enough the relation in which the two communities stood to one
another. It proves also that the rule under which the conquered
Delawares were held was anything but oppressive. They seem to have been
allowed almost entire freedom, except only in making war and in
disposing of their lands without the consent of the Six Nations. In
fact, the Iroquois, in dealing with them, anticipated the very
regulations which the enlightened governments of the United States and
England now enforce in that benevolent treatment of the Indian tribes
for which they justly claim high credit. Can they refuse a like credit
to their dusky predecessors and exemplars, or deny them the praise of
being, as has been already said, the most clement of conquerors?

4. Finally, when a tribe within what may be called "striking distance"
of the Confederacy would neither join the League, nor enter into an
alliance with its members, nor come under their protection, there
remained nothing but a chronic state of warfare, which destroyed all
sense of security and comfort. The Iroquois hunter, fisherman, or
trader, returning home after a brief absence, could never be sure that
he would not find his dwelling a heap of embers, smoldering over the
mangled remains of his wife and children. The plainest dictates of
policy taught the Confederates that the only safe method in dealing with
such persistent and unappeasable foes was to crush them utterly. Among
the most dangerous of their enemies were the Hurons and the eastern
Algonkins, sustained and encouraged by the French colonists. It is from
them and their historians chiefly that the complaints of Iroquois
cruelties have descended to us; but the same historians have not omitted
to inform us that the first acquaintance of the Iroquois with triese
colonists was through two most wanton and butcherly assaults which
Champlain and his soldiers, in company with their Indian allies, made
upon their unoffending neighbors. No milder epithets can justly describe