In all the early histories of the American colonies in the stories of Indian life and delineations of Indian character we have these children of the wilderness represented as savage and barbarous, with scarcely a redeeming trait of character. And in the minds of a large portion of the community the sentiment still prevails, that they were bloodthirsty, revengeful, and merciless justly a terror to both friends and foes. Children are impressed with the idea that an Indian is scarcely human, and as much to be feared as the most ferocious animal of the forest.
Novelists have now and then clothed a few with a garb which excites our admiration; but seldom has one been invested with qualities which we could love, unless it were also said that through some captive, taken in distant wars, he inherited a whiter skin and a paler blood.
But I am inclined to think that Indians are not alone in being savage not alone barbarous, and heartless, and merciless.
It is saidthey were exterminating each other by aggressive and devastating wars before the white people came among them. But wars certainly, aggressive and exterminating wars are not proofs of barbarity. The bravest warrior was the most honored; and this has been ever true of Christian nations; and those who call themselves Christian, have not ceased yet to look upon him who could plan most successfully the wholesale slaughter of human beings, as the most deserving his king s and his country s laurels. How long since the pæan died away in praise of the Duke of Wellington? What have been the wars in which all Europe has been engaged since there have been any records of her history? For what are civilized and Christian nations now drenching their fields with blood?
It is said the Indian was cruel to the captive, and inflicted unspeakable tortures upon his enemy taken in battle. But, from what we know of them, it is not to be inferred that Indian chiefs were ever guilty of filling dungeons with innocent victims, or slaughtering hundreds and thousands of their own people, whose only sin was a quiet dissent from some religious dogma. Towards their enemies they were often relentless, and they had good reason to look upon white men as their enemies. They slew them in battle, plotted against them secretly, and in a few instances few comparatively subjected individuals to torture, burnt them at the stake, and, perhaps, flayed them alive. But who knows any thing of the precepts and practice of Roman Catholic Christendom, and quotes these things as proofs of unmitigated barbarity? At the very time that Indians were using the tomahawk and scalping-knife to avenge their wrongs, peaceful citizens in every country in Europe, where the Pope was the man of authority, were incarcerated for no crime whatever, and such refinements of torture invented and practised as it never entered in the heart of the fiercest Indian warrior that roamed the wilderness, to inflict upon man or beast. We know very little of the secrets of the Inquisition, and this little chills our blood with horror; yet these things were done in the name of Christ, the Saviour of the world the Prince of Peace; and not savage, but civilized,Christian men looked on, not coldly, but rejoicingly, while women and children writhed in flames and weltered in blood!
Were the atrocities, committed in the Vale of Wyoming and Cherry Valley unprecedented among the Waldensian f
