massacre at Wyoming.

This affair of Wyoming can after all scarcely be called an episode in
Brant's career, inasmuch as he was not present at the massacre at all, and
was many miles distant at the time of its occurrence. Still, historians and
poets have so persistently associated it with his name, and have been so
determined to saddle upon him whatever obloquy attaches to the transaction
that a short account of it may properly be given here.

The generally-received versions are tissues of exaggerations and
absurdities from first to last. Wyoming has been uniformly represented as
a terrestrial paradise; as a sort of Occidental Arcadia where the
simple-hearted pious people lived and served God after the manner of
patriarchal times. Stripped of the halo of romance which has been thrown
around it, Wyoming is merely a pleasant, fertile valley on the Susquehanna,
in the north-eastern part of the State of Pennsylvania. In the year 1765
it was purchased from the Delaware Indians by a company in Connecticut,
consisting of about forty families, who settled in the valley shortly after
completing their purchase. Upon their arrival they found the valley in
possession of a number of Pennsylvanian families, who disputed their rights
to the property, and between whom and themselves bickerings and contests
were long the order of the day. Their mode of life was as little Arcadian
as can well be imagined. Neither party was powerful enough to permanently
oust the other; and although their warlike operations were conducted upon a
small scale, they were carried on with a petty meanness, vindictiveness and
treachery that would have disgraced the Hurons themselves. From time to
time one party would gain the upper hand, and would drive the other from
the Valley in apparently hopeless destitution; but the defeated ones, to
whichsoever side they might belong, invariably contrived to re-muster their
forces, and return to harass and drive out their opponents in their turn.