[Ads-l] "serape"? And in 1783

[Joel Berson]

In a 1783 Sept. 11 Pennsylvania Packet article, page 3, col. 1, datelined "Richmond", about relations with Indians in the "Kentuckey Country" (EAN):

"They are not well reconciled to their _fathers_ the English, who they say have conducted them into a serape, deserted, and left them to shift for themselves."
Can someone explain "serape" here?  Could it be related to the following quotation under "yoke", v.?
"1853   E. K. Kane U.S. Grinnell Exped. (1856) xxiv. 196   By the time I had yoked my neck in its serape."
That is, the Indians feel yoked, trapped, with their heads confined within the neck opening of a serape?(n.1)

And it antedates OED2 1834-- !?

Joel
n.1:  I didn't know serapes might have neck holes before reading in Wikipedia:
"Serape" also can be used to refer to a very soft rectangular blanket with an opening in the middle for one's head, similar to a poncho called gabán in Mexico. 
 

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