THE IROQUOIS.

[Contents]THE IROQUOIS.CHAPTER I.NATIONAL TRAITS OF CHARACTER.In all the early histories of the American colonies—in the stories of Indian life and delineations of Indian character—we have these children of the wilderness represented as savage and barbarous, with scarcely a redeeming trait of character. And in the minds of a large portion of the community the sentiment still prevails, that they were bloodthirsty, revengeful, and merciless—justly a terror to both friends and foes. Children are impressed with the idea that an Indian is scarcely human, and as much to be feared as the most ferocious animal of the forest.Novelists have now and then clothed a few with a garb which excites our admiration; but seldom has one been invested with qualities which we could love, unless it were also said that through some captive, taken in distant wars, he inherited a whiter skin and a paler blood.But I am inclined to think that Indians are not alone in being savage—not alone barbarous, and heartless, and merciless.[20]It is saidtheywere exterminating each other by aggressive and devastating wars before the white people came among them. But wars—certainly, aggressive and exterminating wars—are not proofs of barbarity. The bravest warrior was the most honored; and this has been ever true of Christian nations; and those who call themselves Christian, have not ceased yet to look upon him who could plan most successfully the wholesale slaughter of human beings, as the most deserving his king’s and his country’s laurels. How long since the pæan died away in praise of the Duke of Wellington? What have been the wars in which all Europe has been engaged since there have been any records of her history? For what are civilized and Christian nations now drenching their fields with blood?It is said the Indian was cruel to the captive, and inflicted unspeakable tortures upon his enemy taken in battle. But, from what we know of them, it is not to be inferred that Indian chiefs were ever guilty of filling dungeons with innocent victims, or slaughtering hundreds and thousands of their own people, whose only sin was a quiet dissent from some religious dogma. Towards their enemies they were often relentless, and they had good reason to look upon white men as their enemies. They slew them in battle, plotted against them secretly, and in a few instances—few comparatively—subjected individuals to torture, burnt them at the stake, and, perhaps, flayed them alive. But who knows any thing of the precepts and practice of Roman Catholic Christendom, and quotes these things as proofs of unmitigated barbarity? At the very time that Indians were using the tomahawk and scalping-knife to avenge their wrongs, peaceful citizens in every country in Europe, where the Pope was the man of authority, were incarcerated for no crime whatever, and[21]such refinements of torture invented and practised as it never entered in the heart of the fiercest Indian warrior that roamed the wilderness, to inflict upon man or beast. We know very little of the secrets of the Inquisition, and this little chills our blood with horror; yet these things were done in the name of Christ, the Saviour of the world—the Prince of Peace; and not savage, but civilized,Christianmen looked on, not coldly, but rejoicingly, while women and children writhed in flames and weltered in blood!Were the atrocities, committed in the Vale of Wyoming and Cherry Valley unprecedented among the Waldensian fastnesses and the mountains of Auvergne? Who has read Fox’s Book of Martyrs and found any thing to parallel it in all the records of Indian warfare? The slaughter of St. Bartholomew’s day, the destruction of the Jews in Spain, and the Scotch Covenanters, were in obedience to the mandates of Christian princes, aye, and some of them devised by Christian women, who professed to be serving God, and to make the Bible the man of their counsel.It is said also the Indian was treacherous, and in compliance with the conditions of no treaty was ever to be trusted. But our Puritan fathers cannot be wholly exonerated from the charge of faithlessness; and who does not blush to talk of Indian traitors when he remembers the Spanish invasion and the fall of the princely and magnanimous Montezuma?“Indians believed in witches and burned them too!” Did not the sainted Baxter, with the Bible in his hand, pronounce it right? and was not the Indian permitted to be present, when a quiet, unoffending woman was cast into the fire by the decree of a Puritan council?To come down to more decidedly Christian times, we[22]are yet called upon to shudder at the revelations of Howard and Miss Dix. It is not so very long since, in Protestant England, hanging was the punishment of a petty theft, and long and hopeless imprisonment, of a slight misdemeanor. I think it is within the memory of those who are not theoldest inhabitants, when men were yet up to be stoned and spit upon by those who claimed the exclusive right to be called humane and merciful.Again, it is said, the Indian mode of warfare is, without exception, the most inhuman and revolting. But I do not know that those who die by the barbed and poisoned arrow, linger in more unendurable torments, than those who are mangled by powder and balls. The tomahawk makes quick work of dying, and the custom of scalping amongChristian murdererswould save thousands from groaning days, and perhaps weeks, among heaps that cover victorious fields and fill hospitals with the wounded and the dying! But scalping was not an invention exclusively Indian. “It claims,” says Prescott, “high authority, or, at least, antiquity.” The Father of history, Herodotus, gives an account of it among the Scythians, showing that they performed the operation, and wore the scalps of their enemies taken in battle, as trophies, in the same manner as our North American Indians. Traces of the same custom are also found in the laws of the Visigoths, among the Franks, and even the Anglo-Saxons.The Southern Indians did not scalp, but they had a system of slavery, no trace of which is to be found among the customs, laws, or legends of theIroquois.Again: “They carried away women and children captive, and in their long journeys through the wilderness, they were subjected to heart-rending trials.”The wars of Christian men throw hundreds and thousands[23]of women and children helpless upon the cold world, to toil, to beg, to starve!This is not so bright a picture as is usually given of people who have written laws and stores of learning; but I cannot see that in any place the coloring is too dark. There is no danger of painting Indians, so that they will become attractive to civilized people; and there is no need of painting them more hideously than they paint themselves.There is a bright and pleasing side to Indian character; and thinking that there has been enough written of their wars and their cruelties, of the hunter’s and the fisherman’s life, I have sat down by their firesides, and listened to their legends, and tried to become acquainted with their domestic habits, and to understand their finer feelings, and the truly noble traits of their character.It is so long now since they were the lords of our soil, and formidable as our enemies,—they are so utterly wasted away and helpless that we can afford to listen to the truth, and to believe that even our enemies had virtues. Man was created in the image of God, and it cannot be that any thing human is utterly vile and contemptible. To remain in ignorance and censure without knowledge is easier than to study and toil for the truth, but with the present facilities for digging, Christian people cannot be excused in remaining content with dross.Those who have always thought of Indians as roaming about in the forests, hunting and fishing or at war, will laugh, perhaps, at the idea of Indianhomesanddomestic happiness; yet there is no people of which we have any knowledge, among whom, in their primitive state, family ties and relationships were more distinctly defined or more religiously respected.The treatment which they received from the white[24]people, whom they always considered as intruders, aroused and kept in exercise all their ferocious passions, so that none except those who mingled with them as missionaries or as captives, saw them in their true character—as they were to each other.Almost any portrait which we have of Indians, represents them with tomahawk and scalping knife in hand, as if they possessed no other but a barbarous nature. Christian nations might with equal justice be always represented with cannon and balls and swords and pistols, as the emblems of their employments and their prevailing tastes.The details of wars form far too great a portion of every history of civilized and barbarous nations; to conquer and to slay has been too long the glory of Christian people; he who has been most successful in subjugating and oppressing, in mowing down human beings, has too long worn the laurel crown,—been too long an object for the admiration of men and the love of woman.We are weary of the pomp and circumstance of war—of princely banquets and gay cavalcades. The time and space we bestow upon Kings and Courts, and the homage we pay to empty titles, are unworthy our professed Republican spirit and preferences. Let us turn aside from the war path and sit down by the hearth stone of peace.In the pictures which I shall give I shall confine myself principally to theIroquoisor Six Nations, a people who no more deserve the term savage, than we do that of heathen, because we have still lingering among us heathen superstitions, and many opinions and practices which deserve no better name!The cannibals of some of the West India Islands, and the islands of the Pacific, may with justice be termed savage,[25]but a people like theIroquoiswho had a government, established offices, a system of religion eminently pure and spiritual, a code of honor and laws of hospitality excelling those of all other nations, should be considered something better than savage, or utterly barbarous.The terrible tortures they inflicted upon their enemies have made their name a terror, and yet there were not so many burnt and hung and starved by them as perish among Christian nations by these means. The miseries they inflicted were light in comparison with those they suffered, and when individuals from them have come among us to expose the barbarity of savage white men, the deeds they relate equal any thing we know of Indian cruelty. The picture an Indian will give of civilized barbarism, leaves the revolting customs of the wilderness quite in the background. We experienced their revenge when we had put their souls and bodies on the rack, and with ourfire-waterhad maddened their brains. There was a pure and beautiful spirituality in their faith, and their conduct was as much influenced by it as are any people, Christian or pagan.Is there any thing more barbaric in the annals of Indian warfare than the narrative of the destruction of the Pequod Indians? In one place we read of the surprise of an Indian fort by night, when the inmates were slumbering unconscious of danger. When they awoke they were wrapped in flames, and when they attempted to flee, were shot down like wild beasts. From village to village, and wigwam to wigwam, the murderers proceeded, “being resolved,” as our historian piously remarks, “by God’s assistance, to make a final destruction of them,” till finally a small but gallant band took refuge in a swamp “Burning with indignation and made sullen by despair; with hearts bursting with grief at the destruction of their[26]nation, and spirits galled and sore at the fancied ignominy of their defeat, they refused to ask their lives at the hand of an insulting foe, and preferred death to submission. As the night drew on they were surrounded in their dismal retreat, and volleys of musketry poured into their midst, till nearly all were killed or buried in the mire.” In the darkness of a thick fog which preceded the dawn of day, a few broke through the ranks of the besiegers and escaped to the woods.Again, the same historian tells us that the few who remained “stood likesullen dogsto be killed rather than implore mercy; and the soldiers, on entering the swamps, found many sitting together in groups, when they approached; and resting their guns on the boughs of trees within a few yards of them, literally filled their bodies with bullets.”1But they were Indians, and it was pronounced a pious work. “When the Gauls invaded Italy, and the Roman senators, in their purple robes and chairs of state, sat unmoved in the presence of barbarian conquerors, disdaining to flee and equally disdaining to supplicate mercy, it is applauded as noble—as dying like statesmen and philosophers. But when the Indian, with far more to lose, and infinitely greater provocation, sits upon the green mound, beneath the canopy of heaven, and refuses to ask mercy of civilized fiends, he is stigmatized as dogged, spiritless, and sullen.” “What a different name has greatness, clothed in the garb of Christian princes and sitting beneath spacious domes, gorgeous with man’s devices; and greatness, in the simple garb of nature, destitute, and alone in the wilderness!”There is nothing in the character of Alexander of Macedon—who “conquered the world, and wept that he[27]had no more to conquer”—to compare with the noble qualities of King Philip, of Mount Hope; and among his warriors is a long list of brave men unrivalled in deeds of heroism, by any in ancient or modern story. But in what country, and by whom were they hunted and tortured and slain? Who was it that met together to rejoice and give thanks at every species of cruelty inflicted upon those who were fighting for their wives and their children, their altars and their God? When it is recorded that “men, women, and children, indiscriminately, were hewn down and lay in heaps upon the snow,” it is spoken of as doing God service, because they were nominally heathen. “Before the fight was finished, the wigwams were set on fire, and into these, hundreds of innocent women and children had crowded themselves and perished in the general conflagration,” and for this, thanksgivings are sent up to heaven. The head of Philip is strung bleeding upon a pole, and exposed in the public streets; but it is not done by savage warriors, and the crowd that huzzas at the revolting spectacle assemble on the Sabbath in a Puritan church, to listen to the gospel that proclaims peace and love to all men. His body is literally cut in slices to be distributed among the conquerors, and a Christian city rings with acclamations.In speaking of this bloody contest one who is most eminent among the “Fathers” says, “Nor could they cease praying unto the Lord against Philip till they had prayed the bullet through his heart.” “Two and twenty Indian Captains were slain and brought down to hell in one day.” “A bullet took him in the head, and sent his cursed soul in a moment amongst the devils and blasphemers in hell forever.”Massasoit, the father of Philip, was the true friend to the English, and when he was about to die, took his two[28]sons Alexander and Philip, and fondly commended them to the kindness of the new settlers, praying that the same peace and good will might be between them, that had existed between him and his white friends. Upon mere suspicion, only a little while afterwards, the elder, who succeeded his father as ruler among his people, was hunted in his forest home, and dragged before a court, the nature and object of which he could not understand; but the indignity which was offered him and the treachery of those who thus insulted him, so chafed his proud spirit, that a fever was the consequence, of which he died. And this is not all. The son and wife of Philip were sold into slavery, as were also many others of the Indians taken captive during the colonial wars. “Yes,” says a distinguished orator,2“they were sold into slavery,—West Indian slavery! an Indian princess and her child sold from the cool breezes of Mount Hope, from the wild freedom of a New England forest, to gasp under the lash, beneath the blazing sun of the tropics! ‘Bitter as death,’ aye, bitter as hell! Is there any thing, I do not say in the range of humanity,—is there any thing animated, that would not struggle against this?”Nor is this indeed all. A kinswoman of theirs, a princess in her own right, Wet-a-more of Pocasset, was pursued and harassed till she fell exhausted in the wilderness, and died of cold and starvation. There she was found by men professing to be shocked at Indian barbarity, her head severed from her body, and carried bleeding upon a pole to be exposed in the public highways of a country, ruled by men who have been honored as saints and martyrs. “Let me die among my kindred.” “Bury me with my fathers,” is the prayer of every Indian heart; and the most delicate and reverential kindness in their[29]treatment of the bodies of the dead, was considered a religious duty. There was nothing in all their customs that indicated a barbarism so gross and revolting as these acts which are recorded by New England historians without a censure, while the lamentations which the Indian utters in his grief at seeing his kindred dishonored and his religion reviled, are stigmatized as savage and fiendish.If all, or even a few who ministered among them in holy things, had been like Eliot, who is called “the apostle to the Indians,” and deserves to be ranked with the apostles of old; or Kirkland, who is endeared to the memory of everyIroquoiswho heard his name, it could not have become a proverb or a truth that civilization and Christianity wasted them away.Not by one, but many, they are unscrupulously called“dogs, wolves, bloodhounds, demons, devils incarnate, hell-hounds, fiends, monsters, beasts,”—always considering them inferior beings, and scarcely allowing them to be human. Yet one, who was at that time a captive among them, represents them as “kind, loving, and generous,” and concerning this same monster Philip, records nothing that should have condemned him in the eyes of those who believed in wars aggressive and defensive, and awarded honors to heroes, and martyrs, and conquerors.By the Governor of Jamestown, a hand was severed from the arm of a peaceful, unoffending Indian, that he might be sent back a terror to his people, and through the magnanimity of a daughter and King of that same people, that Colony was saved from destruction. It was through their love and trust alone that Powhatan and Pocahontas lost their forest dominions.Hospitality was one of the Indians’ distinguishing virtues, and there was no such thing among them as individual starvation or want. As long as there was a cup of[30]soup, it was divided. If a friend or stranger called he was welcome to all their wigwams could furnish, and to offer him food was not a custom merely, for it was a breach of politeness for him to refuse to eat, however full he might be.Because their system was not like ours, it does not follow that it was not a system. We might have looked into a wigwam or lodge, and thought every thing in confusion; while to the occupants, there was a place for every thing and every thing in its place. Each had his couch, which answered for bed by night and seat by day, and no other person would have thought of appropriating it, any more than a private apartment would be thus appropriated among us.The ceremonies at their festivals were as regular as in our churches; their rules of war were as well defined as those of Christian nations, and in their games and athletic sports, there was a code of honor which it was disgraceful to violate; their marriage vows were as well understood, and courtesy as formally practised at their dances.The nature of the Indian was in all respects like the nature of people of any other nation, and if placed in the same circumstances he exhibited the same passions and vices. But in his forest home there was not the same temptation to great crimes, or what are usually termed the lesser ones of slander, scandal, and gossip, as exists among civilized nations.They knew nothing of the desire of gain, and therefore were not made selfish by the love of hoarding, and there was no temptation to steal where they had all things common; and their reverence for truth and fidelity to promises, may well put all the nations of Christendom to shame.[31]I have written in something of the spirit which would characterize the history written by an Indian, yet it does not deserve to be called Indian partiality, but only justice and the spirit of humanity, or, if I may be allowed to say it, the spirit with which any Christian should be able to consider the character and deeds of his foes. I would not derogate from the virtues of our forefathers. They were at that time unrivalled, but the bigotry and superstition of the dark ages still lingered among them, and their own perils blinded them to the wickedness and cruelty of the means they took for defence. Four, and perhaps two centuries hence, I doubt not, some of our dogmas will seem as unchristian, as theirs seem to us; and I truly hope ere then our wars will seem as barbarous, and the fantastic dress of our soldiers as ridiculous, as we have been in the habit of representing the wars and wild drapery of the Indian of the forest.How long were the Saxon and Celt in becoming a civilized and Christian people? How long since the helmet, the coat of mail, and the battle-axe were laid aside? To make himself more terrific, the Briton of the days of Henry II. drew the skin of a wild beast over his armor, with the head and ears standing upright, and mounted his war-horse to go forth crying “to arms!” “death to the invader!” The paint and the eagle plume of the Indian warrior were scarcely a more barbarous invention, nor his war-cry more terrible.It is not just to compare the Indian of the fifteenth with the Christian of the fifteenth century. Compare him with the barbarian of Britain, of Russia, of Lapland,Kamchatkaand Tartary, and represent him as truly as these nations have been represented, and he will not suffer by the comparison.[32]1Irving.↑2Everett.↑

THE IROQUOIS.CHAPTER I.NATIONAL TRAITS OF CHARACTER.

In all the early histories of the American colonies—in the stories of Indian life and delineations of Indian character—we have these children of the wilderness represented as savage and barbarous, with scarcely a redeeming trait of character. And in the minds of a large portion of the community the sentiment still prevails, that they were bloodthirsty, revengeful, and merciless—justly a terror to both friends and foes. Children are impressed with the idea that an Indian is scarcely human, and as much to be feared as the most ferocious animal of the forest.Novelists have now and then clothed a few with a garb which excites our admiration; but seldom has one been invested with qualities which we could love, unless it were also said that through some captive, taken in distant wars, he inherited a whiter skin and a paler blood.But I am inclined to think that Indians are not alone in being savage—not alone barbarous, and heartless, and merciless.[20]It is saidtheywere exterminating each other by aggressive and devastating wars before the white people came among them. But wars—certainly, aggressive and exterminating wars—are not proofs of barbarity. The bravest warrior was the most honored; and this has been ever true of Christian nations; and those who call themselves Christian, have not ceased yet to look upon him who could plan most successfully the wholesale slaughter of human beings, as the most deserving his king’s and his country’s laurels. How long since the pæan died away in praise of the Duke of Wellington? What have been the wars in which all Europe has been engaged since there have been any records of her history? For what are civilized and Christian nations now drenching their fields with blood?It is said the Indian was cruel to the captive, and inflicted unspeakable tortures upon his enemy taken in battle. But, from what we know of them, it is not to be inferred that Indian chiefs were ever guilty of filling dungeons with innocent victims, or slaughtering hundreds and thousands of their own people, whose only sin was a quiet dissent from some religious dogma. Towards their enemies they were often relentless, and they had good reason to look upon white men as their enemies. They slew them in battle, plotted against them secretly, and in a few instances—few comparatively—subjected individuals to torture, burnt them at the stake, and, perhaps, flayed them alive. But who knows any thing of the precepts and practice of Roman Catholic Christendom, and quotes these things as proofs of unmitigated barbarity? At the very time that Indians were using the tomahawk and scalping-knife to avenge their wrongs, peaceful citizens in every country in Europe, where the Pope was the man of authority, were incarcerated for no crime whatever, and[21]such refinements of torture invented and practised as it never entered in the heart of the fiercest Indian warrior that roamed the wilderness, to inflict upon man or beast. We know very little of the secrets of the Inquisition, and this little chills our blood with horror; yet these things were done in the name of Christ, the Saviour of the world—the Prince of Peace; and not savage, but civilized,Christianmen looked on, not coldly, but rejoicingly, while women and children writhed in flames and weltered in blood!Were the atrocities, committed in the Vale of Wyoming and Cherry Valley unprecedented among the Waldensian fastnesses and the mountains of Auvergne? Who has read Fox’s Book of Martyrs and found any thing to parallel it in all the records of Indian warfare? The slaughter of St. Bartholomew’s day, the destruction of the Jews in Spain, and the Scotch Covenanters, were in obedience to the mandates of Christian princes, aye, and some of them devised by Christian women, who professed to be serving God, and to make the Bible the man of their counsel.It is said also the Indian was treacherous, and in compliance with the conditions of no treaty was ever to be trusted. But our Puritan fathers cannot be wholly exonerated from the charge of faithlessness; and who does not blush to talk of Indian traitors when he remembers the Spanish invasion and the fall of the princely and magnanimous Montezuma?“Indians believed in witches and burned them too!” Did not the sainted Baxter, with the Bible in his hand, pronounce it right? and was not the Indian permitted to be present, when a quiet, unoffending woman was cast into the fire by the decree of a Puritan council?To come down to more decidedly Christian times, we[22]are yet called upon to shudder at the revelations of Howard and Miss Dix. It is not so very long since, in Protestant England, hanging was the punishment of a petty theft, and long and hopeless imprisonment, of a slight misdemeanor. I think it is within the memory of those who are not theoldest inhabitants, when men were yet up to be stoned and spit upon by those who claimed the exclusive right to be called humane and merciful.Again, it is said, the Indian mode of warfare is, without exception, the most inhuman and revolting. But I do not know that those who die by the barbed and poisoned arrow, linger in more unendurable torments, than those who are mangled by powder and balls. The tomahawk makes quick work of dying, and the custom of scalping amongChristian murdererswould save thousands from groaning days, and perhaps weeks, among heaps that cover victorious fields and fill hospitals with the wounded and the dying! But scalping was not an invention exclusively Indian. “It claims,” says Prescott, “high authority, or, at least, antiquity.” The Father of history, Herodotus, gives an account of it among the Scythians, showing that they performed the operation, and wore the scalps of their enemies taken in battle, as trophies, in the same manner as our North American Indians. Traces of the same custom are also found in the laws of the Visigoths, among the Franks, and even the Anglo-Saxons.The Southern Indians did not scalp, but they had a system of slavery, no trace of which is to be found among the customs, laws, or legends of theIroquois.Again: “They carried away women and children captive, and in their long journeys through the wilderness, they were subjected to heart-rending trials.”The wars of Christian men throw hundreds and thousands[23]of women and children helpless upon the cold world, to toil, to beg, to starve!This is not so bright a picture as is usually given of people who have written laws and stores of learning; but I cannot see that in any place the coloring is too dark. There is no danger of painting Indians, so that they will become attractive to civilized people; and there is no need of painting them more hideously than they paint themselves.There is a bright and pleasing side to Indian character; and thinking that there has been enough written of their wars and their cruelties, of the hunter’s and the fisherman’s life, I have sat down by their firesides, and listened to their legends, and tried to become acquainted with their domestic habits, and to understand their finer feelings, and the truly noble traits of their character.It is so long now since they were the lords of our soil, and formidable as our enemies,—they are so utterly wasted away and helpless that we can afford to listen to the truth, and to believe that even our enemies had virtues. Man was created in the image of God, and it cannot be that any thing human is utterly vile and contemptible. To remain in ignorance and censure without knowledge is easier than to study and toil for the truth, but with the present facilities for digging, Christian people cannot be excused in remaining content with dross.Those who have always thought of Indians as roaming about in the forests, hunting and fishing or at war, will laugh, perhaps, at the idea of Indianhomesanddomestic happiness; yet there is no people of which we have any knowledge, among whom, in their primitive state, family ties and relationships were more distinctly defined or more religiously respected.The treatment which they received from the white[24]people, whom they always considered as intruders, aroused and kept in exercise all their ferocious passions, so that none except those who mingled with them as missionaries or as captives, saw them in their true character—as they were to each other.Almost any portrait which we have of Indians, represents them with tomahawk and scalping knife in hand, as if they possessed no other but a barbarous nature. Christian nations might with equal justice be always represented with cannon and balls and swords and pistols, as the emblems of their employments and their prevailing tastes.The details of wars form far too great a portion of every history of civilized and barbarous nations; to conquer and to slay has been too long the glory of Christian people; he who has been most successful in subjugating and oppressing, in mowing down human beings, has too long worn the laurel crown,—been too long an object for the admiration of men and the love of woman.We are weary of the pomp and circumstance of war—of princely banquets and gay cavalcades. The time and space we bestow upon Kings and Courts, and the homage we pay to empty titles, are unworthy our professed Republican spirit and preferences. Let us turn aside from the war path and sit down by the hearth stone of peace.In the pictures which I shall give I shall confine myself principally to theIroquoisor Six Nations, a people who no more deserve the term savage, than we do that of heathen, because we have still lingering among us heathen superstitions, and many opinions and practices which deserve no better name!The cannibals of some of the West India Islands, and the islands of the Pacific, may with justice be termed savage,[25]but a people like theIroquoiswho had a government, established offices, a system of religion eminently pure and spiritual, a code of honor and laws of hospitality excelling those of all other nations, should be considered something better than savage, or utterly barbarous.The terrible tortures they inflicted upon their enemies have made their name a terror, and yet there were not so many burnt and hung and starved by them as perish among Christian nations by these means. The miseries they inflicted were light in comparison with those they suffered, and when individuals from them have come among us to expose the barbarity of savage white men, the deeds they relate equal any thing we know of Indian cruelty. The picture an Indian will give of civilized barbarism, leaves the revolting customs of the wilderness quite in the background. We experienced their revenge when we had put their souls and bodies on the rack, and with ourfire-waterhad maddened their brains. There was a pure and beautiful spirituality in their faith, and their conduct was as much influenced by it as are any people, Christian or pagan.Is there any thing more barbaric in the annals of Indian warfare than the narrative of the destruction of the Pequod Indians? In one place we read of the surprise of an Indian fort by night, when the inmates were slumbering unconscious of danger. When they awoke they were wrapped in flames, and when they attempted to flee, were shot down like wild beasts. From village to village, and wigwam to wigwam, the murderers proceeded, “being resolved,” as our historian piously remarks, “by God’s assistance, to make a final destruction of them,” till finally a small but gallant band took refuge in a swamp “Burning with indignation and made sullen by despair; with hearts bursting with grief at the destruction of their[26]nation, and spirits galled and sore at the fancied ignominy of their defeat, they refused to ask their lives at the hand of an insulting foe, and preferred death to submission. As the night drew on they were surrounded in their dismal retreat, and volleys of musketry poured into their midst, till nearly all were killed or buried in the mire.” In the darkness of a thick fog which preceded the dawn of day, a few broke through the ranks of the besiegers and escaped to the woods.Again, the same historian tells us that the few who remained “stood likesullen dogsto be killed rather than implore mercy; and the soldiers, on entering the swamps, found many sitting together in groups, when they approached; and resting their guns on the boughs of trees within a few yards of them, literally filled their bodies with bullets.”1But they were Indians, and it was pronounced a pious work. “When the Gauls invaded Italy, and the Roman senators, in their purple robes and chairs of state, sat unmoved in the presence of barbarian conquerors, disdaining to flee and equally disdaining to supplicate mercy, it is applauded as noble—as dying like statesmen and philosophers. But when the Indian, with far more to lose, and infinitely greater provocation, sits upon the green mound, beneath the canopy of heaven, and refuses to ask mercy of civilized fiends, he is stigmatized as dogged, spiritless, and sullen.” “What a different name has greatness, clothed in the garb of Christian princes and sitting beneath spacious domes, gorgeous with man’s devices; and greatness, in the simple garb of nature, destitute, and alone in the wilderness!”There is nothing in the character of Alexander of Macedon—who “conquered the world, and wept that he[27]had no more to conquer”—to compare with the noble qualities of King Philip, of Mount Hope; and among his warriors is a long list of brave men unrivalled in deeds of heroism, by any in ancient or modern story. But in what country, and by whom were they hunted and tortured and slain? Who was it that met together to rejoice and give thanks at every species of cruelty inflicted upon those who were fighting for their wives and their children, their altars and their God? When it is recorded that “men, women, and children, indiscriminately, were hewn down and lay in heaps upon the snow,” it is spoken of as doing God service, because they were nominally heathen. “Before the fight was finished, the wigwams were set on fire, and into these, hundreds of innocent women and children had crowded themselves and perished in the general conflagration,” and for this, thanksgivings are sent up to heaven. The head of Philip is strung bleeding upon a pole, and exposed in the public streets; but it is not done by savage warriors, and the crowd that huzzas at the revolting spectacle assemble on the Sabbath in a Puritan church, to listen to the gospel that proclaims peace and love to all men. His body is literally cut in slices to be distributed among the conquerors, and a Christian city rings with acclamations.In speaking of this bloody contest one who is most eminent among the “Fathers” says, “Nor could they cease praying unto the Lord against Philip till they had prayed the bullet through his heart.” “Two and twenty Indian Captains were slain and brought down to hell in one day.” “A bullet took him in the head, and sent his cursed soul in a moment amongst the devils and blasphemers in hell forever.”Massasoit, the father of Philip, was the true friend to the English, and when he was about to die, took his two[28]sons Alexander and Philip, and fondly commended them to the kindness of the new settlers, praying that the same peace and good will might be between them, that had existed between him and his white friends. Upon mere suspicion, only a little while afterwards, the elder, who succeeded his father as ruler among his people, was hunted in his forest home, and dragged before a court, the nature and object of which he could not understand; but the indignity which was offered him and the treachery of those who thus insulted him, so chafed his proud spirit, that a fever was the consequence, of which he died. And this is not all. The son and wife of Philip were sold into slavery, as were also many others of the Indians taken captive during the colonial wars. “Yes,” says a distinguished orator,2“they were sold into slavery,—West Indian slavery! an Indian princess and her child sold from the cool breezes of Mount Hope, from the wild freedom of a New England forest, to gasp under the lash, beneath the blazing sun of the tropics! ‘Bitter as death,’ aye, bitter as hell! Is there any thing, I do not say in the range of humanity,—is there any thing animated, that would not struggle against this?”Nor is this indeed all. A kinswoman of theirs, a princess in her own right, Wet-a-more of Pocasset, was pursued and harassed till she fell exhausted in the wilderness, and died of cold and starvation. There she was found by men professing to be shocked at Indian barbarity, her head severed from her body, and carried bleeding upon a pole to be exposed in the public highways of a country, ruled by men who have been honored as saints and martyrs. “Let me die among my kindred.” “Bury me with my fathers,” is the prayer of every Indian heart; and the most delicate and reverential kindness in their[29]treatment of the bodies of the dead, was considered a religious duty. There was nothing in all their customs that indicated a barbarism so gross and revolting as these acts which are recorded by New England historians without a censure, while the lamentations which the Indian utters in his grief at seeing his kindred dishonored and his religion reviled, are stigmatized as savage and fiendish.If all, or even a few who ministered among them in holy things, had been like Eliot, who is called “the apostle to the Indians,” and deserves to be ranked with the apostles of old; or Kirkland, who is endeared to the memory of everyIroquoiswho heard his name, it could not have become a proverb or a truth that civilization and Christianity wasted them away.Not by one, but many, they are unscrupulously called“dogs, wolves, bloodhounds, demons, devils incarnate, hell-hounds, fiends, monsters, beasts,”—always considering them inferior beings, and scarcely allowing them to be human. Yet one, who was at that time a captive among them, represents them as “kind, loving, and generous,” and concerning this same monster Philip, records nothing that should have condemned him in the eyes of those who believed in wars aggressive and defensive, and awarded honors to heroes, and martyrs, and conquerors.By the Governor of Jamestown, a hand was severed from the arm of a peaceful, unoffending Indian, that he might be sent back a terror to his people, and through the magnanimity of a daughter and King of that same people, that Colony was saved from destruction. It was through their love and trust alone that Powhatan and Pocahontas lost their forest dominions.Hospitality was one of the Indians’ distinguishing virtues, and there was no such thing among them as individual starvation or want. As long as there was a cup of[30]soup, it was divided. If a friend or stranger called he was welcome to all their wigwams could furnish, and to offer him food was not a custom merely, for it was a breach of politeness for him to refuse to eat, however full he might be.Because their system was not like ours, it does not follow that it was not a system. We might have looked into a wigwam or lodge, and thought every thing in confusion; while to the occupants, there was a place for every thing and every thing in its place. Each had his couch, which answered for bed by night and seat by day, and no other person would have thought of appropriating it, any more than a private apartment would be thus appropriated among us.The ceremonies at their festivals were as regular as in our churches; their rules of war were as well defined as those of Christian nations, and in their games and athletic sports, there was a code of honor which it was disgraceful to violate; their marriage vows were as well understood, and courtesy as formally practised at their dances.The nature of the Indian was in all respects like the nature of people of any other nation, and if placed in the same circumstances he exhibited the same passions and vices. But in his forest home there was not the same temptation to great crimes, or what are usually termed the lesser ones of slander, scandal, and gossip, as exists among civilized nations.They knew nothing of the desire of gain, and therefore were not made selfish by the love of hoarding, and there was no temptation to steal where they had all things common; and their reverence for truth and fidelity to promises, may well put all the nations of Christendom to shame.[31]I have written in something of the spirit which would characterize the history written by an Indian, yet it does not deserve to be called Indian partiality, but only justice and the spirit of humanity, or, if I may be allowed to say it, the spirit with which any Christian should be able to consider the character and deeds of his foes. I would not derogate from the virtues of our forefathers. They were at that time unrivalled, but the bigotry and superstition of the dark ages still lingered among them, and their own perils blinded them to the wickedness and cruelty of the means they took for defence. Four, and perhaps two centuries hence, I doubt not, some of our dogmas will seem as unchristian, as theirs seem to us; and I truly hope ere then our wars will seem as barbarous, and the fantastic dress of our soldiers as ridiculous, as we have been in the habit of representing the wars and wild drapery of the Indian of the forest.How long were the Saxon and Celt in becoming a civilized and Christian people? How long since the helmet, the coat of mail, and the battle-axe were laid aside? To make himself more terrific, the Briton of the days of Henry II. drew the skin of a wild beast over his armor, with the head and ears standing upright, and mounted his war-horse to go forth crying “to arms!” “death to the invader!” The paint and the eagle plume of the Indian warrior were scarcely a more barbarous invention, nor his war-cry more terrible.It is not just to compare the Indian of the fifteenth with the Christian of the fifteenth century. Compare him with the barbarian of Britain, of Russia, of Lapland,Kamchatkaand Tartary, and represent him as truly as these nations have been represented, and he will not suffer by the comparison.[32]

Novelists have now and then clothed a few with a garb which excites our admiration; but seldom has one been invested with qualities which we could love, unless it were also said that through some captive, taken in distant wars, he inherited a whiter skin and a paler blood.

But I am inclined to think that Indians are not alone in being savage—not alone barbarous, and heartless, and merciless.[20]

It is saidtheywere exterminating each other by aggressive and devastating wars before the white people came among them. But wars—certainly, aggressive and exterminating wars—are not proofs of barbarity. The bravest warrior was the most honored; and this has been ever true of Christian nations; and those who call themselves Christian, have not ceased yet to look upon him who could plan most successfully the wholesale slaughter of human beings, as the most deserving his king’s and his country’s laurels. How long since the pæan died away in praise of the Duke of Wellington? What have been the wars in which all Europe has been engaged since there have been any records of her history? For what are civilized and Christian nations now drenching their fields with blood?

It is said the Indian was cruel to the captive, and inflicted unspeakable tortures upon his enemy taken in battle. But, from what we know of them, it is not to be inferred that Indian chiefs were ever guilty of filling dungeons with innocent victims, or slaughtering hundreds and thousands of their own people, whose only sin was a quiet dissent from some religious dogma. Towards their enemies they were often relentless, and they had good reason to look upon white men as their enemies. They slew them in battle, plotted against them secretly, and in a few instances—few comparatively—subjected individuals to torture, burnt them at the stake, and, perhaps, flayed them alive. But who knows any thing of the precepts and practice of Roman Catholic Christendom, and quotes these things as proofs of unmitigated barbarity? At the very time that Indians were using the tomahawk and scalping-knife to avenge their wrongs, peaceful citizens in every country in Europe, where the Pope was the man of authority, were incarcerated for no crime whatever, and[21]such refinements of torture invented and practised as it never entered in the heart of the fiercest Indian warrior that roamed the wilderness, to inflict upon man or beast. We know very little of the secrets of the Inquisition, and this little chills our blood with horror; yet these things were done in the name of Christ, the Saviour of the world—the Prince of Peace; and not savage, but civilized,Christianmen looked on, not coldly, but rejoicingly, while women and children writhed in flames and weltered in blood!

Were the atrocities, committed in the Vale of Wyoming and Cherry Valley unprecedented among the Waldensian fastnesses and the mountains of Auvergne? Who has read Fox’s Book of Martyrs and found any thing to parallel it in all the records of Indian warfare? The slaughter of St. Bartholomew’s day, the destruction of the Jews in Spain, and the Scotch Covenanters, were in obedience to the mandates of Christian princes, aye, and some of them devised by Christian women, who professed to be serving God, and to make the Bible the man of their counsel.

It is said also the Indian was treacherous, and in compliance with the conditions of no treaty was ever to be trusted. But our Puritan fathers cannot be wholly exonerated from the charge of faithlessness; and who does not blush to talk of Indian traitors when he remembers the Spanish invasion and the fall of the princely and magnanimous Montezuma?

“Indians believed in witches and burned them too!” Did not the sainted Baxter, with the Bible in his hand, pronounce it right? and was not the Indian permitted to be present, when a quiet, unoffending woman was cast into the fire by the decree of a Puritan council?

To come down to more decidedly Christian times, we[22]are yet called upon to shudder at the revelations of Howard and Miss Dix. It is not so very long since, in Protestant England, hanging was the punishment of a petty theft, and long and hopeless imprisonment, of a slight misdemeanor. I think it is within the memory of those who are not theoldest inhabitants, when men were yet up to be stoned and spit upon by those who claimed the exclusive right to be called humane and merciful.

Again, it is said, the Indian mode of warfare is, without exception, the most inhuman and revolting. But I do not know that those who die by the barbed and poisoned arrow, linger in more unendurable torments, than those who are mangled by powder and balls. The tomahawk makes quick work of dying, and the custom of scalping amongChristian murdererswould save thousands from groaning days, and perhaps weeks, among heaps that cover victorious fields and fill hospitals with the wounded and the dying! But scalping was not an invention exclusively Indian. “It claims,” says Prescott, “high authority, or, at least, antiquity.” The Father of history, Herodotus, gives an account of it among the Scythians, showing that they performed the operation, and wore the scalps of their enemies taken in battle, as trophies, in the same manner as our North American Indians. Traces of the same custom are also found in the laws of the Visigoths, among the Franks, and even the Anglo-Saxons.The Southern Indians did not scalp, but they had a system of slavery, no trace of which is to be found among the customs, laws, or legends of theIroquois.

Again: “They carried away women and children captive, and in their long journeys through the wilderness, they were subjected to heart-rending trials.”

The wars of Christian men throw hundreds and thousands[23]of women and children helpless upon the cold world, to toil, to beg, to starve!

This is not so bright a picture as is usually given of people who have written laws and stores of learning; but I cannot see that in any place the coloring is too dark. There is no danger of painting Indians, so that they will become attractive to civilized people; and there is no need of painting them more hideously than they paint themselves.

There is a bright and pleasing side to Indian character; and thinking that there has been enough written of their wars and their cruelties, of the hunter’s and the fisherman’s life, I have sat down by their firesides, and listened to their legends, and tried to become acquainted with their domestic habits, and to understand their finer feelings, and the truly noble traits of their character.

It is so long now since they were the lords of our soil, and formidable as our enemies,—they are so utterly wasted away and helpless that we can afford to listen to the truth, and to believe that even our enemies had virtues. Man was created in the image of God, and it cannot be that any thing human is utterly vile and contemptible. To remain in ignorance and censure without knowledge is easier than to study and toil for the truth, but with the present facilities for digging, Christian people cannot be excused in remaining content with dross.

Those who have always thought of Indians as roaming about in the forests, hunting and fishing or at war, will laugh, perhaps, at the idea of Indianhomesanddomestic happiness; yet there is no people of which we have any knowledge, among whom, in their primitive state, family ties and relationships were more distinctly defined or more religiously respected.

The treatment which they received from the white[24]people, whom they always considered as intruders, aroused and kept in exercise all their ferocious passions, so that none except those who mingled with them as missionaries or as captives, saw them in their true character—as they were to each other.

Almost any portrait which we have of Indians, represents them with tomahawk and scalping knife in hand, as if they possessed no other but a barbarous nature. Christian nations might with equal justice be always represented with cannon and balls and swords and pistols, as the emblems of their employments and their prevailing tastes.

The details of wars form far too great a portion of every history of civilized and barbarous nations; to conquer and to slay has been too long the glory of Christian people; he who has been most successful in subjugating and oppressing, in mowing down human beings, has too long worn the laurel crown,—been too long an object for the admiration of men and the love of woman.

We are weary of the pomp and circumstance of war—of princely banquets and gay cavalcades. The time and space we bestow upon Kings and Courts, and the homage we pay to empty titles, are unworthy our professed Republican spirit and preferences. Let us turn aside from the war path and sit down by the hearth stone of peace.

In the pictures which I shall give I shall confine myself principally to theIroquoisor Six Nations, a people who no more deserve the term savage, than we do that of heathen, because we have still lingering among us heathen superstitions, and many opinions and practices which deserve no better name!

The cannibals of some of the West India Islands, and the islands of the Pacific, may with justice be termed savage,[25]but a people like theIroquoiswho had a government, established offices, a system of religion eminently pure and spiritual, a code of honor and laws of hospitality excelling those of all other nations, should be considered something better than savage, or utterly barbarous.

The terrible tortures they inflicted upon their enemies have made their name a terror, and yet there were not so many burnt and hung and starved by them as perish among Christian nations by these means. The miseries they inflicted were light in comparison with those they suffered, and when individuals from them have come among us to expose the barbarity of savage white men, the deeds they relate equal any thing we know of Indian cruelty. The picture an Indian will give of civilized barbarism, leaves the revolting customs of the wilderness quite in the background. We experienced their revenge when we had put their souls and bodies on the rack, and with ourfire-waterhad maddened their brains. There was a pure and beautiful spirituality in their faith, and their conduct was as much influenced by it as are any people, Christian or pagan.

Is there any thing more barbaric in the annals of Indian warfare than the narrative of the destruction of the Pequod Indians? In one place we read of the surprise of an Indian fort by night, when the inmates were slumbering unconscious of danger. When they awoke they were wrapped in flames, and when they attempted to flee, were shot down like wild beasts. From village to village, and wigwam to wigwam, the murderers proceeded, “being resolved,” as our historian piously remarks, “by God’s assistance, to make a final destruction of them,” till finally a small but gallant band took refuge in a swamp “Burning with indignation and made sullen by despair; with hearts bursting with grief at the destruction of their[26]nation, and spirits galled and sore at the fancied ignominy of their defeat, they refused to ask their lives at the hand of an insulting foe, and preferred death to submission. As the night drew on they were surrounded in their dismal retreat, and volleys of musketry poured into their midst, till nearly all were killed or buried in the mire.” In the darkness of a thick fog which preceded the dawn of day, a few broke through the ranks of the besiegers and escaped to the woods.

Again, the same historian tells us that the few who remained “stood likesullen dogsto be killed rather than implore mercy; and the soldiers, on entering the swamps, found many sitting together in groups, when they approached; and resting their guns on the boughs of trees within a few yards of them, literally filled their bodies with bullets.”1But they were Indians, and it was pronounced a pious work. “When the Gauls invaded Italy, and the Roman senators, in their purple robes and chairs of state, sat unmoved in the presence of barbarian conquerors, disdaining to flee and equally disdaining to supplicate mercy, it is applauded as noble—as dying like statesmen and philosophers. But when the Indian, with far more to lose, and infinitely greater provocation, sits upon the green mound, beneath the canopy of heaven, and refuses to ask mercy of civilized fiends, he is stigmatized as dogged, spiritless, and sullen.” “What a different name has greatness, clothed in the garb of Christian princes and sitting beneath spacious domes, gorgeous with man’s devices; and greatness, in the simple garb of nature, destitute, and alone in the wilderness!”

There is nothing in the character of Alexander of Macedon—who “conquered the world, and wept that he[27]had no more to conquer”—to compare with the noble qualities of King Philip, of Mount Hope; and among his warriors is a long list of brave men unrivalled in deeds of heroism, by any in ancient or modern story. But in what country, and by whom were they hunted and tortured and slain? Who was it that met together to rejoice and give thanks at every species of cruelty inflicted upon those who were fighting for their wives and their children, their altars and their God? When it is recorded that “men, women, and children, indiscriminately, were hewn down and lay in heaps upon the snow,” it is spoken of as doing God service, because they were nominally heathen. “Before the fight was finished, the wigwams were set on fire, and into these, hundreds of innocent women and children had crowded themselves and perished in the general conflagration,” and for this, thanksgivings are sent up to heaven. The head of Philip is strung bleeding upon a pole, and exposed in the public streets; but it is not done by savage warriors, and the crowd that huzzas at the revolting spectacle assemble on the Sabbath in a Puritan church, to listen to the gospel that proclaims peace and love to all men. His body is literally cut in slices to be distributed among the conquerors, and a Christian city rings with acclamations.

In speaking of this bloody contest one who is most eminent among the “Fathers” says, “Nor could they cease praying unto the Lord against Philip till they had prayed the bullet through his heart.” “Two and twenty Indian Captains were slain and brought down to hell in one day.” “A bullet took him in the head, and sent his cursed soul in a moment amongst the devils and blasphemers in hell forever.”

Massasoit, the father of Philip, was the true friend to the English, and when he was about to die, took his two[28]sons Alexander and Philip, and fondly commended them to the kindness of the new settlers, praying that the same peace and good will might be between them, that had existed between him and his white friends. Upon mere suspicion, only a little while afterwards, the elder, who succeeded his father as ruler among his people, was hunted in his forest home, and dragged before a court, the nature and object of which he could not understand; but the indignity which was offered him and the treachery of those who thus insulted him, so chafed his proud spirit, that a fever was the consequence, of which he died. And this is not all. The son and wife of Philip were sold into slavery, as were also many others of the Indians taken captive during the colonial wars. “Yes,” says a distinguished orator,2“they were sold into slavery,—West Indian slavery! an Indian princess and her child sold from the cool breezes of Mount Hope, from the wild freedom of a New England forest, to gasp under the lash, beneath the blazing sun of the tropics! ‘Bitter as death,’ aye, bitter as hell! Is there any thing, I do not say in the range of humanity,—is there any thing animated, that would not struggle against this?”

Nor is this indeed all. A kinswoman of theirs, a princess in her own right, Wet-a-more of Pocasset, was pursued and harassed till she fell exhausted in the wilderness, and died of cold and starvation. There she was found by men professing to be shocked at Indian barbarity, her head severed from her body, and carried bleeding upon a pole to be exposed in the public highways of a country, ruled by men who have been honored as saints and martyrs. “Let me die among my kindred.” “Bury me with my fathers,” is the prayer of every Indian heart; and the most delicate and reverential kindness in their[29]treatment of the bodies of the dead, was considered a religious duty. There was nothing in all their customs that indicated a barbarism so gross and revolting as these acts which are recorded by New England historians without a censure, while the lamentations which the Indian utters in his grief at seeing his kindred dishonored and his religion reviled, are stigmatized as savage and fiendish.

If all, or even a few who ministered among them in holy things, had been like Eliot, who is called “the apostle to the Indians,” and deserves to be ranked with the apostles of old; or Kirkland, who is endeared to the memory of everyIroquoiswho heard his name, it could not have become a proverb or a truth that civilization and Christianity wasted them away.

Not by one, but many, they are unscrupulously called“dogs, wolves, bloodhounds, demons, devils incarnate, hell-hounds, fiends, monsters, beasts,”—always considering them inferior beings, and scarcely allowing them to be human. Yet one, who was at that time a captive among them, represents them as “kind, loving, and generous,” and concerning this same monster Philip, records nothing that should have condemned him in the eyes of those who believed in wars aggressive and defensive, and awarded honors to heroes, and martyrs, and conquerors.

By the Governor of Jamestown, a hand was severed from the arm of a peaceful, unoffending Indian, that he might be sent back a terror to his people, and through the magnanimity of a daughter and King of that same people, that Colony was saved from destruction. It was through their love and trust alone that Powhatan and Pocahontas lost their forest dominions.

Hospitality was one of the Indians’ distinguishing virtues, and there was no such thing among them as individual starvation or want. As long as there was a cup of[30]soup, it was divided. If a friend or stranger called he was welcome to all their wigwams could furnish, and to offer him food was not a custom merely, for it was a breach of politeness for him to refuse to eat, however full he might be.

Because their system was not like ours, it does not follow that it was not a system. We might have looked into a wigwam or lodge, and thought every thing in confusion; while to the occupants, there was a place for every thing and every thing in its place. Each had his couch, which answered for bed by night and seat by day, and no other person would have thought of appropriating it, any more than a private apartment would be thus appropriated among us.

The ceremonies at their festivals were as regular as in our churches; their rules of war were as well defined as those of Christian nations, and in their games and athletic sports, there was a code of honor which it was disgraceful to violate; their marriage vows were as well understood, and courtesy as formally practised at their dances.

The nature of the Indian was in all respects like the nature of people of any other nation, and if placed in the same circumstances he exhibited the same passions and vices. But in his forest home there was not the same temptation to great crimes, or what are usually termed the lesser ones of slander, scandal, and gossip, as exists among civilized nations.

They knew nothing of the desire of gain, and therefore were not made selfish by the love of hoarding, and there was no temptation to steal where they had all things common; and their reverence for truth and fidelity to promises, may well put all the nations of Christendom to shame.[31]

I have written in something of the spirit which would characterize the history written by an Indian, yet it does not deserve to be called Indian partiality, but only justice and the spirit of humanity, or, if I may be allowed to say it, the spirit with which any Christian should be able to consider the character and deeds of his foes. I would not derogate from the virtues of our forefathers. They were at that time unrivalled, but the bigotry and superstition of the dark ages still lingered among them, and their own perils blinded them to the wickedness and cruelty of the means they took for defence. Four, and perhaps two centuries hence, I doubt not, some of our dogmas will seem as unchristian, as theirs seem to us; and I truly hope ere then our wars will seem as barbarous, and the fantastic dress of our soldiers as ridiculous, as we have been in the habit of representing the wars and wild drapery of the Indian of the forest.

How long were the Saxon and Celt in becoming a civilized and Christian people? How long since the helmet, the coat of mail, and the battle-axe were laid aside? To make himself more terrific, the Briton of the days of Henry II. drew the skin of a wild beast over his armor, with the head and ears standing upright, and mounted his war-horse to go forth crying “to arms!” “death to the invader!” The paint and the eagle plume of the Indian warrior were scarcely a more barbarous invention, nor his war-cry more terrible.

It is not just to compare the Indian of the fifteenth with the Christian of the fifteenth century. Compare him with the barbarian of Britain, of Russia, of Lapland,Kamchatkaand Tartary, and represent him as truly as these nations have been represented, and he will not suffer by the comparison.[32]

1Irving.↑2Everett.↑

1Irving.↑

2Everett.↑

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