the Quakers of Pennsylvania, there would not have been so dark a record
of sins, wrongs and tortures. If none but men of principle had made
treaties with them, and all whose duty it was to observe them, had kept
their faith, revenge had not come out so prominently in Indian character.

But it was not in obedience to national policy that those who were taken
in battle, were put to the torture, burned, and flayed. The Six Nations
had never found it necessary to build prisons, and dig dungeons for their
own people. If any man committed murder, they sometimes decided that he
should die, and sometimes bade him flee far away where none who knew him
could look upon his face. But crimes were so rare that they had no
criminal code, and when they overcame their enemies, they either adopted
them and treated them as brethren, or put them immediately to death.

White people have often put Indians to death, and oftener put them in
dungeons to waste and starve, but it was not part of their practice to
adopt them and call them brethren. Had they sometimes done this, or sent
them freely back to their friends unharmed, they might have conciliated
where they were only made more desperate.

When families are bereaved, they sought to be revenged on those who had
bereaved them, and when warriors returned from battle, the prisoners were
given up to the friends of the afflicted. With them alone it remained to
decide the fate of those who fell into their hands. If they chose, they
adopt them in place of the husbands, or brothers, who were slain; and if
they so decided they were put to death, and in any way they decreed. If
the manner in which their friend had been killed was aggravating and
greatly enraged them, they were very likely to decide upon torture, and
inflicted it in a manner to produce the greatest suffering. But in such
cases, they sometimes showed great magnanimity, and "returned good for