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 abhorred and
lamented by me, as it can be by the tenderest of her friends. The fact
was no premeditated barbarity. On the contrary, two chiefs who had
brought her off for the purpose of security, not of violence to her
person, disputed which should be her guard, and in a fit of savage
passion in one, from whose hands she was snatched, the unhappy woman
became the victim. Upon the first intelligence of this event, I
obliged the Indians to deliver the murderer into my hands, and though
to have punished him by our laws, or principles of justice, would have
been perhaps unprecedented, he certainly should have suffered an
ignominious death, had I not been convinced from my circumstances and
observation, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that a pardon under
the terms which I presented, and they accepted, would be more
efficacious than an execution, to prevent similar mischiefs.

"The above instance excepted, your intelligence respecting the cruelty
of the Indians is false.

"You seem to threaten me with European publications, which affect me
as little as any other threats you could make; but in regard to