It has been the custom of almost all American historians to give the Indians attributes of the most debasing character. At peace, unworthy the advantages of civilization; at war, treacherous and ferociously cruel. For this persistent and ungenerous procedure it is impossible to conceive any cause, unless to supply an excuse for the steady course of double-dealing the Americans have pursued toward the original owners of the soil, and provide a covering for the oft-repeated treachery practised toward the credulous Indian by the over-reaching New Englander. To the Mohawk Nation particularly, since they proved true allies of the British, have American writers found it agreeable to bestow a character noted for blood and rapine. Nothing can be more untrue than the character thus gratuitously portrayed, nothing more at variance with the essential nature of the Indian, when free from European intrigues, and the cursed fire-water. The aboriginal races of North America are not by nature, blood-thirsty above Europeans. That they are honest, just and true, capable of distinguishing between right and wrong, with a due appreciation of well-kept faith, is well attested by the conduct which has ever been observed by them toward, not alone the Pennsylvanians, but every man found to be a Quaker. No instance can be found recorded throughout the long bloody wars of the Indians, where a hair of the head of a single man, woman or child of that denomination was injured by the Indian; and thus because the upright Penn never defrauded them. The Americans, while British colonists, with the exception alluded to, made themselves obnoxious to almost all Indian tribes. They never secured that hearty and faithful alliance that the French did. There seemed to be something in the air, especially of the New England States, which in a few generations blinded the eye, by which the golden rule is to be observed.