Adair's History of the American IndiansAdair, James
History
Adair's History of the American Indians
Adair, James
Indians -- Origin; Indians of North America -- Southern States
secretary’s heart would never allow him to tell a lie; and the secretary
urged that he was a foreigner, without owing any allegiance to Great
Britain,—that he only travelled through some places of their country, in
a peaceable manner, paying for every thing he had of them; that in
compliance with the request of the kindly French, as well as from his
own tender feelings for the poverty and insecure state of the Cheerake,
he came a great way, and lived among them as a brother, only to preserve
their liberties, by opening a water communication between them and New
Orleans; that the distance of the two places from each other, proved his
motive to be the love of doing good, especially as he was to go there,
and bring up a sufficient number of Frenchmen of proper skill to
instruct them in the art of making gun-powder, the materials of which,
he affirmed their lands abounded with.—He concluded his artful speech,
by urging that the tyrannical design of the English commissioner toward
him, appeared plainly to be levelled against them, because, as he was
not accused of having done any ill to the English, before he came to the
Cheerake, his crime must consist in loving the Cheerake.—And as that was
reckoned so heinous a transgression in the eye of the English, as to
send one of their angry beloved men to enslave him, it confirmed all
those honest speeches he had often spoken to the present great
war-chieftains, old beloved men, and warriors of each class.
An old war-leader repeated to the commissioner, the essential part of
the speech, and added more of his own similar thereto. He bade him to
inform {241} his superiors, that the Cheerake were as desirous as the
English to continue a friendly union with each other, as “freemen and
equals.” That they hoped to receive no farther uneasiness from them, for
consulting their own interests, as their reason dictated.—And they
earnestly requested them to send no more of those bad papers to their
country, on any account; nor to reckon them so base, as to allow any of
their honest friends to be taken out of their arms, and carried into
slavery. The English beloved man had the honour of receiving his leave
of absence, and a sufficient passport of safe conduct, from the imperial
red court, by a verbal order of the secretary of state,—who was so
polite as to wish him well home, and ordered a convoy of his own
life-guards, who conducted him a considerable way, and he got home in
safety.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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