which belonged to the Shawanoes, but they usurped their lands also; they pretended, indeed, to have purchased these lands; but the very goods they gave for them, were more the property of the Indians than the white people, because the knowledge which enabled them to manufacture these goods actually belonged to the Shawanoes:  but these things will soon have an end.  The Master of Life is about to restore to the Shawanoes both their knowledge and their rights, and he will trample the long knives under his feet.”

[Footnote A:  Atlantic Ocean.]

It has been already stated that, for a series of years, the several tribes of Indians residing in the territory now forming the state of Ohio, made violent opposition to the settlement of the whites, west of the Alleghanies.  Among the most formidable of these were the Shawanoes.  The emigrants, whether male or female, old or young, were every where met by the torch, the tomahawk and the scalping-knife.  The war-cry of the savage was echoed from shore to shore of the beautiful Ohio, whose waters were but too often reddened with the blood of women and children.  Many of those who escaped the perils of the river, and had reared their log-cabins amid the cane-brakes of Kentucky, were doomed to encounter the same ruthless foe, and fell victims to the same unrelenting cruelty.  While the feelings are shocked at these dreadful scenes of blood and carnage, and the Indian character rises in hideous deformity before the mind, it is not to be forgotten that there are many mitigating circumstances to be pleaded in behalf of the aborigines.  They were an ignorant people, educated alone for war, without the lights of civilization, without the attributes of mercy shed abroad by the spirit of christianity.  They were contending for their homes and their hunting grounds—­the tombs of their forefathers—­the graves of their children.  They saw the gradual, but certain, encroachments of the whites upon their lands; and they had the sagacity to perceive, that unless this mighty wave of emigration was arrested, it would overwhelm them.  They fought as savage nature will fight, with unflinching courage and unrelenting cruelty.  But it was not alone this encroachment upon their lands, which roused their savage passions.  The wanton aggressions of the whites oftentimes provoked the fearful retaliation of the red-man.  The policy of the United States towards the Indians has generally been of a pacific and benevolent character; but, in carrying out that policy, there have been many signal and inexcusable failures.  The laws enacted by congress for the protection of the rights of the Indians, and to promote their comfort and civilization, have, in a great variety of cases, remained a dead letter upon the statute book.  The agents of the government have often proved unfaithful, and have looked much more to their own pecuniary interests, than to the honest execution of the public trusts confided to them.  Nor is this all.  There has ever been