same fate as her neighbours. For a long time she refused, but at length fear entered her mind, and she went with them. In the fort, however, she became wretched. She considered that she had abandoned the principles of peace by putting herself under the protection of arms. She felt that she had cast a slander on the hitherto inviolate faith of the Indians, which might bring most disastrous consequences on other Friends who yet lived in the open country on the faith of the Indian integrity. She therefore determined to go out again, and return to her own house. She went forth, but had scarcely reached the first thicket when she was shot by the Indians, who now looked upon her as an enemy, or at least as a spy. These are the only exceptions to the perfect security of Friends through all the Indian devastations in America; for wherever there were Friends, any tribe of Indians felt bound to recognize the sons of Father Onas: they would have been ashamed to injure an unarmed man, who was unarmed because he preserved peace as the command of the Great Spirit. It was during this war that the very treaty made with Penn was shewn by the Indians to some British officers, being preserved by them with the most sacred care, as a monument of a transaction without a parallel, and equally honourable to themselves as to the Friends. What a noble testimony is this to the divine nature and perfect adaptation of Christianity to all human purposes; and yet when has it been imitated? and how little is heard of it! From that day to the present both Americans and English have gone on outraging and expelling the natives from their lands; and it was but the other day that the English officers at the Cape were astonished that a similar conduct towards the Caffres produced a similar result. How lost are the most splendid deeds of the Christian philosopher on the ordinary statesman! But the Friends are a peaceable people, and "doing good they blush to find it fame." If they would make more noise in the world, and din their good deeds in its ears, they would be never the worse citizens. The landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in America is annually celebrated in New England with great ceremony and eclat. It has been everywhere extolled by those holding similar religious views, and has been eulogised in poetry and prose. The landing of the Friends in Pennsylvania was a landing of the Pilgrim Fathers not less important: they went there under similar circumstances: they fled from persecution at home-a bitterer and more savage persecution even than befel the Puritans-to seek a home in the wilderness. They equalled the good Roger Williams in their justice to the Indians-they bought their lands of them— and they far exceeded him and his followers in their conception of the power of Christianity, and their practical demonstration of it. They are the only people in the history of the world that have gone into the midst of a fierce and armed race, and a race irritated with rigour too, without arms;* established a * Missionaries, especially the Jesuits, and the English in the South Sea Islands, form the only exceptions, and these partially. The Jesuits, though they did not commonly bear arms, taught the use of them, and led, in fact, the most effective troops to battle in Paraguay. The South Sea missionaries form the strongest exceptions: they are, indeed, but guests, and not the governors; but their conduct is admirable, and we may believe will not alter with power. state on the simple basis of justice, and to the last hour of their government maintained it triumphantly on the same. Their conduct to the Indians never altered for the worse; Pennsylvania, while under their administration, never became, as New England, a slaughter-house of the Indians. The world cannot charge them with the extinction of a single tribe-no, nor with that of a single man! It is delightful to close this chapter of American settlements with so glorious a spectacle of Christian virtue ;-would to God that it were but more imitated !* * Mr. Bannister, in an excellent little work (British Colonization and the Coloured Tribes), just published, and which ought to be read by every one for its right-mindedness and sound and most important views, has regretted that William Penn did not take a guarantee from the British crown, in his charter, for the protection of the Indians from other states, and from his own successors. It is to be regretted; nor is it meant here to assert that the provisions of his government were as complete as they were pure in principle. Embarrassments of various kinds prevented him from perfecting what he had so nobly begun; yet the feeling with which his political system is regarded, must be that of the following passage: "Virtue had never perhaps inspired a legislation better calculated to promote the felicity of mankind. The opinions, the sentiments, and the morals, corrected whatever might be defective in it. Accordingly the prosperity of Pennsylvania was very rapid. This republic, without either wars, conquests, struggles, or any of those revolutions which attract the eyes of the vulgar, soon excited the admiration of the whole universe. Its neighbours, notwithstanding their savage state, were softened by the sweetness of its manners; and distant nations, notwithstanding their corruption, paid homage to its virtues. All delighted to see those heroic days of antiquity realized, which European manners and laws had long taught every one to consider as entirely fabulous."-Raynal, vol. vii. p. 292. CHAPTER XXIII. THE ENGLISH IN AMERICA TILL THE REVOLT OF THE COLONIES. In Carolina's palmy bowers, Its jasmines and magnolias; O'er the monarda's vast expanse Of scarlet, where the bee-birds glance Their flickering wings, and breasts that gleam A million little knights that run Warring for wild-flowers in the sun;- eye might rove through earth and sky, We may pass rapidly over this space. The colonial principles of action were established regarding the Indians, and they went on destroying and demoralizing them till the reduction of Canada by the English. That removed one great source of Indian destruction; for while there was such an enemy to repulse, the Indians were perpetually called upon and urged forward in the business of slaughter and scalping. It was the same, indeed, on every frontier where there was an enemy, French or Spanish. We have the history of Adair, who was a resident in the southwestern states for above forty years. This gentleman, who has given us a very minute account of the manners, customs, and opinions of the Choctaws, Cherokees, and Chickasaws, amongst whom he chiefly resided in the Carolinas, and who is firmly convinced that they are descended from the Ten Tribes of Israel, and, moreover, gives us many proofs of the excellence of their nature—yet, most inconsistently, is loud in praise of the French policy of setting the different Indian nations by the ears; and condemnation of anything like conciliation and forbearance. Speaking of some such attempts in 1736, he says "Our rivals, the French, never neglect so favourable an opportunity of securing and promoting their interests. We have known more than one instance wherein their wisdom has not only found out proper means to disconcert the most dangerous plans of disaffected savages, but likewise to foment, and artfully to encourage, great animosities between the heads of ambitious rival families, till they fixed them in an implacable hatred against each other, and all of their respective tribes.” * That he was in earnest in his admiration of such a policy, he goes on to relate to us, with the greatest naiveté and in the most circumstantial manner, how he recommended to the Governor of South Carolina to employ the Choctaws to scalp and extirpate the French traders in Louisiana, who, no doubt, interfered with his own gains. He lets us know that he got such a commission; and informs us particularly of the presents and flatteries with which he plied a great Choctaw chief, called Red Shoes, to set him on this * Adair's History of the American Indians, p. 249. |
