"'_Father!_--We have only to say further, that your traders exact more than ever for their goods; and our hunting is lessened by the war, so that we have fewer skins to give for them. This ruins us. Think of some remedy. We are poor, and you have plenty of everything. We know you will send us powder and guns, and knives and hatchets; but we also want shirts and blankets.--A little white belt.'
"I do not doubt but that your Excellency will think it proper to give some further encouragement to those honest people. The high prices they complain of are the necessary effect of the war. Whatever presents may be sent for them through my hands shall be distributed with prudence and fidelity. I have the honour of being
"Your Excellency's most obedient and most humble servant,
This chapter of Congress vengeance to exterminate the Six Nations of Indians, and of its writers to picture them as human monsters, cannot be better concluded than in the words of the historian of Brant,[100] and of the Border Wars of the American Revolution:
"No Indian pen traces the history of their tribes and nations, or records the deeds of their warriors and chiefs, their prowess and their wrongs. Their spoilers have been their historians; and although a reluctant assent has been awarded to some of the nobler traits of their nature, yet, without yielding a due allowance for the peculiarities of their situation, the Indian character has been presented with singular uniformity as being cold, cruel, morose, and revengeful; unrelieved by any of those varying traits and characteristics, those lights and shadows which are admitted in respect to other people no less wild and uncivilized than they.
"Without pausing to reflect that, even when most cruel, they have been practising the trade of war--always dreadful--as much in conformity to their own usages and laws as have their more civilized antagonists, the white historian has drawn them with the characteristics of demons. Forgetting that the second of Hebrew monarchs did not scruple to saw his prisoners with saws, and harrow them with harrows of iron; forgetful likewise of the scenes of Smithfield, under the direction of our own British ancestors; the historians of the poor untutored Indians, almost with one accord, have denounced them as monsters _sui generis_, of unparalleled and unapproachable barbarity; as though the summary tomahawk were worse than the iron tortures of the harrow, and the torch of the Mohawk hotter than the faggots of Queen Mary.