These somewhat contradictory views of the Indian race seem to be a little too sweeping on both sides, they being neither so good nor so bad as represented. The native Indians have been both kind and cruel to one another and the whites. Their instincts are not unlike those of civilized peoples, but there are less control and restraint in savagery than civilization. Their tribal differences of conduct towards the whites depended less upon natural disposition than leadership and provocations. Vindictiveness towards real or fancied enemies seems to have prevailed everywhere among the North American tribes, and this was undoubtedly increased towards the whites by the latter's aggressions and by the former's indulgence in the intoxicants furnished them by their white neighbors. But cruelty is ingrained in the barbarian character almost everywhere, and often is manifested in communities called civilized. The tortures of the middle ages in the name of religion were as painful as those inflicted in the eighteenth century by our Indians, and both seem almost impossible to the philanthropist of to-day. Not until minds have been softened by such teachings as those of the Founder of Christianity, and extremes of bigotry have given place to tolerance and charity, is the natural disposition of the average man to give pain to antagonists dissipated. There has been no more intellectual nation among the aborigines of America than the Senecas of Western New York--the most original and determined of the confederated Iroquois--but its warriors were cruel like the others, and their squaws often assisted the men in torturing their captives. When Boyd and Parker were captured in the Genesee Valley in the Sullivan campaign of 1779, Brant, the famous half-breed chief, assured them that they would not be injured, yet left them in the hands of Little Beard, another chief, to do with as he would, and the prolonged tortures to which he and his savage companions subjected them were horrible. After they had been stripped and tied to trees, and tomahawks were thrown so as to just graze their heads, Parker was unintentionally hit so that his head was severed from his body, but Boyd was made to suffer lingering miseries. His ears were cut off, his mouth enlarged with knives and his severed nose thrust into it, pieces of flesh were cut from his shoulders and other parts of his body, an incision was made in his abdomen and an intestine fastened to the tree, when he was scourged to make him move around it, and finally as he neared death, was decapitated, and his head raised on a pole. [Illustration: John G. Borden] Similar tortures were not uncommon among both the Iroquois and Algonquins when they made captives of the whites.