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

pecuniary interests, than to the honest
execution of the public trusts confided to them. Nor is this all. There
has ever been found upon the western frontiers, a band of unprincipled
men who have set at defiance the laws of the United States, debauched
the Indians with ardent spirits, cheated them of their property, and then
committed upon them aggressions marked with all the cruelty and
wanton bloodshed which have distinguished the career of the savage.
The history of these aggressions would fill a volume. It is only
necessary to recall to the mind of the reader, the horrible murder of the
Conestoga Indians, in December 1763, by some 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