The Americans, who have ever set themselves up as the champions, _par excellence_, of liberty, to whom the “down-trodden of the old world” could look for sympathy, if not direct support, have signally failed to observe those lofty principles at home toward the natives of the soil, while they continued for eighty years to keep in chains the sable sons of Africa. They have found it convenient and plausible to prate about the political “tyranny of European despots;” but no nation of northern Europe has shown such disregard for the rights of their people as the United States have exhibited toward the original owners of the soil. Avarice has quite outgrown every principle of liberty that germinated ere they came to America. The frontier men, the land-jobber, the New England merchant, as well as the Southern Planter, have alike ignored true liberty in defrauding the Indian, in sending out slavers, and in cruel treatment of the slave. Then can we wonder that the noble-minded Indian, naturally true to his faith, should, when cheated, wronged,— cruelly wronged, with the ferocity natural to his race, visit the faithless with terrible retribution? The unbiassed records of the past, speak in tones that cannot be hushed, of the more noble conduct of the natives, than of those who have sought to exterminate them. The Mohawks, although brave warriors, fought not for the mere love of it. They even at times strove to mediate between the French and New Englanders. To the Mohawks, the American writer has especially bestowed a name bloody and ignoble. And all because they listened not to their wily attempts to seduce them to join the rebels, but preferred to ally themselves with the British. No doubt the Indian had long before discriminated between the rule of British officers, and the selfish policy of local governments. And hence, we find, in every scrap of paper relating to the Mohawks, unfounded accounts of savage doings. But taking, as true, the darkest pages written by the Americans against the Six Nations, they present no parallel to the deeds of brutal vengeance enacted by the American army under Sullivan, when he traversed the fruitful country, so long the home of the Iroquois. Says an American writer: “When the army reached the Genesee Valley, all were surprised at the cultivation exhibited, by wide fields of corn, gardens well stocked, their cattle, houses, and other buildings, showing good design, with mechanical skill, and every kind of vegetable that could be conceived. Beautiful as was the scene in the eyes of the army, a few days changed it to utter desolation; neither house, nor garden, grain, fruit tree, or vegetable, was left unscathed.”