ased; and as far back as the Revolution,
if not as the colonizing of Massachusetts, their breasts were filled
with a hatred of the whites, deadly and unslumbering. Through all our
subsequent transactions with them, this feeling has been increasing in
magnitude and intensity: and recent events have carried it to a pitch
which will render it enduring forever, perhaps not in its activity, but
certainly in its bitterness. Whether more amicable relations with the
whites, during the first settlements made upon this continent by the
Europeans, would have changed materially the ultimate destiny of the
aboriginal tribes, is a question about which diversities of opinion
may well be entertained; but it is not to be considered here.

The fierce, and bloody, and continuous opposition which the Indians
have made from the first to the encroachments of the Anglo-Americans,
is matter of history; and close scrutiny will show, that the great
instigators of that opposition have always, or nearly so, been _renegade
white men_. Scattered through the tribes east of the Alleghanies,
before and during the American Revolution, there were many such
miscreants. Among the Western tribes, during the early settlement of
Kentucky and Ohio, and at the period of the last war with Great Britain,
there were a number, some of them men of talent and great activity.
One of the boldest and most notorious of these latter, was one whom we
have had frequent occasion to mention, SIMON GIRTY--for many years the
scourge of the infant settlements in the West, the terror of women, and
the bugaboo of children. This man was an adopted member of the great
Wyandot nation, among whom he ranked high as an expert hunter, a brave
warrior, and a powerful orator. His influence extended through all the
tribes of the West, and was generally exerted to incite the Indians to
expeditions against the "Stations" of Kentucky, and to acts of cruelty
to their white prisoners. The bloodiest counsel was usually his; his
was the voice which was raised loudest against his countrymen, who were
preparing the way for the introduction of civilization and Christianity
into this glorious region; and in all great attacks upon the frontier
settlements he was one of the prime movers, and among the prominent
leaders.

Of the causes of that venomous hatred, which rankled in the bosom of
Simon Girty against his countrymen, we have two or three versions:
such as, that he early imbibed a feeling of cont