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summer, to be deferred, upon which I am commissioned to treat with you and at the same time to assure you that the succeeding Governor will meet you as soon as he conveniently can, with presents as usual. You will then have an opportunity of laying before him whatever is amiss, which will be redressed you may depend on, without any unnecessary delay; till then I expect all of you will live in perfect harmony with yr Bretheren ye English. A Belt.

Bretheren of the Six Nations.

It grieves me sorely to find the road hither so grown up with weeds for want of being used, & your fire almost expiring at Onondaga, where it was agreed by the wisdom of our Ancestors that it should never be extinguished: You know it was a saying among us that when the Fire was out here, you would be no longer a people; I am now sent by Your Brother the Governor to clear the Road & make the fire with such wood as will never burn out, and I earnestly desire you would take care to keep it up, so as to be found always the same when he shall send among you.

Bretheren of the Six Nations.

A Belt.

I have now renewed the Fire, swept clean all your rooms with a new White Wing, and leave it hanging near the Fire place, that you may use it for cleaning all dust dirt & which may have been brought in by Strangers, no friends to you or us. A string of Wampum.

Bretheren of the Six Nations.

I am sorry to find on my arrival among you that the fine shady Tree which was planted by your forefathers for your ease and shelter, should be now leaning, being almost blown down by Northerly winds. I shall now endeavour to set it upright that it may flourish as formerly, while the roots spread abroad; so that when we sitt or stand on them you will feel them shake should any storms blow, then should you be ready to secure it. A Belt.

Bretheren of the Six Nations.

Your Fire now burns clearly at the old place, the Tree of Shelter and Protection is set up & flourishes; I must now insist upon your quenching that fire made with brambles at Swegachey, and recall those to their proper home who have deserted thither. I can not leave disswading you from going to Canada, the French are a delusive people, always endeavouring to divide you as much as they can, nor will they let slip any opportunity of making advantage of it. "Tis formidable news we hear that the French & some Indians are making a descent upon Ohio:

is it with your consent or leave that they proceed in this extraordinary manner, endeavouring by force of arms to dispossess your own native allies as well as your bretheren the English, and establishing themselves? A large Belt. . . .

Bretheren of the Senecas.

As you have always been looked upon as the door of the Six Nations where all news, especially from the Westward and Southward must enter and go out, we dont hear this door open as we used to do formerly, and believe it to be worn out, & think it necessary to hang on a new one of such wood as will never decay; the noise of which when it opens should alarm all the Confederacy. I must now desire you that whatever you hear of consequence you would send it very distinctly to the Sachems of Onondaga who will send it directly to your Bretheren. I require also as you are nearest to the Western Tribes of Indians that you will endeavour all in your power to draw as many of them into our interest as possibly you can, by which means the Six Nations may continue their strength & credit. A Belt. . . .

Bretheren of the Six Nations.

You must imagine I was much troubled when immediately after my appointment to meet you at Onondaga, to renew and put in order every thing relating to your affairs, to hear that some of your people were returned with scalp and prisoners from the Catabaws, with whom you made so solemn a peace last year in my presence, which pleased all your bretheren the English upon this Continent, the King your Father also approved of it. Now what an everlasting shame must it be to the Six Nations if this bloody affair be not immediately made up, if it be possible. I expect at least that you return the prisoners if any you have, and committ no further hostilities on that Nation. A Belt. . . . Bretheren of the Six Nations.

I take this opportunity to return you the three Belts of Wampum sent by you to the Governor with a request to hinder the Rum from coming among You. He was very glad to gratifie you in it, and that you had seen the ill consequences of that bewitching liquor, and hopes you will continue in that resolution always. The proclamation forbidding Rum to be sent or sold any where among you (except at Oswego) is already published. Here returned them their Three Belts.

Bretheren of the Six Nations.

I have now only to recommend what I have said in your Brother the Governor's name to your serious consideration, and when you are pre

pared to return an answer, I should be glad to hear it by the Lake where I am encamped and have a small present for you, and some provision for your Children.

E. B. O'Callaghan, editor, Documents relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York (Albany, 1855), VI, 810-812 passim.

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Carver was a British officer who formed a plan for crossing the continent to the Pacific, but was stopped in the upper Mississippi country. He was the first English writer who visited the northwestern tribes. — Bibliography: Tyler, Literary History of the Revolution, I, 141–150.

THE

HE character of the Indians, like that of other uncivilized nations, is composed of a mixture of ferocity and gentleness. They are at once guided by passions and appetites, which they hold in common with the fiercest beasts that inhabit their woods, and are possessed of virtues which do honour to human nature.

In the following estimate I shall endeavour to forget on the one hand the prejudices of Europeans, who usually annex to the word Indian epithets that are disgraceful to human nature, and who view them in no other light than as savages and cannibals; whilst with equal care I avoid any partiality towards them, as some must naturally arise from the favourable reception I met with during my stay among them.

At the same time I shall confine my remarks to the nations inhabiting only the western regions, such as the Naudowessies, the Ottagaumies, the Chipeways, the Winnebagoes, and the Saukies: for as throughout that diversity of climates the extensive continent of America is composed of, there are people of different dispositions and various characters, it would be incompatible with my present undertaking to treat of all these, and to give a general view of them as a conjunctive body.

That the Indians are of a cruel, revengeful, inexorable disposition, that they will watch whole days unmindful of the calls of nature, and make their way through pathless, and almost unbounded woods, subsisting only on the scanty produce of them, to pursue and revenge themselves of an enemy, that they hear unmoved the piercing cries of such as unhappily fall into their hands, and receive a diabolical pleasure from

the tortures they inflict on their prisoners, I readily grant; but let us look on the reverse of this terrifying picture, and we shall find them temperate both in their diet and potations (it must be remembered, that I speak of those tribes who have little communication with Europeans) that they withstand, with unexampled patience, the attacks of hunger, or the inclemency of the seasons, and esteem the gratification of their appetites, but as a secondary consideration.

We shall likewise see them sociable and humane to those whom they consider as their friends, and even to their adopted enemies; and ready to partake with them of the last morsel, or to risk their lives in their defence.

In contradiction to the report of many other travellers, all of which have been tinctured with prejudice, I can assert, that notwithstanding the apparent indifference with which an Indian meets his wife and children after a long absence, an indifference proceeding rather from custom than insensibility, he is not unmindful of the claims either of connubial or parental tenderness; the little story I have introduced in the preceding chapter of the Naudowessie woman lamenting her child, and the immature death of the father, will elucidate this point, and enforce the assertion much better than the most studied arguments I can make use of.

Accustomed from their youth to innumerable hardships, they soon become superior to a sense of danger or the dread of death; and their fortitude, implanted by nature, and nurtured by example, by precept, and accident, never experiences a moment's allay.

Though slothful and inactive whilst their store of provision remains unexhausted, and their foes are at a distance, they are indefatigable and persevering in pursuit of their game, or in circumventing their enemies.

If they are artful and designing, and ready to take every advantage, if they are cool and deliberate in their councils, and cautious in the extreme either of discovering their sentiments, or of revealing a secret, they might at the same time boast of possessing qualifications of a more animated nature, of the sagacity of a hound, the penetrating sight of a lynx, the cunning of the fox, the agility of a bounding roe, and the unconquerable fierceness of the tyger.

In their public characters, as forming part of a community, they possess an attachment for that band to which they belong, unknown to the inhabitants of any other country. They combine, as if they were actuated only by one soul, against the enemies of their nation, and banish from their minds every consideration opposed to this.

They consult without unnecessary opposition, or without giving way to the excitements of envy or ambition, on the measures necessary to be pursued for the destruction of those who have drawn on themselves their displeasure. No selfish views ever influence their advice, or obstruct their consultations. Nor is it in the power of bribes or threats to diminish the love they bear their country.

The honour of their tribe, and the welfare of their nation, is the first and most predominant emotion of their hearts; and from hence proceed in a great measure all their virtues and their vices. Actuated by this, they brave every danger, endure the most exquisite torments, and expire triumphing in their fortitude, not as a personal qualification, but as a national characteristic.

From thence also flow that insatiable revenge towards those with whom they are at war, and all the consequent horrors that disgrace their name. Their uncultivated minds being incapable of judging of the propriety of an action, in opposition to their passions which are totally insensible to the controuls of reason or humanity, they know not how to keep their fury within any bounds, and consequently that courage and resolution which would otherwise do them honour, degenerates into a savage ferocity.

But this short dissertation must suffice; the limits of my work will not permit me to treat the subject more copiously, or to pursue it with a logical regularity. The observations already made by my readers on the preceding pages, will, I trust, render it unnecessary; as by them they will be enabled to form a tolerably just idea of the people I have been describing. Experience teaches, that anecdotes, and relations of particular events, however trifling they might appear, enable us to form a truer judgment of the manners and customs of a people, and are much more declaratory of their real state, than the most studied and elaborate disquisition, without these aids.

J[onathan] Carver, Travels through the Interior Parts of North-America, in the Years 1766, 1767, and 1768 (London, 1778), 408-414.

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