CHAPTER XLIV.

THE INDIANS AND THE WHITES COMPARED.

If lions had painters! This proverbial saying applies with equal force to the American Indians. They have no historians among them, no books, no newspapers, no convenient means of making their grievances known to a sympathising world. Why, then, should not a white man, a Christian, who has spent among them the greatest part of his life, and was treated by them at all times with hospitality and kindness, plead their honest cause, and defend them as they would defend themselves, if they had but the means of bringing their facts and their arguments before an impartial public?

Those who have never taken the pains to enquire into the real character and disposition of the American Indians, naturally suppose, that a people who have no code of laws for their government, but where every man is at liberty to do what he pleases, where men never forget or forgive injuries, and take revenge in their own way, often in the most cruel manner, and are never satisfied until they have been revenged, must of course be _barbarians_ and _savages_; by which undefined words is understood whatever is bad, wicked, and disgraceful to human nature. Imagination is immediately at work to paint them as a species of monsters, to whom cruelty is an appetite; a sort of human-shaped tigers and panthers, strangers to the finer feelings, and who commit acts of barbarity without any excitement but that of their depraved inclination, and without even suspecting that there are such things in nature as virtue on the one hand and crime on the other.

But nothing is so false as this picture of the Indians. The worst that can be said of them is, that the passion of revenge is so strong in their minds, that it carries them beyond all bounds. But set this aside, and their character is noble and great. They have no written laws, but they have usages founded on the most strict principles of equity and justice. Murder with them is punished with death. It is true, that as was the case not many centuries ago among the most civilised nations of Europe, the death of a man may be compounded for with his surviving relations; if, however, they do not choose to accept of the terms offered, any one of them may become the executioner of the murderer.

Thieves are compelled to restore what they have stolen, or to make satisfactory amends to the injured party; in their default, their nearest relations are obliged to make up the loss. If the thief, after sufficient warning, continues his bad practices, he is disowned by his nation, and any one may put him to death the next time that he is caught in the act of stealing, or that it can be clearly proved to have been committed by him. I have given two instances of the kind in a former chapter,[248] and I recollect another which will put what I have said in the strongest light. I once knew an Indian chief, who had a son of a vicious disposition, addicted to stealing, and who would take no advice. His father, tired and unable to satisfy all the demands which were made upon him for the restitution of articles stolen by his son, at last issued his orders for shooting him the next time he should be guilty of a similar act.

As to crimes and offences of an inferior nature to murder and theft, they are left to the injured party to punish in such manner as he thinks proper. Such are personal insults and threats, which among those people are not considered as slight matters. If the will and intention of the aggressor appear to be _bad_; if the insult offered is considered as the forerunner of something worse; or, as the Indians express themselves, if the “_murdering spirit_” is “_alive_” within him who offers or threatens violence to another, they think themselves justified in preventing the act meditated against them; in such a case, they consider the killing the aggressor as an act of necessity and self defence. Yet it is very rarely, indeed, that such punishments are inflicted.[249] The Indians, in general, avoid giving offence as much as possible. They firmly believe that bad thoughts and actions proceed from the evil spirit, and carefully avoid every thing that is _bad_.

Every person who is well acquainted with the true character of the Indians will admit that they are peaceable, sociable, obliging, charitable, and hospitable among themselves, and that those virtues are, as it were, a part of their nature. In their ordinary intercourse, they are studious to oblige each other. They neither wrangle nor fight; they live, I believe, as peaceably together as any people on earth, and treat one another with the greatest respect. That they are not devoid of tender feelings has been sufficiently shewn in the course of this work. I do not mean to speak of those whose manners have been corrupted by a long intercourse with the worst class of white men; they are a degenerate race, very different from the true genuine Indians whom I have attempted to describe.

If any one should be disposed to think that I have exaggerated in the picture which I have drawn of these _original people_, as they call themselves, I appeal to the numerous impartial writers who have given the same testimony respecting them. What says Christopher Columbus himself of the American Indians in his letters to his sovereign? “There are not,” says he, “a better people in the world than these; more affectionate, affable, or mild. _They love their neighbours as themselves._”

Similar encomiums were passed on them by some of the first Englishmen who came to settle in this country. The Reverend Mr. Cushman, in a sermon preached at Plymouth in 1620, says: “The Indians are said to be the most cruel and treacherous people in all those parts, even like lions; but to us they have been like lambs, so kind, so submissive and trusty, as a man may truly say, many Christians are not so kind and sincere.”

The learned Dr. Elias Boudinot, of Burlington, in New Jersey (a man well remembered as one of the most eminent leaders of the American Revolution),[250] in a work[251] which, whatever opinion may be entertained of the hypothesis that he contends for, well deserves to be read, for the spirit which it breathes and the facts that it contains, has brought together in one view, the above and many other authorities of eminent men in favour of the American Indians, and in proof that their character is such as I have described. I shall not repeat after him what Las Casas, William Penn, Bryan Edwards, the Abbé Clavigero, Father Charlevoix and others, have said on the same subject; those numerous and weighty testimonies may be found in the work to which I have referred.[252] But I cannot refrain from transcribing the opinion of the venerable author himself, to which his high character, his learning, and independence, affix a more than common degree of authority.

“It is a matter of fact,” says Dr. Boudinot, “proved by most historical accounts, that the Indians, at our first acquaintance with them, generally manifested themselves kind, hospitable and generous to the Europeans, so long as they were treated with justice and humanity. But when they were, from a thirst of gain, over-reached on many occasions, their friends and relations treacherously entrapped and carried away to be sold for slaves, themselves injuriously oppressed, deceived and driven from their lawful and native possessions; what ought to have been expected, but inveterate enmity, hereditary animosity, and a spirit of perpetual revenge? To whom should be attributed the evil passions, cruel practices and vicious habits to which they are now changed, but to those who first set them the example, laid the foundation and then furnished the continual means for propagating and supporting the evil?”[253]

Such was the original character of the Indians, stamped, as it were, upon them by nature; but fifty or sixty years back, whole communities of them bore the stamp of this character, difficult now to be found within the precincts of any part of their territory bordering on the settlements of the white people!

What! will it be asked, can this be a true picture of the character of the Indians; of those brutes, barbarians, savages, men without religion or laws, who commit indiscriminate murders, without distinction of age or sex? Have they not in numberless instances desolated our frontiers, and butchered our people? Have they not violated treaties and deceived the confidence that we placed in them? No, no; they are beasts of prey in the human form; they are men with whom no faith is to be kept, and who ought to be cut off from the face of the earth!

Stop, my friends! hard names and broad assertions are neither reasons nor positive facts. I am not prepared to enter into a discussion with you on the comparative merits or demerits of the Indians and whites; for I am unskilled in argument, and profess only to be a plain _matter of fact_ man. To facts therefore I will appeal. I admit that the Indians have sometimes revenged, cruelly revenged, the accumulated wrongs which they have suffered from unprincipled white men; the love of revenge is a strong passion which their imperfect religious notions have not taught them to subdue. But how often have they been the aggressors in the unequal contests which they have had to sustain with the invaders of their country? In how many various shapes have they not been excited and their passions roused to the utmost fury by acts of cruelty and injustice on the part of the whites, who have made afterwards the country ring with their complaints against the lawless savages, who had not the means of being heard in their defence? I shall not pursue these questions any farther, but let the facts that I am going to relate speak for themselves.

In the summer of the year 1763, some friendly Indians from a distant place, came to Bethlehem to dispose of their peltry for manufactured goods and necessary implements of husbandry. Returning home well satisfied, they put up the first night at a tavern, eight miles distant from this place.[254] The landlord not being at home, his wife took the liberty of encouraging the people who frequented her house for the sake of drinking to abuse those Indians, adding, “That she would freely give a gallon of rum to any one of them that should kill one of these black d----ls.” Other white people from the neighbourhood came in during the night, who also drank freely, made a great deal of noise, and increased the fears of those poor Indians, who, for the greatest part, understanding English, could not but suspect that something bad was intended against their persons. They were not, however, otherwise disturbed: but in the morning, when, after a restless night, they were preparing to set off, they found themselves robbed of some of the most valuable articles they had purchased, and on mentioning this to a man who appeared to be the bar-keeper, they were ordered to leave the house. Not being willing to lose so much property, they retired to some distance into the woods, where, some of them remaining with what was left them, the others returned to Bethlehem and lodged their complaint with a justice of the peace. The magistrate gave them a letter to the landlord, pressing him without delay to restore to the Indians the goods that had been taken from them. But behold! when they delivered that letter to the people at the inn, they were told in answer: “that if they set any value on their lives, they must make off with themselves immediately.” They well understood that they had no other alternative, and prudently departed without having received back any of their goods.[255] Arrived at Nescopeck[256] on the Susquehannah, they fell in with some other Delawares, who had been treated much in the same manner, one of them having had his rifle stolen from him. Here the two parties agreed to take revenge in their own way, for those insults and robberies for which they could obtain no redress; and that they determined to do as soon as war should be again declared by their nation against the English.

Scarcely had these Indians retired, when in another place, about fourteen miles distant from the former, one man, two women and a child, all quiet Indians, were murdered in a most wicked and barbarous manner, by drunken militia officers and their men, for the purpose of getting their horse and the goods they had just purchased.[257] One of the women, falling on her knees, begged in vain for the life of herself and her child, while the other woman, seeing what was doing, made her escape to the barn, where she endeavoured to hide herself on the top of the grain. She however was discovered, and inhumanly thrown down on the threshing floor with such force that her brains flew out.[258]

Here, then, were insults, robberies and murders, all committed within the short space of three months, unatoned for and unrevenged. There was no prospect of obtaining redress; the survivors were therefore obliged to seek some other means to obtain revenge. They did so; the Indians, already exasperated against the English in consequence of repeated outrages, and considering the nation as responsible for the injuries which it did neither prevent nor punish, and for which it did not even offer to make any kind of reparation, at last declared war, and then the injured parties were at liberty to redress themselves for the wrongs they had suffered. They immediately started against the objects of their hatred, and finding their way, unseen and undiscovered, to the inn which had been the scene of the first outrage, they attacked it at daybreak, fired into it on the people within, who were lying in their beds. Strange to relate! the murderers of the man, two women, and child, were among them. They were mortally wounded, and died of their wounds shortly afterwards. The Indians, after leaving this house, murdered by accident an innocent family, having mistaken the house that they meant to attack, after which they returned to their homes.[259]

Now a violent hue and cry was raised against the Indians--no language was too bad, no crimes too black to brand them with. No faith was to be placed in those savages; treaties with them were of no effect; they ought to be cut off from the face of the earth! Such was the language at that time in everybody’s mouth; the newspapers were filled with accounts of the cruelties of the Indians, a variety of false reports were circulated in order to rouse the people against them, while they, the really injured party, having no printing presses among them, could not make known the story of their grievances.

“No faith can be placed in what the Indians promise at treaties; for scarcely is a treaty concluded than they are again murdering us.” Such is our complaint against these unfortunate people; but they will tell you that it is the white men in whom no faith is to placed. They will tell you, that there is not a single instance in which the whites have not violated the engagements that they had made at treaties. They say that when they had ceded lands to the white people, and boundary lines had been established--“firmly established!” beyond which no whites were to settle; scarcely was the treaty signed, when white intruders again were settling and hunting on their lands! It is true that when they preferred their complaints to the government, the government gave them many fair promises, and assured them that men would be sent to remove the intruders by force from the usurped lands. The men, indeed, came, but with chain and compass in their hands, taking surveys of the tracts of good land, which the intruders, from their knowledge of the country, had pointed out to them!

What was then to be done, when those intruders would not go off from the land, but, on the contrary, increased in numbers? “Oh!” said those people, (and I have myself frequently heard this language in the Western country,) “a new treaty will soon give us all this land; nothing is now wanting but a pretence to pick a quarrel with them!” Well, but in what manner is this quarrel to be brought about? A _David Owen_, a _Walker_, and many others might, if they were alive, easily answer this question. A precedent, however, may be found, on perusing Mr. Jefferson’s Appendix to his Notes on Virginia. On all occasions, when the object is to murder Indians, strong liquor is the main article required; for when you have them dead drunk, you may do to them as you please, without running the risk of losing your life. And should you find that the laws of your country may reach you where you are, you have only to escape or conceal yourself for a while, until the storm has blown over! I well recollect the time when thieves and murderers of Indians fled from impending punishment across the Susquehannah, where they considered themselves safe; on which account this river had the name given to it of “_the rogue’s river_.” I have heard other rivers called by similar names.

In the year 1742, the Reverend Mr. Whitefield offered the Nazareth Manor (as it was then called) for sale to the United Brethren.[260] He had already begun to build upon it a spacious stone house, intended as a school house for the education of negro children. The Indians, in the meanwhile, loudly exclaimed against the white people for settling in this part of the country, which had not yet been legally purchased of them, but, as they said, had been obtained by fraud.[261] The Brethren declined purchasing any lands on which the Indian title had not been properly extinguished, wishing to live in peace with all the Indians around them. Count Zinzendorff happened at that time to arrive in the country; he found that the agents of the proprietors would not pay to the Indians the price which they asked for that tract of land; he paid them out of his private purse the whole of the demand which they made in the height of their ill temper, and moreover gave them permission to abide on the land, at their village, (where, by the by, they had a fine large peach orchard,) as long as they should think proper. But among those white men, who afterwards came and settled in the neighbourhood of their tract, there were some who were enemies to the Indians, and a young Irishman, without cause or provocation, murdered their good and highly respected chief _Tademi_,[262] a man of such an easy and friendly address, that he could not but be loved by all who knew him. This, together with the threats of other persons, ill disposed towards them, was the cause of their leaving their settlement on this manor, and removing to places of greater safety.

It is true, that when flagrant cases of this description occurred, the government, before the Revolution, issued proclamations offering rewards for apprehending the offenders, and in later times, since the country has become more thickly settled, those who had been guilty of such offences were brought before the tribunals to take their trials. But these formalities have proved of little avail. In the first case, the criminals were seldom, if ever, apprehended; in the second, no jury could be found to convict them; for it was no uncommon saying among many of the men of whom juries in the frontier countries were commonly composed, that no man should be put to death for killing an Indian; for it was the same thing as killing a wild beast!

But what shall I say of the conduct of the British agents, or deputy agents, or by whatsoever other name they may be called, who, at the commencement of the American Revolution, openly excited the Indians to kill and destroy all the rebels without distinction? “Kill all the rebels,” they would say, “put them all to death, and spare none.” A veteran chief of the Wyandot nation, who resided near Detroit, observed to one of them that surely it was meant that they should kill men only, and not women and children. “No, no,” was the answer, “kill all, destroy all; _nits breed lice_!” The brave veteran[263] was so disgusted with this reply, that he refused to go out at all; wishing however to see and converse with his old brother soldiers of the Delaware nation, with whom he had fought against the English in the French war, he took the command of a body of ninety chosen men, and being arrived at the seat of the government of the Delawares, on the Muskingum, he freely communicated to his old comrades (among whom was Glikhican, whom I shall presently have occasion further to mention) what had taken place, and what he had resolved on; saying that he never would be guilty of killing women and children; that this was the first and would be the last of his going out this war; that in ten days they should see him come back with one prisoner only, no scalp to a pole, and no life lost. He kept his word. The sixteen chiefs under him, from respect and principle, agreed to all his proposals and wishes.

How different the conduct of the Indians from that of their inhuman employers! I have already related the noble speech of Captain Pipe to the British Commandant at Detroit, and I have done justice to the character of that brave officer, who surely ought not to be confounded with those Indian agents that I have spoken of. But what said Pipe to him? “Innocence had no part in your quarrels; and therefore I distinguished--I spared. Father! I hope you will not destroy what I have saved!”[264] I have also told the conduct of the two young spirited Delawares[265] who saved the life of the venerable Missionary Zeisberger, at the risk of their own. But it is not only against their own people that Indians have afforded their protection to white men, but against the whites themselves.

In the course of the Revolutionary war, in which (as in all civil commotions) brother was seen fighting against brother, and friend against friend, a party of Indian warriors, with whom one of those white men, who, under colour of attachment to their king, indulged in every sort of crimes, was going out against the settlers on the Ohio, to kill and destroy as they had been ordered. The chief of the expedition had given strict orders not to molest any of the white men who lived with their friends the Christian Indians; yet as they passed near a settlement of these converts, the white man, unmindful of the orders he had received, attempted to shoot two of the Missionaries who were planting potatoes in their field, and though the captain warned him to desist, he still obstinately persisted in his attempt. The chief, in anger, immediately took his gun from him, and kept him under guard until they had reached a considerable distance from the place. I have received this account from the chief himself, who on his return sent word to the Missionaries that they would do well not to go far from home, as they were in too great danger from the _white people_.

Another white man of the same description, whom I well knew, related with a kind of barbarous exultation, on his return to Detroit from a war excursion with the Indians in which he had been engaged, that the party with which he was, having taken a woman prisoner who had a sucking babe at her breast, he tried to persuade the Indians to kill the child, lest its cries should discover the place where they were; the Indians were unwilling to commit the deed, on which the white man at once jumped up, tore the child from its mother’s arms and taking it by the legs dashed its head against a tree, so that the brains flew out all around. The monster in relating this story said, “The little dog all the time was making _wee!_” He added, that if he were sure that his old father, who some time before had died in Old Virginia, would, if he had lived longer, have turned rebel, he would go all the way into Virginia, raise the body, and take off his scalp!

Let us now contrast with this the conduct of the Indians. Carver tells us in his travels with what moderation, humanity and delicacy they treat female prisoners, and particularly pregnant women.[266] I refer the reader to the following fact, as an instance of their conduct in such cases. If his admiration is excited by the behaviour of the Indians, I doubt not that his indignation will be raised in an equal degree by that of a white man who unfortunately acts a part in the story.

A party of Delawares, in one of their excursions during the Revolutionary war, took a white female prisoner. The Indian chief, after a march of several days, observed that she was ailing, and was soon convinced (for she was far advanced in her pregnancy) that the time of her delivery was near. He immediately made a halt on the bank of a stream, where at a proper distance from the encampment, he built for her a close hut of peeled barks, gathered dry grass and fern to make her a bed, and placed a blanket at the opening of the dwelling as a substitute for a door. He then kindled a fire, placed a pile of wood near it to feed it occasionally, and placed a kettle of water at hand where she might easily use it. He then took her into her little infirmary, gave her Indian medicines, with directions how to use them, and told her to rest easy and she might be sure that nothing should disturb her. Having done this, he returned to his men, forbade them from making any noise, or disturbing the sick woman in any manner, and told them that he himself should guard her during the night. He did so, and the whole night kept watch before her door, walking backward and forward, to be ready at her call at any moment, in case of extreme necessity. The night passed quietly, but in the morning, as he was walking by on the bank of the stream, seeing him through the crevices, she called to him and presented her babe. The good chief, with tears in his eyes, rejoiced at her safe delivery; he told her not to be uneasy, that he should lay by for a few days and would soon bring her some nourishing food, and some medicines to take. Then going to his encampment, he ordered all his men to go out a hunting, and remained himself to guard the camp.

Now for the reverse of the picture. Among the men whom this chief had under his command, was one of those white vagabonds whom I have before described. The captain was much afraid of him, knowing him to be a bad man; and as he had expressed a great desire to go a hunting with the rest, he believed him gone, and entertained no fears for the woman’s safety. But it was not long before he was undeceived. While he was gone to a small distance to dig roots for his poor patient, he heard her cries, and running with speed to her hut, he was informed by her that the white man had threatened to take her life if she did not immediately throw her child into the river. The Captain, enraged at the cruelty of this man, and the liberty he had taken with his prisoner, hailed him as he was running off, and told him, “That the moment he should miss the child, the tomahawk should be in his head.” After a few days this humane chief placed the woman carefully on a horse, and they went together to the place of their destination, the mother and child doing well. I have heard him relate this story, to which he added, that whenever he should go out on an excursion, he never would suffer a white man to be of his party.

Yet I must acknowledge that I have known an Indian chief who had been guilty of the crime of killing the child of a female prisoner. It was Glikhican,[267] of whom I have before spoken, as one of the friends of the brave Wyandot who expressed so much horror at the order given to him by the Indian agents to murder women and children.[268] In the year 1770, he joined the congregation of the Christian Indians; the details of his conversion are related at large by Loskiel in his History of the Missions.[269] Before that time he had been conspicuous as a warrior and a counsellor, and in oratory it is said he never was surpassed. This man, having joined the French, in the year 1754, or 1755, in their war against the English, and being at that time out with a party of Frenchmen, took, among other prisoners, a young woman named _Rachel Abbott_, from the Conegocheague settlement,[270] who had at her breast a sucking babe. The incessant cries of the child, the hurry to get off, but above all, the persuasions of his _white_ companions, induced him, much against his inclination, to kill the innocent creature; while the mother, in an agony of grief, and her face suffused with tears, begged that its life might be spared. The woman, however, was brought safe to the Ohio, where she was kindly treated and adopted, and some years afterwards was married to a Delaware chief of respectability, by whom she had several children, who are now living with the Christian Indians in Upper Canada.

Glikhican never forgave himself for having committed this crime, although many times, and long before his becoming a Christian, he had begged the woman’s pardon with tears in his eyes, and received her free and full forgiveness. In vain she pointed out to him all the circumstances that he could have alleged to excuse the deed; in vain she reminded him of his unwillingness at the time, and his having been in a manner compelled to it by his French associates; nothing that she did say could assuage his sorrow or quiet the perturbation of his mind; he called himself a wretch, a monster, a _coward_ (the proud feelings of an Indian must be well understood to judge of the force of this self-accusation), and to the moment of his death the remembrance of this fatal act preyed like a canker worm upon his spirits. I ought to add, that from the time of his conversion, he lived the life of a Christian, and died as such.

The Indians are cruel to their enemies! In some cases they are, but perhaps not more so than white men have sometimes shewn themselves. There have been instances of white men flaying or taking off the skin of Indians who had fallen into their hands, then tanning those skins, or cutting them in pieces, making them up into razor-straps, and exposing those for sale, as was done at or near Pittsburg sometime during the Revolutionary war. Those things are abominations in the eyes of the Indians, who, indeed, when strongly excited, inflict torments on their prisoners and put them to death by cruel tortures, but never are guilty of acts of barbarity in cold blood. Neither do the Delawares and some other Indian nations, ever on any account disturb the ashes of the dead.

The custom of torturing prisoners is of ancient date, and was first introduced as a trial of courage. I have been told, however, that among some tribes it has never been in use; but it must be added that those tribes gave no quarter. The Delawares accuse the Iroquois of having been the inventors of this piece of cruelty, and charge them further with eating the flesh of their prisoners after the torture was over. Be this as it may, there are now but few instances of prisoners being put to death in this manner.

Rare as these barbarous executions now are, I have reason to believe that they would be still less frequent, if proper pains were taken to turn the Indians away from this heathenish custom. Instead of this, it is but too true that they have been excited to cruelty by unprincipled white men, who have joined in their war-feasts, and even added to the barbarity of the scene. Can there be a more brutal act than, after furnishing those savages, as they are called, with implements of war and destruction, to give them an ox to kill and to roast whole, to dance the war dance with them round the slaughtered animal, strike at him, stab him, telling the Indians at the same time: “Strike, stab! Thus you must do to your enemy!” Then taking a piece of the meat, and tearing it with their teeth: “So you must eat his flesh!” and sucking up the juices: “Thus you must drink his blood!” and at last devour the whole as wolves do a carcass. This is what is known to have been done by some of those Indian agents that I have mentioned.

“Is this possible?” the reader will naturally exclaim. Yes, it is possible, and every Indian warrior will tell you that it is true. It has come to me from so many credible sources, that I am forced to believe it. How can the Indians now be reproached with acts of cruelty to which they have been excited by those who pretended to be Christians and civilised men, but who were worse savages than those whom, no doubt, they were ready to brand with that name?

When hostile governments give directions to employ the Indians against their enemies, they surely do not know that such is the manner in which their orders are to be executed; but let me tell them and every government who will descend to employing these auxiliaries, that this is the only way in which their subaltern agents will and can proceed to make their aid effectual. The Indians are not fond of interfering in quarrels not their own, and will not fight with spirit for the mere sake of a livelihood which they can obtain in a more agreeable manner by hunting and their other ordinary occupations. Their passions must be excited, and that is not easily done when they themselves have not received any injury from those against whom they are desired to fight. Behold, then, the abominable course which must unavoidably be resorted to--to induce them to do what?--to lay waste the dwelling of the peaceable cultivator of the land, and to murder his innocent wife and his helpless children! I cannot pursue this subject farther, although I am far from having exhausted it. I have said enough to enable the impartial reader to decide which of the two classes of men, the Indians and the whites, are most justly entitled to the epithets of brutes, barbarians, and savages. It is not for me to anticipate his decision.

But if the Indians, after all, are really those horrid monsters which they are alleged to be, two solemn, serious questions have often occurred to my mind, to which I wish the partisans of that doctrine would give equally serious answers.

1. Can civilised nations, can nations which profess Christianity, be justified in employing people of that description to aid them in fighting their battles against their enemies, Christians like themselves?

2. When such nations offer up their prayers to the throne of the most High, supplicating the Divine Majesty to grant success to their arms, can they, ought they to expect that those prayers will be heard?

I have done. Let me only be permitted, in conclusion, to express my firm belief, the result of much attentive observation and long experience while living among the Indians, that if we would only observe towards them the first and most important precept of our holy religion, “to do to others as we would be done to;” if, instead of employing them to fight our battles, we encouraged them to remain at peace with us and with each other, they might easily be brought to a state of civilisation, and become CHRISTIANS.

I still indulge the hope that this work will be accomplished by a wise and benevolent government. Thus we shall demonstrate the falsity of the prediction of the Indian prophets, who say: “That when the whites shall have ceased killing the red men, and got all their lands from them, the great tortoise which bears this island upon his back, shall dive down into the deep and drown them all, as he once did before, a great many years ago; and that when he again rises, the Indians shall once more be put in possession of the whole country.”

CONCLUSION.

I have thus finished the work which was required of me by the Historical Committee of the American Philosophical Society. On reading over the printed sheets which have been kindly sent to me from Philadelphia, as they issued from the press, I have noticed several errors, some of which may be ascribed to me, others to the transcriber of the manuscript, and very few to the printer. I regret that there are among them some mistakes in dates and names of places; they are all rectified in the errata.

I am very sensible of the many defects of this little work in point of method, arrangement, composition and style. I am not an author by profession; the greatest part of my life was spent among savage nations, and I have now reached the age of seventy-five, at which period of life little improvement can be expected. It is not, therefore, as an author that I wish to be judged, but as a sincere relator of facts that have fallen within my observation and knowledge. I declare that I have said nothing but what I certainly know or verily believe. In matters of mere opinion, I may be contradicted; but in points of fact I have been even scrupulous, and purposely omitted several anecdotes for which I could not sufficiently vouch. In my descriptions of character, I may have been an unskilful painter, and ill chosen expressions may imperfectly have sketched out the images that are imprinted on my mind; but the fault is in the writer, not in the man.

It is with pleasure that I inform the reader that the parts of Mr. Zeisberger’s Iroquois Dictionary which I have mentioned above, (pages 97, 118,) as being irretrievably lost, have most fortunately been found since this work is in the press. The book has been neatly bound in seven quarto volumes, and will remain a monument of the richness and comprehensiveness of the languages of the Indian nations. Several valuable grammatical works on the same language, by the same author and Mr. Pyrlæus, have been recovered at the same time, by means of which, the idiom of the Six Nations may now be scientifically studied.

When I spoke (p. 136) of the impression made by Captain Pipe’s speech “on all present,” I meant only on those who understood the language; for there were many who did not, and M. Baby, the Canadian interpreter, did not explain to the bystanders the most striking passages, but went now and then to the Commandant and whispered in his ear. Captain Pipe, while he spoke, was exceedingly animated, and twice advanced so near to the Commandant, that M. Baby ordered him to fall back to his place. All who were present must have at least suspected that his speech was not one of the ordinary kind, and that everything was not as they might suppose it ought to be.

I promised in my introduction (p. xxvi.) to subjoin an explanatory list of the Indian nations which I have mentioned in the course of this work, but I find that I have been so full on the subject that such a list is unnecessary.

I have classed the Florida Indians together in respect of language, on the supposition that they all speak dialects of the same mother tongue; the fact, however, may be otherwise, though it will be extraordinary that there should be several languages entirely different from each other in the narrow strip of land between the Carolinas and the Mississippi, when there are but two principal ones in the rest of the United States. It is to be expected that the researches of the Historical Committee will throw light upon this subject.

ERRATA IN PART I.

PAGE 26, LINE 5--Between the words “_if_” and “_what_” insert “_we can credit_.” 30, 15--For “_declaring at the same time_” read “_and declared afterwards_.” 31, 8--For “_Mohicans_” read “_Lenape_.” 67, 14--For “_1742_” read “_and November 1756_.” 72, 12--Dele “_in which_.” 77, 11--For “_Delawares_” read “_Mohicans_.” 80, 18--For “_1787_” read “_1781_.” 81, 5--For “_us_” read “_them_.” 84, 12--For “_Mouseys_” read “_Monseys_.” 23--Beginning a paragraph, for “_1768, about six_” read “_1772, a few_.” 85, 29--Of third note, for “_Shawanachau_” read “_Shawanachan_.” 90, 13--For “_Shawanos_” read “_Nanticokes_.” 91, 13--For “_schschequon_” read “_shechschequon_.” 92, 29 and 30--For “_Tawachguáno_” read “_Tayachguáno_.” 110, 12--For “_once_” read “_sometimes_.” 111, 8--For “_should_” read “_deserved to_.” 10--For “_to_” read “_out at_.” 12--Dele “_outside of the door and_.” 118, 15--For “_Thornhallesen_” read “_Thorhallesen_.” 122, 10--Of the first note, for “_p. 3_” read “_p. 5_.” 130, 8--For “_or_” read “_nor_.” 131, 22--For “_met_” read “_saw_.” 25--For “_days_” read “_hours_.” 133, 5--For “_December_” read “_November_.” 140, 10--Of No. 43, for “_with_” read “_of_.” 143, 34--For “_they_” read “_the Chippeways and some other nations_.” 146, 17--For “_your_” read “_yon_.” 150, 4--After the word “_nation_” insert “_which they do not approve of_.” 153, 31--For “_they sure_” read “_they are sure_.” 160, 32--For “_reply_” read “_answer_.” 164, 26--For “_decide_” read “_say_.” 28--For “_man_” read “_men_.” 166, 2--Between “_is_” and “_even_” insert “_sometimes_.” 22--For “_an old Indian_” read “_several old men_.” 167, 11 and 13--For “_road_” read “_course_.” 174, 18--For “_where_” read “_whence_.” 178, 33--For “_Duke Holland_” read “_Luke Holland_;” the same where the name again occurs. 201, 5--Dele “_again_.” 216, 29--For “_very often_” read “_sometimes_.” 217, 2--For “_inches_” read “_feet_.” 218, 14--For “_of_” read “_on_.” 243, 3--For “_Americans_” read “_white men_.” 250, 9--For “_killed_” read “_eaten_.” 253, 37--For “_Pauk-sit_” read “_P’duk-sit_.” 263, 14--Dele “_lands or_.” 278, 35--For “_Albany_” read “_Pittsburgh_.” 283, 31--For “_Sandusky_” read “_Muskingum_.” 293, 26--For “_bought_” read “_brought_.” 313, 23--For “_them_” read “_us_.”