-Gabriel Arthur, 1673

[From the earliest colonial times Native Americans not only enslaved whites that came into their power, but also adopted boys and military age men into the tribe to replace losses from battle and disease. Daniel Boone was once adopted by a Shawnee chief after being captured in battle, only 30 years after Peter’s experience. We should keep in mind that Peter was most likely saved from the brutal fate of Joseph Snider and his slave because he had demonstrated masculine traits by threatening the raiding party and sustaining their tortures and was the right age and fitness to serve as a beast of burden in the meantime, before either his eventual adoption, or death by torture at the home village.]

Going from thence along by the River Susquehana for the space of six miles, loaded as I was before, we arrived at a spot near the Apalachian Mountains, or Blue Hills, where they hid their plunder under logs of wood. And, oh, shocking to relate! From thence did these hellish monsters proceed to a neighbouring house, occupied by one Joseph Snider, and his unhappy family, consisting of his wife, five children, and a young man his servant [a slave, the terms slave and servant being utterly interchangeable up until the Civil War].

They soon got admittance into the unfortunate man's house, where they immediately, without the least remorse, and with more than brutal cruelty, scalped* the tender parents and the unhappy children. I, nor could the tears, the shrieks, or cries of these unhappy victims, prevent their horrid massacre; for having thus scalped them, and plundered the house of every thing that was moveable, they set fire to the same, where the poor creatures met their final doom amidst the flames, the hellish miscreants standing at the door, or as near the house as the flames would permit them, rejoicing, and echoing back in their diabolical manner, the piercing cries, heart-rending groans, and paternal and affectionate soothings, which issued from this most horrid sacrifice of an innocent family.

Sacrifice! I think, I may properly call it, to the aggrandizing ambition of a king, who wrongly styles himself Most Christian! For, had these savages been never tempted with the alluring bait of all-powerful gold, myself as well as hundreds of others, might still have lived most happily in our stations. If Christians countenance, nay hire, those wretches to live in a continual repetition of plunder, rapine, murder, and conflagration, in vain are missionaries sent or sums expended, for the propagation of the Gospel. But these sentiments, with many others, must, before the end of this narrative, occur to every humane heart.

*Scalping is taking off the skin from the top of the bead; which they perform with a long knife which they hang round their neck, and always carry with them. They cut the skin round as much of the head as they think proper, sometimes quite round from the neck and forehead, then take it in their fingers, and pluck it off, and often leave the unhappy creatures, so served, to die in a most miserable manner. Some, who are not cut too deep in the temples and scull, live in horrid torments many hours, and sometimes a day or two after. The scalps, or skins thus taken off, they preserve and carry home in triumph, where they receive, as is said before, a considerable sum for every one. [Money was paid by the French and English agents. Scalping was not a European innovation, but a native custom adopted by Europeans, for governance, military and commercial purposes.]