vania is prosperous. Pennsylvania
doesn't go round chopping down bee-trees and then killing the bees to get
the honey. What good is this land over here if you can't get fur from it?
Settlers chop down the timber, burn it, raise measly patches of corn, live
half-starved, die. That's all."

His crazy tirade nettled me. It was obvious I could not keep in his good
books, even with Patricia as the incentive, without losing my
self-respect. I told him:

"This country can never develop without settled homes. We're building
rudely now, but a hundred years from now----"

"Yah!" And his disgust burst through the thick lips in a deep howl. "Who
of us will be alive a hundred years from now? Were we put on earth to
slave and make fortunes for fools not yet born? Did any fools work and
save up so we could take life soft and easy? You make me sick!"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Dale, to hear you say that. However, the war is here----"

"The war may be here, in Virginia, among the backwoodsmen. It is also in
Dunmore's heart, but it ain't in the hearts of the Indians," he
passionately contradicted. "The Indians only ask to be let alone, to be
allowed to trade with us. Some canting hypocrites are whining for us to
civilize the Indians. Why should they be civilized? Do they want to be?
Ever hear of Indians making a profit out of our civilization? Did the
Conestoga Indians make a profit when they tried to live like the whites
near Lancaster, and the Paxton boys killed fourteen of them, men, women
and children, then broke into the Lancaster jail where the others had been
placed for their safety, and butchered the rest of them?

"Did the ancient Virginia Indians prosper by civilization? I reckon if the
old Powhatans could return they'd have some mighty warm things to say on
that score. Why shouldn't the Indians insist we live as they do? They were
here first. The only way to help the Indian is to trade with him. And when
you help him that way you're helping yourself. That's the only point you
can ever make a red man see.

"I know the Indians. I can go into their towns now, be they Cherokee,
Mingo, Shawnee or Delaware, and they'll welcome me as a brother. They know
I don't want their land. They know I'm their true friend. They want me to
make a profit when I trade with them, so I'll come again with more rum and
blankets and guns, and gay cloth for their women."

"You have the trader's point of view, and very naturally so," I said.

"Thank God I