great truth and feeling, the calamitous issue, which awaited them. 'We doubt not,' said they, 'but our great Queen has been acquainted with our long and tedious war, in conjunction with her children, against her enemies the French, and that we have been as a strong wall for their security, even to the loss of our best men." "* Since then, so often has this strong wall been interposed between the British and their enemies, that it is now utterly demolished, and its fragments scattered to the four winds of heaven. In 1750, the governor of New York was directed to confer with the chiefs of the Six Nations, and to endeavor, by means of valuable presents, and promises of more, to wean them from the French interest, into which they had been artfully allured by that intriguing people, and attach them to their former friends and allies, the British.'†

It is evident from many circumstances, that the Indians justly appreciated the motives of the christian belligerents. Pownall says, 'They repeatedly told us, that both we and the French sought to amuse them with fine tales of our several upright intentions. That both parties told them, that they made war for the protection of the Indian rights, but that our actions fully discovered, that the war was only a contest, who should become masters of the country, which was the property, neither of one, nor the other.' (Vol. I. p. 244.) And the Indians told Sir William Johnson, that they believed soon they should not be able to hunt a bear into a hole in a tree, but some Englishman would claim a right to the property of it, as being his tree.' (Ib. p. 188.) A change in the counsels of the Iroquois was the natural result of this state of feeling, and decided indications of this change are found in the vacillating conduct of their chiefs upon the Ohio, towards Washington, when engaged in his adventurous military embassy to the French posts in that quarter. This state of things became every day less and less equivocal, and in 1774, it led to open hostilities.

But at an earlier period, the unsettled state of their Indian relations must have satisfied the British government, that in succeeding to the power of the French, they had not succeeded to their influence and interest with the Indians. Pontiac's war, and the contemporaneous attack upon most of the posts on the northwestern frontier, and the capture of many of them; Ib. Vol. II. p. 24.

* Wynne, Vol. I. p. 178.

the expeditions of Broadstreet and Bouquet in that quarter, and of Grant in the south, together with many other military expeditions of subordinate interest, mark the excited feelings, which prevailed among the Indians, from Michilimackinac to Florida. There is a peculiar elasticity in the French character, and we stop not to inquire whether it be feeling or philosophy, by which a Frenchman accommodates himself to any situation, in which he may be placed. Upon the Seine and upon the St Lawrence, if not equally pleased, he is equally pleasant; and during two centuries, in the depths of the American forests, he has associated with their rude tenants, and, as he could not elevate them to his own standard, he has descended to theirs.* A mutual and permanent attachment has been the result of this intercourse, and to this day, the period of French domination is the era of all that is happy in Indian reminiscence.

When we look back upon the long interval of Indian intercourse, which elapsed between the first settlement on the shores of the Atlantic, and the final consolidation of the British power, nothing but a dreary waste meets the eye. Not a verdant spot cheers the sight, nor a single Oasis in this worse than Libyan desert. Remote and feeble colonies had become im portant and flourishing provinces, and the aboriginal inhabitants had disappeared, or receded, before the mighty tide of population, which already, from the summit of the Allegany, was spreading with exterminating force over the forests and prairies of the west. We hold no fellowship with those, to whom the sound of the Indian's rifle is more attractive than that of the woodman's axe, nor are we believers in that system of legal metaphysics, which would give to a few naked and wandering savages, a perpetual title to an immense continent. But it will not at this day be disputed, that when, in the progress of improvement, the hunting grounds of the Indians give place to cultivated fields, it is our duty to render them a full equivalent. The British government is responsible for the whole course of measures, in relation to the Indians in this country, until the war of the Revolution. Their orders were executed by their

*In 1685, the Marquis de Denonville wrote to the French government; It has long been believed that it is necessary to mingle with the Indians in order to Frenchify them (Franciser). But this is a mistake. Those with whom we mingle do not become French, but our people become Indians.'

own officers, and during a part of this period, a superintendent of Indian affairs for the northern, and another for the southern department, were appointed by the crown.

Not a vestige remains of any permanent advantage derived by the Indians from the cessions or sacrifices they made. Their actual relations with the British government may be emphatically stated in few words. They were useful, and were used, in war to fight, and in peace to trade. Queen Anne, indeed, presented sacramental vessels to the Mohawks, and other furniture for a chapel, and this is about the extent, as far as we have been able to discover, of the direct interference of the British government in any plan to improve the moral condition of the Indians. Pious and benevolent men were engaged then, as they are now, in this interesting task, and the names of Eliot and Brainerd have come down to us with apostolic sanctity. The Society for Propagating the Gospel attempted something; but they discovered, as they said, that the Indians obstinately rejected their care,' and abandoned the effort, without suspecting, that the fault was in the plan of the teacher, and not in the docility of the scholar. Generally, however, great indifference prevailed, and it is said in the Biographia Britannica, that Lord Granville reproved the converting of the Indians, because a knowledge of Christianity will introduce them to a knowledge of the arts, and such a consummation will make them dangerous to our plantations.' Of a similar character is the policy, stated by Hutchinson to have been pursued, that of keeping up so much contention among the Indians, as to prevent a combination, and to make an appeal to us as umpires necessary from time to time.*

In the few Indian treaties which have escaped from the official bureaus, a piece or two of 'strouding,' some duffils,' 'kettles,' 'flints,' &c. constitute the whole value paid for important cessions. These presents were too inconsiderable for general distribution, and they disappeared almost as speedily as the council which produced them. A permanent arrangement, by which an annual consideration should always be given, and a supply thus provided for never ending wants, was neither adopted nor proposed. This plan of permanent annuities, which constitutes an era in the relations existing between the white and the red man upon the continent, was introduced

* Hist. of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. I. p. 252. VOL. XXIV.NO. 55. 47

under the American government, and was first extensively embodied in Wayne's treaty of 1795; a treaty to which no parallel can be found in history. The Indians had waged a bloody and causeless war against our settlements for many years. They had been finally overthrown in a signal battle, and their confidence in themselves and their cause utterly destroyed. They were invited to a general council at Greenville, where the same terms were granted, which had been offered to them long before. Many important advantages were secured to them, and perpetual annuities were guarantied to each

tribe.

If any restraints were imposed by the British authorities, before our revolution, upon the Indian traders, either in relation to their general conduct, or the price of their goods, such restraints have escaped our investigation. We speak advisedly when we say, that none such now exist. Nor is there any prohibition against the introduction of spirituous liquors into any part of their Indian country. We may close this branch of the subject in few words. There was no attempt to provide a permanent residence for the Indians. There were no schools, and no efforts to introduce agriculture, or the mechanic arts. There were no annuities, no regulations to direct the conduct of the traders, and no law to prevent the sale of ardent spirits. A century and a half had passed away since the first settlement of the country. The rulers who governed it, heedless of the condition and sufferings of its aboriginal inhabitants, abandoned them to that current of events, which is yet hurrying them onward to their doom. The records of history cannot furnish a more cold blooded, heartless document, than the official report of Sir Jeffery Amherst, the British commander in chief, dated Albany, 13 August, 1763, and communicating the result of Colonel Grant's expedition against the Cherokees. He states, that 'Colonel Grant had burnt fifteen towns, and all the plantations of the country; destroyed fourteen hundred acres of corn; and driven about five thousand men, women, and children into the woods and mountains, where, having nothing to subsist upon, they must either starve or sue for peace.'

But that great revolution had now approached, which has already produced, and is yet destined to produce, important changes in the social and political systems of the world. The American government, at the commencement of its operations,

used every effort to prevent the Indians from taking part in the contest, and the desperate struggle in which the early patriots were engaged, still left them time to devise plans for the moral and physical melioration of their unhappy neighbors. On the 30th of June, 1775, Congress resolved,

'That the committee for Indian affairs do prepare proper talks to the several tribes of Indians, for engaging the continuance of their friendship to us, and neutrality in our present unhappy dispute with Great Britain.'

And on the 17th of the following month it was again resolved, in the same spirit of conciliation and humanity,

'That it should be recommended to the commissioners of the northern department to employ Mr Kirkland among the Indians of the Six Nations, in order to secure their friendship, and to continue them in a state of neutrality, with respect to the present controversy between Great Britain and these colonies.'

But in January and February of the next year, two resolutions were passed, which provided more full security for the protection and improvement of the Indians, than all the measures of the preceding government.

'Resolved-That all traders shall dispose of their goods, at such stated prices, as shall be fixed and ascertained by the commissioners, or a majority of such as can conveniently assemble for that purpose, in each respective department, and shall allow the Indians a reasonable price for their furs and skins, and take no unjust advantage of their distress and intemperance; and to this end, they shall respectively, upon receiving their licenses, enter into bond to the commissioners, for the use of the United Colonies, in such penalty as the acting commissioner or commissioners shall think proper, conditioned for the performance of the terms and regulations above prescribed.'

Resolved-That a friendly commerce between the people of the United Colonies and the Indians, and the propagation of the gospel, and the cultivation of the civil arts among the latter, may produce many and inestimable advantages to both, and that the commissioners for Indian affairs be desired to consider of proper places in their respective departments, for the residence of ministers and schoolmasters, and report the same to Congress.'

When the infancy of the government, and the object and spirit of these resolutions are maturely considered, they will be found honorable to the body which adopted them. With what little effect attempts were thus made to counteract the efforts of the British authorities, and to restrain the habitual disposi