[As discussed by Peter with the governor and with the assembly, in 1754-5 the Crown Colony of Pennsylvania has no royal troops on station, has no standing militia force, has no provisional militia force, has not enough armed free men to defend their property against small, squad- and even team-strength, bands of Indians. One soon discovers that there are not facilities, officers or equipment to facilitate Peter’s training, equipment and employment as an Indian fighter—the nearest such being in New England. These facts, taken together with the governor’s line of inquiry, suggest that Pennsylvania had been providing for its frontier security by way of the employment of warriors belonging to certain unnamed tribes.]

However, on receiving this intelligence from his excellency, they immediately sent for me. When I arrived, I was conducted into the lower house, where the assembly then sat, and was there interrogated by the speaker, very particularly, as to all I had before given the governor an account of. This, my first examination, lasted three hours. The next day I underwent a second for about an hour and a half, when I was courteously dismissed, with a promise that all proper methods should be taken, not only to accommodate and reimburse all those who had suffered by the savages, but to prevent them from committing the like hostilities for the future.

Now returned, and once more at liberty to pursue my own inclinations, I was persuaded by my father-in-law and friends to follow some employment or other; but the plantation from whence I was taken, though an exceeding good one, could not tempt me to settle on it again.

[This episode is an indication that free white men were scarce and wanted for neighbors by existing plantation owners.]

What my fate would have been if I had, may easily be conceived. And there being at this time (as the assembly too late for many of us found) a necessity for raising men to check those barbarians in their ravaging depredations, I enlisted myself as one, with the greatest alacrity and most determined resolution to exert the utmost of my power in being revenged on the hellish authors of my ruin. General Shirley, governor of New England, and commander-in-chief of his Majesty's land forces in North America, was pitched upon to direct the operations of the war in that part of the world.

Into a regiment immediately under the command of this general, was it my lot to be placed for three years. This regiment was intended for the frontiers, to destroy the forts erected by the French, as soon as it should be completely furnished with arms, etc., at Boston in New England, where it was ordered for that purpose. Being then very weak and infirm in body, though possessed of my resolution, it was thought advisable to leave me for two months in winter quarters. At the end of which, being pretty well recruited in strength, I set out for Boston to join the regiment, with some others likewise left behind: and after crossing the river Delaware, we arrived at New Jersey, and from thence proceeded through the same by New York* Middletown, Mendon in Connecticut, to Boston, where we arrived about the end of March, and found the regiment ready to receive us.