t arrival into our own
country. We took them by the hand and bid them welcome to sit down by
our side, and live with us as brothers; but how did they requite our
kindness? They at first asked only for a little land, on which to raise
bread for their families, and pasture for their cattle, which we freely
gave them. They saw the game in the woods, which the Great Spirit had
given us for our subsistence, and they wanted it too. They penetrated
into the woods in quest of game, they discovered spots of land they
also wanted, and because we were loth to part with it, as we saw they
had already more than they had need of, they took it from us by force,
and drove us to a great distance from our homes."[A]

[Footnote A: Heckewelder's historical account of the Indians.]

It is matter of history, that for a period of near seventy years after
it was planted, the colony of William Penn lived in peace and harmony
with the neighboring Indians, among whom were bands of the warlike
Shawanoes. It was an observation of this venerable and worthy man, when
speaking of the Indians, that "if you do not abuse them, but let them
have justice, you will win them, when there is such a knowledge of good
and evil." His kind treatment to them was repaid by friendly offices,
both to himself and his followers. The Indians became indeed the
benefactors of the colonists. When the latter were scattered in 1682,
and without shelter or food, they were kind and attentive, and treated
them as brothers.[A]

[Footnote A: Clarkson's Life of Penn.]

Proud, in his History of Pennsylvania, when explaining the aversion of
the Indians to christianity, attributes it to the character and conduct
of the whites residing near or among them, "many of whom were of the
lowest rank and least informed of mankind, who flowed in from Germany,
Ireland and the jails of Great Britain, or who had fled from the better
inhabited parts of the colony, to escape from justice." The proceedings
of the assembly of Pennsylvania show that, as early as 1722, an Indian
was barbarously killed by some whites, within the limits of the
province. The assembly proposed some measures for the governor's
consideration in regard to the affair; and mentioned the repeated
requests of the Indians, that strong liquors should not be carried nor
sold among them. In a treatise published in London, in 1759, on the
cause of the then existing difficulties between the Indians and the
colonists, we find this pa