Back of the Conquest of Mexico by Cortes, the thread of authentic history becomes most uncertain. It begins about the sixth century. Ixtlilxochitl, the native Mexican, has written a good deal, but it must be taken, oftentimes, with extreme caution. The history of the Amerind race is written mainly by their conquerors. It is a one-sided affair, and even so is not pleasant reading. Balzac says: “Historians are privileged liars, who lend their pen to popular beliefs.” Certainly the character of the Amerind and his doings have not often been too charitably drawn, while, on the other hand, our actions toward him, even as related by ourselves, are enough to make one sometimes doubt the benefits of civilisation. Morgan, speaking of the remnant of the Senecas, says: “To embitter their sense of desolation as a nation, the pre-emptive right to these last remnants of their ancient possessions is now held by a company of land speculators, the Ogden Land Company, who, to wrest away these few acres, have pursued and hunted them for the last fourteen years with a degree of wickedness hardly to be paralleled in the history of human avarice. Not only have every principle of honesty, every dictate of humanity, every Christian precept been violated by this company in their eager artifices to despoil the Senecas; but the darkest frauds, the basest bribery, and the most execrable intrigues which soulless avarice could suggest, have been practised in open day upon this defenceless and much injured people.”[401] [Illustration: APACHE WOMAN CARRYING WATER IN A WICKER BOTTLE] On one occasion in 1643, out of a spirit of revenge for a murder committed by an Indian who had been infuriated by whisky, but whose friends, according to Amerind custom, offered to pay a blood indemnity, Governor Kieft, heading a band of soldiers and freebooters from Dutch privateers, fell upon the unsuspecting Algonquins and slaughtered over a hundred of them. Little children were tossed into the river, and the parents who plunged to the rescue were prevented from landing by the soldiers, and child and parent both perished. In this incident began the Dutch and Indian War, which lasted two years. Can anyone condemn them for going to war after such treatment?