traveling Spaniard." General Muhlenberg spent his time while in Pittsburgh in preparing for the further journey, his leisure being employed in "trying to catch some Ohio fish, which, according to report, are very large; but hitherto I have been unsuccessful, as the river is too full of ice." When the boat on which General Muhlenberg and the party with which he was now traveling left Pittsburgh, was passing Logstown, where his grandfather, Conrad Weiser, had held his conference with the Indians in 1748, it ran aground on an island. It was near sunset, and as the boat could not be floated, they were compelled to stay all night. The occupants of the boat became uneasy. On the north side of the river was the Indian Country, and they were fearful of an attack. The Indians, although at peace with the whites, could probably not "withstand the great temptation of plundering a boat so richly laden as ours," Muhlenburg writes. The company was therefore divided into four watches and placed under his orders. He admits that he felt anxious. "For I must confess that I did not hear the noise of the wild fowl, the screaming loons, the hooting owls, and the howling wolves, which continued around us all night, with total indifference."

Early in 1784, Congress appointed three commissioners to meet the Six Nations on the northern and western frontiers, and purchase their western lands. On February 3, 1784, Pennsylvania also appointed commissioners to acquire the Indian lands in Pennsylvania, (23) who were to meet with the United States commissioners. All the commissioners met the Indians at Fort Schuyler (more generally known by its former and subsequent name of Fort Stanwix), beginning on October 3, 1784. The treaty was signed with the United States commissioners on October 22nd and with the Pennsylvania commissioners the next day, (24) and all the Indian lands in Pennsylvania, north and west of the Allegheny River, except certain lands at Erie, were ceded to Pennsylvania. One of the United States commissioners was Arthur Lee, of Virginia, who, together with Dr. Franklin and Silas Deane, had been joint commissioners of the United States to the Court of France during the Revolution. Lee kept a journal from Philadelphia to Fort Schuyler, and after the conclusion of

the treaty with the Six Nations, continued the journal through Western Pennsylvania while on the way to Cuyahoga, now Cleveland, where a conference was to be held with the Western Indians. The party came by way of Sunbury and Carlisle and consisted of the United States commissioners, George Rogers Clark, Richard Butler and Arthur Lee, and arrived at Fort Pitt on December 2, 1784. (25)

On December 5th a conference was held with Colonel Josiah Harmer, who commanded the Pennsylvania troops on the frontier, in the Indian Country on the opposite side of the Allegheny River from Fort Pitt, where he was cncamped, with a force of soldiers intended as an escort for the commissioners on the further journey. Here it was decided that owing to the lateness of the season and the difficulty in securing supplies, the conference should be held at Fort McIntosh, thirty miles distant. After a stay of several weeks at Fort Pitt, the commissioners procceded to Fort McIntosh, where the Pennsylvania commissioners met them, and where the conference was finally held and the deeds granting the lands to the United States and to Pennsylvania were signed on January 21, 1785. (26)

During his stay in Pittsburgh, Lee wrote down his impressions of the place: "Pittsburgh is inhabited almost entirely by Scots and Irish, who live in paltry log-houses, and are as dirty as in the north of Ireland and Scotland. There is a great deal of small trade carried on, the goods being brought at the vast expense of forty-five shillings per hundred weight from Philadelphia and Baltimore. They take in the shops, money, wheat, flour and skins. There are in the town four attorneys and two doctors." He also expressed the opinion that the place would "never be very considerable." In this respect the subsequent history of Pittsburgh has shown that his judgment was of far less value than that of Dr. Schoepf.

Religion also had begun to reassert itself in Pittsburgh in the bosoms of those who, owing to the vicissitudes of their new life, had neglected its outward observance. Wandering clerics came and preached in the fort or in some public house in the town, but house of worship there was none. The strain of the Revolution being over and the

stress of adverse material circumstances being lessened, the people began yearning for the spiritual life which they had led in their old homes in the East, and a desire for a church home developed. The majority of the people in Pittsburgh and its vicinity were either Scotch-Irish or German. The former were Presbyterians, while the latter were divided in their church affiliations between the Evangelical and Reformed faiths. The Germans were the first to organize a congregation, their church dating from 1782. (27) The Presbyterians claim 1784 as the natal year of their church. When Dr. Schoepf was in Pittsburgh, as he relates, a German preacher was living there who ministered to all the Germans. (28) Arthur Lee, on the other hand, tells that there was not in Pittsburgh "a priest of any persuasion, nor church nor chapel; so they are likely to be damned without the benefit of clergy." (29) Mr. Lee probably did not know that the Presbyterian church was in process of formation, and he may have closed his eyes to the fact that the German church had been in existence for two years, in order that he might elaborate his witticism about being "damned without the benefit of clergy."

John Wilkins, who removed from Carlisle to Pittsburgh in October, 1783, and who subsequently became one of its leading citizens, being an associate justice of the common pleas court of Allegheny County upon its erection, a chief burgess of the borough of Pittsburgh, and county treasurer for many years, has left a graphic, but rather dark account of the social and religious conditions prevailing in Pittsburgh at the time he settled there. (30)

"When I first came here I found the place filled with old officers and soldiers, followers of the army, mixed with a few families of credit. All sorts of wickedness were carried on to excess, and there was no appearance of morality or regular order. There appeared to be no signs of religion among the people, and it seemed to me that the Presbyterian ministers were afraid to come to the place lest they should be mocked or mistreated."

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He then relates that he had "often hinted to the creditable part of the people that something ought to be done toward establishing a Presbyterian church." The result of his suggestions was the organization of the Presbyterian