commonly large snake, moving as if it intended to bite me I cannot get over my surprise, that the liquor I drank, and, indeed, that was not much, should have so deceived me! but I think I have now discovered how it happens that Indians so often kill one another when drunk, almost without knowing what they are doing; and when afterwards they are told what they have done, they ascribe it to the liquor which was in them at the time, and say the liquor did it. I have thought that as I saw this time a living snake in a dead piece of wood, so I might, at another time, take a human being, perhaps one of my own family, for a bear or some other ferocious beast and kill him. Can you, my friend, tell me what is in the beson that confuses one so, and transforms things in that manner? Is it an invisible spirit? It must be something alive; or have the white people sorcerers among them, who put something in the liquor to deceive those who drink it? Do the white people drink of the same liquor that they give to the Indians? Do they also, when drunk, kill people, and bite noses off, as the Indians do? Who taught the white people to make so pernicious a beson ?”

I answered all these questions, and several others that he put to me, in the best manner that I could, to which he replied, and our conversation continued as follows:

Indian," Well, if, as you say, the bad spirit cannot be the inventor of this liquor; if, in some cases it is moderately used among you as a medicine, and if your doctors can prepare from it, or with the help of a little of it, some salutary besons, still, I must believe that when it operates as you have seen, the bad spirit must have some hand in it, either by putting some bad thing into it, unk own to those who prepare it, or you have conjurers who understand how to bewitch it. Perhaps they only do so to that which is

This word means liquor, and is also used in the sense of a medicinal draught, or other compound potion.

for the Indians; for the devil is not the Indians' friend, because they will not worship him, as they do the good Spirit, and therefore I believe he puts something into the beson, for the purpose of destroying them."

Heckew." What the devil may do with the liquor I cannot tell; but I believe that he has a hand in every thing that is bad. When the Indians kill one another, bite off each other's noses, or commit such wicked acts, he is undoubtedly well satisfied; for, as God himself has said, he is a destroyer and a murderer."

Indian," Well, now, we think alike, and henceforth he shall never again deceive me, or entice me to drink his beson."

In the year 1769, an Indian from Susquehannah having come to Bethlehem with his sons to dispose of his peltry, was accosted by a trader from a neighbouring town, who addressed him thus: "Well! Thomas, I really believe you have turned Moravian." "Moravian!" answered the Indian, "what makes you think so?"-" Because," replied the other, "you used to come to us to sell your skins and peltry, and now you trade them away to the Moravians." "So !" rejoined the Indian, " now I understand you well, and I know what you mean to say. Now hear me.See, my friend! when I come to this place with my skins and peltry to trade, the people are kind, they give me plenty of good victuals to eat, and pay me in money or whatever I want, and no one says a word to me about drinking rum-neither do I ask for it! When I come to your place with my peltry, all call to me: Come, Thomas! here's rum, drink heartily, drink! it will not hurt you.' All this is done for the purpose of cheating me. When you have obtained from me all you want, you call me a drunken dog, and kick me out of the room.-See! this is the manner in which you cheat the Indians when they come to trade with you. So now you know when you see me coming to your town again, you may say to

one another: Ah! there is Thomas coming again! he is no longer a Moravian, for he is coming to us to be made drunk-to be cheated-to be kicked out of the house, and be called a drunken dog!"-HECKE

WELDEK.

FRIENDSHIP.

In the year 1779, the noted Girty with his murdering party of Mingoes, nine in number, fell in with the Missionary Zeisberger, on the path leading from Goschacking to Gnadenhütten; their design was to take that worthy man prisoner, and if the could not seize him alive, to murder him and take his scalp to Detroit. They were on the point of laying hold of him, when two young spirited Delawares providentially entered the path at that critical moment, and in an instant presented themselves to defend the good Missionary at the risk of their lives. Their determined conduct had the desired success, and his life was saved. His deliverers afterwards declared that they had no other motive for thus exposing themselves for his sake, than that he was a friend to their nation and was considered by them as a good man.

In the year 1777, while the revolutionary war was raging, and several Indian tribes had enlisted on the British side, and were spreading murder and devastation along our unprotected frontier, I rather rashly determined to take a journey into the country on a visit to my friends. Captain White Eyes, an Indian chief, resided at that time at the distance of seventeen miles from the place where I lived. Hearing of my determination, he immediately hurried up to me, with his friend Captain Wingenund, (whom I shall presently have occasion farther to mention) and some of his young men, for the purpose of escorting me to Pittsburg, saying, "that he would not suffer me to go, while the Sandusky warriors were out on war excursions, without a proper escort and himself at my

side." He insisted on accompanying me, and we set out together. One day, as we were proceeding along, our spies discovered a suspicious track. White Eyes, who was riding before me, inquired whether I felt afraid? I answered that while he was with me, I entertained no fear. On this he immediately replied, "You are right; for until I am laid prostrate at your feet, no one shall hurt you." "And even not then," added Wingenund, who was riding behind me; "before this happens, I must be also overcome, and lay by the side of our friend Koguethagechton."* I believed them, and I believe at this day that these great men were sincere, and that if they had been put to the test, they would have shown it, as did another Indian friend by whom my life was saved in the spring of the year 1781. From behind a log in the bushes where he was concealed, he espied a hostile Indian at the very moment he was levelling his piece at me. Quick as lightning he jumped between us, and exposed his person to the musket shot just about to be fired, when fortunately the aggressor desisted, from fear of hitting the Indian, whose body thus effectually protected me, at the imminent risk of his own life. Captain White Eyes, in the year 1774, saved in the same manner the life of David Duncan, the peacemessenger, whom he was escorting He rushed, regardless of his own life, up to an inimical Shawanese, who was aiming at our ambassador from behind a bush, and forced him to desist.

In the year 1782, a settlement of Christian Indians on the Sandusky river, were cruelly murdered by a gang of banditti, under the command of one Williamson. Not satisfied with this horrid outrage, the same band, not long afterwards, marched to Sandusky, where it seems they had been informed that the remainder of that unfortunate congregation had fled, in order to perpetrate upon them the same indiscri

* The Indian name of Capt. White Eyes,

minate murder.

But Providence had so ordered it that they had before left that place, where they had found that they could not remain in safety, their ministers having been taken from them and carried to Detroit by order of the British government, so that they had been left entirely unprotected. The murderers, on their arrival, were much disappointed in finding nothing but empty huts. They then shaped their course towards the hostile Indian villages, where being, contrary to their expectations, furiously attacked, Williamson and his band took the advantage of a dark night and ran off, and the whole party escaped, except one Colonel Crawford and another, who being taken by the Indians, were carried in triumph to their village, where the former was condemned to death by torture, and the punishment was inflicted with all the cruelty that rage could inThe latter was demanded by the Shawanese and sent to them for punishment.

vent.

While preparations were making for the execution of this dreadful sentence, the unfortunate Crawford recollected that the Delaware chief Wingenund,* of whom I have spoken in the beginning of this chapter, had been his friend in happier times; he had several times entertained him at his house, and showed him those marks of attention which are so grateful to the poor despised Indians. A ray of hope darted through his soul, and he requested that Wingenund, who lived at some distance from the village, might be sent for. His request was granted, and a messenger was despatched for the chief, who, reluctantly, indeed, but without hesitation, obeyed the summons, and immediately came to the fatal spot.

This great and good man was not only one of the bravest and most celebrated warriors, but one of the most amiable men of the Delaware nation.

To a

This name, according to the English orthography, should be written Winganoond or Wingaynoond, the second syllable accented and long, and the last syllable short.