Acceptable presents are generally found very efficacious in conciliating the affections of any uncivilized nation: they have very great influence over the minds of the Indians; but to conciliate their affections to the utmost, presents alone are not sufficient; you must appear to have their interest at heart in every respect; you must associate with them; you must treat them as men that are your equals, and, in some measure, even adopt their native manners. It was by such steps as these that the French, when they had possession of Canada, gained their favour in such a very eminent manner, and acquired so wonderful an ascendency over them. The old Indians still say, that they never were so happy as when the French had possession of the country; and, indeed, it is a very remarkable fact, which I before mentioned, that the Indians, if they are sick, if they are hungry, if they want shelter from a storm, or the like, will always go to the houses of the old French settlers in preference to these of the British inhabitants. The necessity of treating the Indians with respect and attention is strongly inculcated on the minds of the English settlers, and they endeavour to act accordingly; but still they cannot banish wholly from their minds, as the French do, the idea that the Indians are an inferior race of people to them, to which circumstance is to be attributed the predilection of the Indians for the French rather than them; they all live together, however, on very amicable terms, and many of the English on the frontiers have indeed told me, that if they were but half as honest, and half as well conducted towards one another, as the Indians are towards them, the state of society in the country would be truly enviable. On the frontiers of the United States little pains have hitherto been taken by the government, and no pains by the people, to gain the good will of the Indians; and the latter, indeed, instead of respecting the Indians as an independent neighbouring nation have in too many instances violated their rights as men in the most flagrant manner. The consequence has been, that the people on the frontiers have been involved in all the calamities that they could have suffered from an avengeful and cruel enemy. Nightly murders, robberies, massacres, and conflagrations have been common. They have hardly ventured to stir, at times, beyond the walls of their little habitations; and for whole nights together have they been kept on the watch, in arms, to resist the onset of the Indians. They have never dared to visit their neighbours unarmed, nor to proceed alone, in open day, on a journey of a few miles. The gazettes of the United States have daily teemed with the shocking accounts of the barbarities committed by the Indians, and volumes would scarcely suffice to tell the whole of the dreadful tales. [Sidenote: REMARKS.]