Voices; Birth-Marks; The Man and the ElephantHolt, Mathew Joseph
History
Voices; Birth-Marks; The Man and the Elephant
Holt, Mathew Joseph
Kentucky -- Fiction; Kentucky -- History
“Friends, listen! A great nation is divided. The sons, the Long Knives,
fight their father, the British. The father has called on his Indian
children to help him punish his white children. We should do what Lord
Dunmore asks. He stood between us and destruction after the battle of
Point Pleasant, when the Long Knives wished to burn our villages and
murder our women and children.
“I took time to consider whether I should receive the hatchet of my
father to assist him. At first I thought it a family quarrel in which I
was not interested. At length it appeared to me that the father was
right and his white sons should be punished.
“The father has promised to arm and provision us and to treat us as his
children, so we shall never want. But we have a greater cause for war.
The Long Knives have broken their treaty with us. They steal our
property; they murder without provocation; even those of us who would be
their friends, who when they seek the shelter of their forts in peace
and for council and to do them a service are set upon and murdered. Look
at the murders committed by them upon the kindred of our friend and
their friend also; who were living in peace on the banks of the Ohio.
Did they not kill them without provocation and in cold blood? Will they
be any better? No. Even Logan, who so many times has spoken for them, is
forced to remain silent; he cannot plead their cause.
“There is no course but war, as they will continue to rob and murder so
long as we have a foot of land remaining.
“We respect Colonel Morgan, but are unfriendly to his cause. He must
return to Pittsburgh. John Mason, who has been our friend so long and
who comes to teach us about the white man’s God, may remain.”
Of all the council but one chief dissented, White Eyes, a Delaware; and
he alone of all his tribe desired to remain neutral. When he spoke for
neutrality, believing that the war would bring only disaster and
suffering to the Indians, Chieftain Pipe, a rival chief of his own
nation, rose and said: “I declare that every man should be called an
enemy to his nation, who opposes war with the Long Knives.”
To which White Eyes replied:
“If this council declares for war, you shall not go without me. I have
been for peace that I might save my tribe from destruction; but all
think me wrong. I hope you are right. I am a warrior and a Delaware. If
you insist on fighting the Americans, go! and I will go with you. And I
will not go like the bear hunter who sets his dogs upon the animal to be
beaten about by his paws while he keeps himself at a distance. No! I
will lead my people. I will be in the front. I will fall with the first
of you. I will not live to bewail the destruction of a brave people who
deserve a better fate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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