principal causes which so much diminished their numbers, not only
here but all over the continent. In some places whole nations have
disappeared. Some years ago three Indian canoes, on their return to
Detroit from the falls of Niagara, unluckily got the smallpox from
the Europeans with whom they had traded. It broke out near the long
point on Lake Erie, there they all perished; their canoes, and their
goods, were afterwards found by some travellers journeying the same
way; their dogs were still alive. Besides the smallpox, and the use
of spirituous liquors, the two greatest curses they have received
from us, there is a sort of physical antipathy, which is equally
powerful from one end of the continent to the other. Wherever they
happen to be mixed, or even to live in the neighbourhood of the
Europeans, they become exposed to a variety of accidents and
misfortunes to which they always fall victims: such are particular
fevers, to which they were strangers before, and sinking into a
singular sort of indolence and sloth. This has been invariably the
case wherever the same association has taken place; as at Nattick,
Mashpe, Soccanoket in the bounds of Falmouth, Nobscusset,
Houratonick, Monhauset, and the Vineyard. Even the Mohawks
themselves, who were once so populous, and such renowned warriors,
are now reduced to less than 200 since the European settlements have
circumscribed the territories which their ancestors had reserved.
Three years before the arrival of the Europeans at Cape Cod, a
frightful distemper had swept away a great many along its coasts,
which made the landing and intrusion of our forefathers much easier
than it otherwise might have been. In the year 1763, above half of
the Indians of this island perished by a strange fever, which the
Europeans who nursed them never caught; they appear to be a race
doomed to recede and disappear before the superior genius of the
Europeans. The only ancient custom of these people that is