As I read over volumes of history in order to glean the truth from the great mass of details, I cannot help being struck with the different manner in which massacre and bloodshed are represented when Indians are spoken of, and when the same things are recorded of white men. The villages of Wyoming and Cherry Valley were devastated and destroyed by British and Indians, and the shocking story is repeated and dwelt upon as unparalleled in atrocity. The Indian is called a barbarian and bloodthirsty assassin—the personification of cruelty and revenge. But when it is recorded of the American army that “they were sent in every direction to overrun and lay waste Indian settlements, cut down their orchards, destroy their provisions and crops, kill their cattle and horses, and apply the besom of destruction to every thing that could give shelter or sustenance to man or beast;” and it is added, that “they meted out the full measure of destruction and desolation upon every settlement that came in their way, and actually destroyed forty Indian villages, one hundred and sixty thousand bushels of corn, vast quantities of beans and other vegetables, a great number of horses, and all farming utensils, and indeed every thing that was the result of labor or the produce of cultivation; all this being the unmolested and unremitting employment of five thousand men for three weeks;” and to close their labors of destruction, applied the torch to the ancient metropolis of the Seneca Nation, which contained one hundred and twenty-eight houses—many being killed and many taken prisoners, and all obliged to flee—men, women, and children—through the wilderness, strewing the way with the dead and dying—it is called “gallant,” a “brilliant achievement,” a “glorious exploit!” That Indian mothers see their children murdered before their eyes, or starving, or wasting from sickness, is nothing to excite pity or call forth compassion. That the horses, and cows, and sheep of Indians are burnt, and all their pleasant fields laid waste, is matter of rejoicing. Their homes were far more dear to them than were the homes of those who had occupied them but for a few years; for they were living with the legends and sweet associations of centuries. They were deprived of their birthright. I have listened with horror as I have heard old men relate the tales of hunger, and sickness, and misery to which thousands were reduced by an act which gained for the victors immortal honors and not a single censure.