consistent at once with our dignity and our interest,
has been shown to them. You have seen, for instance,"
continued he with a smile, "my three friends, who have
just left the room; they are not exactly the happiest
specimens of Indian grace, but they have great weight in
the council, and are the leading men in the alliance to
which you hare alluded, although not wholly for the same
purpose. In the wars of Pontiac--and these are still
fresh in the recollection of certain members of my own
family--the English Commanders, with one or two exceptions,
brought those disasters upon themselves. Forgetting that
the Indians were a proud people, whom to neglect was to
stir into hatred, they treated them, with indifference,
if not with contempt; and dearly did they pay the penalty
of their fault. As we all know, they, with one only
exception, were destroyed. In their fall expired the
hostility they themselves had provoked, and time had
wholly obliterated the sense of injustice from the minds
of the several nations. Were we then with these fearful
examples, yet fresh in our recollection, to fall into a
similar error? No; a course of conciliation was adopted,
and has been pursued for years; and now do we reap the
fruit of what, after all, is but an act of the most
justifiable policy. In my capacity of superintendant of
Indian affairs, Major Montgomerie, even more than at a
Canadian brought up among them, I have had opportunities
of studying the characters of the heads of the several
nations. The most bitter enmity animates the bosoms of
all against the Government and people of the United
States, from whom, according to their own showing, they