outskirts did not fail to report at head-quarters the arrival at Raystown of Colonel Boquet and his army, the formidable bearing and arms of which convinced the savages that it was prudent to keep within the bounds of the French power.
The first Indian depredations of the Revolution in the Juniata Valley were committed in November, 1777. A large body of Indians--not less than thirty--armed with British rifles, ammunition, tomahawks, scalping-knives, and all other murderous appliances they were capable of using, came into the settlement with the avowed intention of gathering scalps for His Britannic Majesty's officers at Detroit. Their coming was not unlooked-for, but the settlers were unprepared for them. The constant rumors afloat that a large body of savages, British, and tories, were coming, struck the people with so much panic that there was no effort made to give any such force as might come a warlike reception, but their energies were concentrated in measures of defence.