Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations | Page 4

the coloring is too dark! There is no danger of painting

Indians so they will become attractive to the civilized people.
There is a bright and pleasing side to the Indian character, and thinking
that there has been enough written of their wars and cruelties, of the
hunter's and fisherman's life, I have sat down at their fireside, listened
to their legends, and am acquainted with their domestic habits,
understand their finer feelings and the truly noble traits of their
character.
It is so long now since they were the lords of this country, and
formidable as your enemies, and they are so utterly wasted away and
melted like snow under the meridian sun, and helpless, that you can sit
down and afford to listen to the truth, and to believe that even your
enemies had their virtues. Man was created in the image of God, and it
cannot be that anything human is utterly vile and contemptible.
Those who have thought of Indians as roaming about in the forests
hunting and fishing, or at war, will laugh, perhaps, at the idea of Indian
homes, and domestic happiness. Yet there are no people of which we
have any knowledge, among whom, in their primitive state, family ties
and relationship were more distinctly defined, or more religiously
respected than the Iroquois.
The treatment which they received from the white people, whom they
always considered as intruders, aroused, and kept in exercise all their
ferocious passions, so that none except those who associated with them
as missionaries, or as captives, saw them in their true character, as they
were to each other.
Almost any portrait that we see of an Indian, he is represented 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, swords and pistols, as the
emblems of their employment and their prevailing tastes.
The details of war are from far to great a portion of every History of
civilized and barbarous nations, to conquer and to slay has been to long
the glory of the christian people; he who has been most successful in
subjugating and oppressing, in mowing down human beings, has too
long wore the laural crown, been too long an object for the admiration
of men and the love of women.
It seems you might be weary of the pomp and circumstance of war, of
princely banquets, and gay cavalcades. The time and space you bestow

upon King and courts, and the homage you pay to empty titles, are
unworthy your professed republican spirit and preferences, let us turn
aside from the war path, and sit down by the hearth-stone of peace.
In the picture which I have given, I have confined myself principally to
the Iroquois, or Six Nations, a people who no more deserve the term
savage, than the whites do that of heathen, because they have still
lingering among them heathen superstitions, and many opinions and
practices which deserves no better name.
The cannibals of some of the west Indies Islands, and the Islands of the
Pacific, may with justice be termed savage, but a people like the
Iroquois who had a goverment, 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 torture they inflicted upon their enemies, have made their
name a terror, and yet there were not so many burnt, hung, and starved
by them, as perished among Christian nations by these means. The
miseries they inflicted were light, in comparison, with those they
suffered. If individuals should have come among you to expose the
barbarities of savage white men, the deeds they relate would quite
equal anything known of Indian cruelty. The picture an Indian gives of
civilized barbarism leaves the revolting custom of the wilderness quite
in the back-ground. You experienced their revenge when you had put
their souls and bodies at a stake, with your fire-water that maddened
their brains. There was a pure and beautiful spirituality in their faith,
and their conduct was much more influenced by it, as are any people,
Christian or Pagan.
Is there anything more barbaric in the annals of Indian warfare, than the
narrative 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 any danger. When they awoke they were wrapped in
flames, and when they Attempted to flee, were shot down like beasts.
From village to village, from wigwam to wigwam, the murderers
proceeded, "being resolved," as your historian piously remarks, "by
God's assistance, to make a final destruction