The proprietaries were then in England; but observing, on perusing the treaty, with what asperity they had expressed themselves against Maryland, and that the Indians had just cause to complain of the settlements at Juniata, so near Shamokin, they wrote to their governor, in very pressing terms, to cause those trespassers to be immediately removed; and both the proprietaries and governor laid these commands on me to see this done, which I accordingly did in June, 1743, the governor having first given them notice by a proclamation served on them.
At that time none had presumed to settle at a place called the Big Cove--having this name from its being enclosed in the form of a basin by the southernmost range of the Kittochtinny Hills and Tuscarora Hills; which last end here, and lose themselves in other hills. This Big Cove is about five miles north of the temporary line, and not far west of the place where the line terminated. Between the Big Cove and the temporary line lies the Little Cove,--so called from being likewise encircled with hills; and to the west of the Little Cove, toward Potowmec, lie two other places, called the Big and Little Conollaways, all of them situate on the temporary line, and all of them extended toward the Potowmec.
In the year 1741 or 1742 information was likewise given that people were beginning to settle in those places, some from Maryland and some from this province. But as the two governments were not then on very good terms, the governor did not think proper to take any other notice of these settlements than to send the sheriff to serve his proclamation on them, though they had ample occasion to lament the vast inconveniences which attend unsettled boundaries. After this the French war came on, and the people in those parts, taking advantage of the confusion of the times, by little and little stole into the Great Cove; so that at the end of the war it was said thirty families had settled there; not, however, without frequent prohibitions on the part of the government, and admonitions of the great danger they run of being cut off by the Indians, as these settlements were on lands not purchased of them. At the close of the war, Mr. Maxwell, one of the justices of Lancaster county, delivered a particular message from this government to them, ordering their removal, that they might not occasion a breach with the Indians, but it had no effect.