en out of a house near
fort Edward, carried into the woods, and there scalped and mangled in
a most shocking manner. Two parents with their six children, were all
treated with the same inhumanity, while quietly resting in their once
happy and peaceful dwelling. The miserable fate of Miss M'Crea was
particularly aggravated, by being dressed to receive her promised
husband; but met her murderer employed by you. Upwards of one hundred
men, women and children, have perished by the hands of the ruffians to
whom, it is asserted, you have paid the price of blood."

To this part of his letter, General Burgoyne replied, "I have
hesitated, sir, upon answering the other paragraphs of your letter. I
disdain to justify myself against the rhapsodies of fiction and
calumny, which from the first of this contest, it has been an unvaried
American policy to propagate, but which no longer imposes on the
world. I am induced to deviate from this general rule, in the present
instance, lest my silence should be construed an acknowledgment of the
truth of your allegations, and a pretence be thence taken for
exercising future barbarities by the American troops.

"By this motive, and upon this only, I condescend to inform you, that
I would not be conscious of the acts you presume to impute to me, for
the whole continent of America, though the wealth of worlds was in its
bowels, and a paradise upon its surface.

"It has happened, that all my transactions with the Indian nations,
last year and this, have been clearly heard, distinctly understood,
accurately minuted, by very numerous, and in many parts, very
unprejudiced persons. So immediately opposite to the truth is your
assertion that I have paid a price for scalps, that one of the first
regulations established by me at the great council in May, and
repeated and enforced, and invariably adhered to since, was, that the
Indians should receive compensation for prisoners, because it would
prevent cruelty; and that not only such compensation should be
withheld, but a strict account demanded for scalps. These pledges of
conquest, for such you well know they will ever esteem them, were
solemnly and peremptorily prohibited to be taken from the wounded, and
even the dying, and the persons of aged men, women, children, and
prisoners, were pronounced sacred, even in an assault.

"In regard to Miss M'Crea, her fall wanted not the tragic display you
have laboured to give it, to make it as sincerely abhor