he says, “are a poor and generally called barbarous people, bred under the darkest ignorance; and yet a bright and noble genius shines through these black clouds.  None of the greatest Roman heroes have discovered a greater love of country, or contempt of death, than these people, called barbarous, have shown when liberty came in competition.  Indeed I think our Indians have outdone the Romans in this particular.  Some of the greatest of those Roman heroes have murdered themselves to avoid shame or torments; but our Indians have refused to die meanly or with little pain, when they thought their country’s honour would be at stake by it; but have given their bodies willingly to the most cruel torments of their enemies, to show, as they said, that ‘the Five Nations’ consisted of men whose courage and resolution could not be shaken.  But what, alas! have we Christians done to make them better?  We have, indeed, reason to be ashamed that these infidels, by our conversation and neighbourhood, are become worse than they were before they knew us.  Instead of virtue, we have only taught them vice, that they were entirely free from before that time."[20] The Rev. Timothy Flint, who was himself a missionary, in his “Ten Years’ Residence in the Valley of the Mississippi,” observes, page 144,—­“I have surely had it in my heart to impress them with the importance of the subject (religion).  I have scarcely noticed an instance in which the subject was not received either with indifference, rudeness, or jesting.  Of all races of men that I have seen, they seem most incapable of religious impressions.  They have, indeed, some notions of an invisible agent, but they seemed generally to think that the Indians had their god as the whites had theirs.”  And again, “nothing will eventually be gained to the great cause by colouring and mis-statement,” alluding to the practice of the missionaries; “and however reluctant we may be to receive it, the real state of things will eventually be known to us.  We have heard of the imperishable labours of an Elliott and a Brainard, in other days.  But in these times it is a melancholy truth, that Protestant exertions to Christianize them have not been marked with apparent success.  The Catholics have caused many to hang a crucifix around their necks, which they show as they show their medals and other ornaments, and this is too often all they have to mark them as Christians.  We have read the narratives of the Catholics, which detailed the most glowing and animating views of success.  I have had accounts, however, from travellers in these regions, that have been over the Stony mountains into the great missionary settlements of St. Peter and St. Paul.  These travellers (and some of them were professed Catholics) unite in affirming that the converts will escape from the missions whenever it is in their power, fly into their native deserts, and resume at once their old mode of life.”