1764 Letter from Lewis Weiss to Frederick Marshall
[Punctuation and spelling is as it appears in the original document]
To Mr. Frederick Marshall
Bethlehem
Dear Br. Marshall
I am exceedingly obliged to you for this Mapp of the Susquehanna Settlements. Since our late Tumults it seems the Government is mostly concerned for removing the Indians Thomas Appy is gone up to Sir William Johnson & is expected in 8 Days back I wish you or somebody else was then here from Bethl. as we shall want your advice for our Conduct at that time. The minds of all the people friends and foes are fixed upon & point The Indians must go from Philada. Now if Sir William should refuse to take them You may easily thinking that it will be a difficult matter to say where they are to go to. Last Friday letters arrived from Sir William to our Governor signifying that he (Sir Wlm.) had received his Majesties express order to bring about a lasting peace with the Indians. This I hope will be of some good effect in respect to our Indians. It seems the soldiers stationed here for their defense will be otherwise employed about the middle of the month.
I should have demanded the papers concerning Renatus* but Mr. Dickinson is gone out of town & will be here I believe Saturday evening I am about drawing another Petition to the House for Renatus’s trial in the County of Philada. If our Assembly should break up without making such provision he might remain in prison till the next meeting of the Assembly in October.
I am
Your affectionate [illeg.] friend & br.
L. Weiss
March 2d. 1764.
* Editors note: Renatus, a Christian Mahican living at the Moravian mission at Nain, was accused in October, 1763 of murdering a tavern keeper, John Stenton. For details on the events leading up to Renatus' arrest through his acquittal, see Jane T. Merritt, At the Crossroads: Indians and Empires on the Mid-Atlantic Frontier, 1700-1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 272-281.
Updated: 21 September 2005
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