Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations | Page 6

the Colonial wars.) "Yes," says a distinguished orator,
(Everett,) "they were sold into slavery, West Indian slavery. An Indian
princess and her child, sold from the cold breezes of Mount Hope, from
a wild freedom of New England forest, to drop under the lash, beneath
the blazing sun of the tropics."
Bitter as death, aye, bitter as hell! Is there anything--I do not think in
the range of humanity--is there any animal that would not struggle
against this? Nor is this indeed all. A kinswoman of theirs, a Princess in
her own right, Wetamore Pocasset, was pursued and harrassed 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 the 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's heart; and the most delicate and reverential
kindness in the 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 Indian's protests
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 deserved
to be ranked with the Apostle of old, or Kirkland, who is endeared to
the memory of every Iroquois who heard his name, it could not have
become a proverb or a truth that civilization and christianity wasted
them away.
They were, not by one, but many, unscrupulously called "dogs, wolves,
bloodhounds, demons, devils incarnate, hellhounds, 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 and 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 soup, it was divided. If a friend or a stranger made a
call he was welcome to all their wigwams would furnish, and to offer
him food was not merely a custom, for it was a breach of politeness for

him to refuse to eat however full he might be.
Because their system not being like the white people's, it does not
follow that it was not a system. You might have looked into the
wigwam or lodge and thought everything in confusion, while to the
occupants, there was a place for everything, and everything in its place:
each had a couch which answered for bed by night and seat by day. The
ceremonies at their festivals were as regular as in the churches, their
rules of war 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 practiced at their dances.
The nature of the Indian is in all respects like the nature of any other
nation; placed in the same circumstances, he exhibits the same passions
and vices. But in his forest home there was not the same temptation to
great crimes, or what is termed the lesser ones, that 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 everything in common, and their reverence for truth
and fidelity to promises, may well put all the nations of christendom to
shame.
I have written in somewhat of the spirit which will characterize a
History, by an Indian, yet it does not deserve to be called Indian
partiality, but only justice and the spirit of