it thus. By his will, I am left yet, to taste more of the miseries of
this world. Thy relations and friends have gathered about thy body to
look upon thee for the last time. They mourn, as with one mind, thy
departure from among us. We, too, have but a few days more and our
journey will be ended. We part now, and you are conveyed out of our
sight. But we shall soon meet again, and shall look upon each other, then
we shall part no more. Our Maker has called thee home, and thither will
we follow."

After the adoption of the league of the Iroquois, and they dwelled in
villages, this was one of the duties enjoined by their religious teacher
at their festivals: "It is the will of the Great Spirit that you
reverence the aged, even though they be helpless as infants." And also,
"Kindness to the orphan, and hospitality to all." "If you tie up the
clothes of an orphan child, the Great Spirit will notice it, and reward
you for it." "To adopt an orphan, and bring them up in virtuous ways, is
pleasing to the Great Spirit." "If strangers wander about your abode,
welcome him to your home, be hospitable towards him, speak to him with
kind words, and forget not, always to make mention of the Great Spirit."

The Indians lamentations, on being driven far away from the graves of
their fathers, have been the theme of all historians and travelers. It
can be easily imagined how those who so loved their homes and revered
their fathers' graves, would become fierce with indignation and rage, on
seeing themselves treated as without human feeling, and the sacred relics
of the dead ploughed up and scattered as indifferently as the stones, or
the bones of the moose and the deer of the forest. It was this feeling
that often prompted them to acts of hostility, which those who
experienced them, ascribed to wanton cruelty and barbarity.