He has been justly called a great and a good man.  He was the zealous friend of the Moravian missions; and warmly encouraged every effort to ameliorate the moral and physical condition of his people.  “His noble bearing,” says Mr. Withers, “his generous and disinterested attachment to the colonies, when the thunder of British cannon was reverberating through the land, his anxiety to preserve the frontier of Virginia from desolation and death, (the object of his visit to Point Pleasant,) all conspired to win for him the esteem and respect of others; while the untimely and perfidious manner of his death, caused a deep and lasting regret to pervade the bosoms even of those who were enemies to his nation; and excited the just indignation of all towards his inhuman and barbarous murderers.”  The strong native powers of his mind had been more enriched by observation, travel and intercourse with the whites, than is usual among the Indian chiefs.  He was familiarly acquainted with the topography and geography of the north-west, even beyond the Mississippi river, and possessed an accurate knowledge of the various treaties between the whites and the Indian tribes of this region, and the relative rights of each party.

At the treaty with Dunmore, he made a speech alike creditable to his love of country and his sense of justice.  He pourtrayed, in living colors, the wrongs inflicted upon the Indians by the colonists, and placed in strong contrast the former and present condition of his nation, the one being happy and prosperous, the other degraded and oppressed.  He spoke in a strain of manly boldness of the repeated perfidy of the white people; and especially, of the unblushing dishonesty of the traders; and, finally concluded by proposing as one of the fundamental provisions of the treaty, that no commerce with the Indians should be carried on for individual profit, but that honest men should be sent among them by their white brother, with such things as they needed, to be exchanged, at a fair price, for their skins and furs:  and still further, that no “fire-water,” of any kind, should be introduced among them, inasmuch as it depraved his people and stimulated them to aggressions upon their white brethren.

As an orator, the fame of Cornstalk stands high.  Colonel Benjamin Wilson, an officer in Dunmore’s campaign, in 1774, who was present at the interview (at camp Charlotte) between the chiefs and the governor, in speaking of Cornstalk, says, “when he arose, he was in no wise confused or daunted, but spoke in a distinct and audible voice, without stammering or repetition, and with peculiar emphasis.  His looks, while addressing Dunmore, were truly grand and majestic, yet graceful and attractive.  I have heard the first orators in Virginia,—­Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee,—­but never have I heard one whose powers of delivery surpassed those of Cornstalk.”