And for this noble and magnanimous conduct on the part of the Indian, what return did the white man make? Such a one only, we regret to say, as makes no bright page in their history. They were taught all the vices of civilization, but to teach them its virtues was deemed a work of supererogation. The ignorant Indian and his primitive habits were treated with disdain, and he was deemed a fit subject for robbery whenever opportunity offered--this more especially by the lawless, who considered themselves out of the reach of government and its officers. A gradual encroachment upon the Indian's sacred hunting-grounds, and the refusal of the white man to look upon him as any thing but a degraded being or to associate with him on an equality, soon taught the Indian that he had taken into fellowship the crafty white man only to enable him to suck out his existence by his superior skill and his subtle cunning. The keen penetration of the savage soon discovered the position he occupied by the side of his white brother. Smarting under the indignities offered, and foreseeing the degradation to which he would be subjected in time, the red man and the white man did not long dwell together in unity. While the latter commenced tilling the land and surrounding himself with the comforts of civilization, the former fled before him to the mountains and valleys where he was monarch of the land,--where the council-fire could blaze, the green-corn dance and song be heard, and the calumet of peace be smoked without the presence of the white man. Yet, with all the encroachments upon their rights by the settlers, the Indians exercised great forbearance. They knew the warlike appliances in the power of the proprietary government; hence they repeatedly declared their wish to "keep bright the chain of friendship;"--in less figurative language, they did not want to go to war. No depredations were committed upon the whites, of any consequence, before the French tampered with them and the Six Nations perfidiously sold the land they had given "their cousins" as a sacred hunting-ground. Nor even then, although the aggravation was great, did all the Indians leave the valley to join the French. Many who were friendly toward the proprietary government remained until war broke out between the colonies and Great Britain; and some few peaceably-disposed fragments of tribes even lingered in the valley until the close of the Revolutionary war.