The generality of the Indian nations appear to have two sorts of chiefs; council chiefs, and war chiefs. The former are hereditary, and are employed principally in the management of their civil affairs; but they may be war chiefs at the same time: the latter are chosen from amongst those who have distinguished themselves the most in battle, and are solely employed in leading the warriors in the field. The chiefs have no power of enforcing obedience to their commands, nor do they ever attempt to give their orders in an imperious manner; they simply advise. Each private individual conceives that he is born in a state of perfect liberty, and he disdains all controul, but that which his own reason subjects him to. As they all have one interest, however, at heart, which is the general welfare of the nation, and as it is well known that the chiefs are actuated by no other motives, whatever measures they recommend are generally attended to, and at once adopted. Savages as they are, yet in no civilized community, I fear, on earth, shall we find the same public spirit, the same disinterestedness, and the same regard to order, where order is not enforced by the severity of laws, as amongst the Indians. The Indians have the most sovereign contempt for any set of people that have tamely relinquished their liberty; and they consider such as have lost it, even after a hard struggle, as unworthy any rank in society above that of old women: to this cause, and not to the difference that subsists between their persons, is to be attributed, I conceive, the rooted aversion which the Indians universally have for negroes. You could not possibly affront an Indian more readily, than by telling him that you think he bears some resemblance to a negro; or that he has negro blood in his veins: they look upon them as animals inferior to the human species, and will kill them with as much unconcern as a dog or a cat. [Sidenote: ANECDOTES.]