[Footnote A:  Heckewelder’s historical account of the Indians.]

It is matter of history, that for a period of near seventy years after it was planted, the colony of William Penn lived in peace and harmony with the neighboring Indians, among whom were bands of the warlike Shawanoes.  It was an observation of this venerable and worthy man, when speaking of the Indians, that “if you do not abuse them, but let them have justice, you will win them, when there is such a knowledge of good and evil.”  His kind treatment to them was repaid by friendly offices, both to himself and his followers.  The Indians became indeed the benefactors of the colonists.  When the latter were scattered in 1682, and without shelter or food, they were kind and attentive, and treated them as brothers.[A]

[Footnote A:  Clarkson’s Life of Penn.]

Proud, in his History of Pennsylvania, when explaining the aversion of the Indians to christianity, attributes it to the character and conduct of the whites residing near or among them, “many of whom were of the lowest rank and least informed of mankind, who flowed in from Germany, Ireland and the jails of Great Britain, or who had fled from the better inhabited parts of the colony, to escape from justice.”  The proceedings of the assembly of Pennsylvania show that, as early as 1722, an Indian was barbarously killed by some whites, within the limits of the province.  The assembly proposed some measures for the governor’s consideration in regard to the affair; and mentioned the repeated requests of the Indians, that strong liquors should not be carried nor sold among them.  In a treatise published in London, in 1759, on the cause of the then existing difficulties between the Indians and the colonists, we find this paragraph.  “It would be too shocking to describe the conduct and behavior of the traders, when among the Indians; and endless to enumerate the abuses the Indians received and bore from them, for a series of years.  Suffice it to say, that several of the tribes were, at last, weary of bearing; and, as these traders were the persons who were, in some part, the representatives of the English among the Indians, and by whom they were to judge of our manners and religion, they conceived such invincible prejudices against both, particularly our holy religion, that when Mr. Sargeant, a gentleman in New England, took a journey in 1741, to the Shawanoes and some other tribes living on the Susquehanna, and offered to instruct them in the christian religion, they rejected his offer with disdain.  They reproached Christianity.  They told him the traders would lie and cheat.”  In 1744, governor Thomas, in a message to the assembly of Pennsylvania, says, “I cannot but be apprehensive that the Indian trade, as it is now carried on, will involve us in some fatal quarrel with the Indians.  Our traders, in defiance of the laws, carry spirituous liquors among them, and take advantage of their inordinate appetite for it, to cheat them of their skins, and