“They went away, as they had said, and returned in the following season, when both parties were much rejoiced to see each other; but the white men laughed at the Indians, for they had the axes and hoes, which they had given them the year before, hanging to their breasts, as ornaments, and the stockings were made use of as tobacco pouches.  The whites now put handles to the axes for them, and cut down trees before their eyes, hoed up the ground, and put the stockings on their legs:  here, they say, a general laughter ensued among the Indians, that they had remained ignorant of the use of such valuable tools, and had borne the weight of them hanging to their necks for such a length of time.  They took every white man they saw for an inferior attendant on the supreme Manitou in the red laced clothes.

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“As they became daily more familiar with the Indians, the white men proposed to stay with us, and we readily consented.

“It was we who so kindly received them in our country, we took them by the hand and bade them welcome to sit down by our side and live with us as brothers; but how did they requite our kindness?  They first asked only for a little land, on which to raise bread for themselves and their families, and pasture for their cattle, which we freely gave them; they soon wanted more, which we also gave them; they saw the game in the woods, which the Great Spirit had given us for our subsistence, and they wanted that too; they penetrated into the woods in quest of game; they discovered spots of land which pleased them, that land they also wanted; and because we were loath to part with it, as we saw they had already more than they had need of, they took it from us by force, and drove us to a great distance from our ancient homes; they looked everywhere for good spots of land, and when they found one, they immediately, and without ceremony, possessed themselves of it; but when at last they came to our favourite spots, those which lay most convenient to our fisheries, then bloody wars ensued.  We would have been contented that the white people and we should have lived quietly beside each other, but these white men encroached so fast upon us, that we saw at once we should lose all if we did not resist them.  The wars that we carried on against each other were long and cruel,—­we were enraged when we saw the white people put our friends and relatives, whom they had taken prisoners, on board their ships, whether to drown or sell them as slaves in the country from which they came, we know not; but certain it is, that none of them have ever returned, or even been heard of.

“At last they got possession of the whole country, which the Great Spirit had given us; one of our tribes was forced to wander far to the north, others dispersed in small bodies, and sought refuge where they could.

“How long we shall be permitted to remain in this asylum, the Great Spirit only knows.  The whites will not rest contented till they shall have destroyed the last of us, and made us disappear entirely from the face of the earth.”