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.

"Nor does it seem to have occurred to the 'pale-faced' writers that the
identical cruelties, the records and descriptions of which enter so
largely into the composition of the earlier volumes of American history,
were not barbarities in the estimation of those who practised them. _The
scalp lock was an emblem of chivalry._ Every warrior shaving his head
for battle was careful to leave _the lock of defiance upon his crown_,
as for the bravado, 'Take it if you can.' The stake and the torture
were identified with their rude notions of the power of endurance. They
were inflicted upon captives of their own race, as well as upon whites;
and with their own braves these trials were courted, to enable the
sufferer to exhibit the courage and fortitude with which they could be
borne--the proud scorn with which all the pain that a foe might inflict
could be endured.

"But (it is said) they fell upon slumbering hamlets in the night and
massacred defenceless women and children. This, again, was their own
mode of warfare, as honourable in their estimation as the more courteous
methods of committing wholesale murder laid down in the books.

"But of one eno