Life of Tecumseh, and of His Brother the Prophet | Page 9

Pennsylvanians; the dark tragedy enacted on the banks of he Muskingum, at a later period, when the Moravian Indians, at the three villages of Schoenbrun, Salem, and Gnadenhuetten, were first disarmed and then deliberately tomahawked by Williamson and his associates; the unprovoked murder of the family of Logan; the assassination of Bald Eagle, of the gallant and high-souled Cornstalk, and his son Elinipsico: we need but recall these, from the long catalogue of similar cases, to satisfy every candid mind, that rapine, cruelty and a thirst for human blood are not peculiarly the attributes of the American Indian.
But there are still other causes which have aroused and kept in activity, the warlike passions of the Indians. They have been successively subjected to English, Dutch, French and Spanish influence. The agents of these different powers, as well as the emigrants from them, either from interest or a spirit of mischievous hostility, have repeatedly prompted the Indians to arm themselves against the United States. The great principle of the Indian wars, for the last seventy years, has been the preservation of their lands. On this, the French, English and Spanish have in turn excited them to active resistance against the expanding settlements of the whites. It was on the principle of recovering their lands, that the French were their allies between the commencement of hostilities with the colonies, in 1754, and the peace of 1762; and subsequently kept up an excitement among them until the beginning of the revolution. From this period, the English took the place of the French, and instigated them in a similar manner. Their views and feelings on this point, may be gathered from their own words:
"It was we," say the Delawares, Mohicans and their kindred tribes, "who so kindly received the Europeans on their first arrival into our own country. We took them by the hand and bid them welcome to sit down by our side, and live with us as brothers; but how did they requite our kindness? They at first asked only for a little land, on which to raise bread for their families, and pasture for their cattle, which we freely gave them. They saw the game in the woods, which the Great Spirit had given us for our subsistence, and they wanted it too. They penetrated into the woods in quest of game, they discovered spots of land they also wanted, and because we were loth to part with it, as we saw they had already more than they had need of, they took it from us by force, and drove us to a great distance from our homes."[A]
[Footnote A: Heckewelder's historical account of the Indians.]
It is matter of history, that for a period of near seventy years after it was planted, the colony of William Penn lived in peace and harmony with the neighboring Indians, among whom were bands of the warlike Shawanoes. It was an observation of this venerable and worthy man, when speaking of the Indians, that "if you do not abuse them, but let them have justice, you will win them, when there is such a knowledge of good and evil." His kind treatment to them was repaid by friendly offices, both to himself and his followers. The Indians became indeed the benefactors of the colonists. When the latter were scattered in 1682, and without shelter or food, they were kind and attentive, and treated them as brothers.[A]
[Footnote A: Clarkson's Life of Penn.]
Proud, in his History of Pennsylvania, when explaining the aversion of the Indians to christianity, attributes it to the character and conduct of the whites residing near or among them, "many of whom were of the lowest rank and least informed of mankind, who flowed in from Germany, Ireland and the jails of Great Britain, or who had fled from the better inhabited parts of the colony, to escape from justice." The proceedings of the assembly of Pennsylvania show that, as early as 1722, an Indian was barbarously killed by some whites, within the limits of the province. The assembly proposed some measures for the governor's consideration in regard to the affair; and mentioned the repeated requests of the Indians, that strong liquors should not be carried nor sold among them. In a treatise published in London, in 1759, on the cause of the then existing difficulties between the Indians and the colonists, we find this paragraph. "It would be too shocking to describe the conduct and behavior of the traders, when among the Indians; and endless to enumerate the abuses the Indians received and bore from them, for a series of years. Suffice it to say, that several of the tribes were, at last, weary of bearing; and, as these traders were the persons who were, in some part, the representatives of the English among the