vagery prevailed.

Among the Indians of the northwest there was one tribe that attained a
considerable fame. In all their forays into Kentucky and Virginia the
Wyandots fought with the most fearless bravery and the most disciplined
skill. Their conduct at the battle of Estel's Station met with many
words of praise from Mann Butler, the Kentucky historian. It was well
known among the settlements that the Wyandots treated their captives
with consideration, and that they seldom resorted to torture by fire.
Though few in numbers, they acquired the acknowledged supremacy in the
confederation of the northwest, were intrusted by Wayne at the treaty of
Greenville with the custody of the great belt, the symbol of peace and
union, and were given the principal copy of the treaty of peace. Between
the Wyandot and the Ottawa, however, and the Wyandot and the Potawatomi,
there was a striking divergence. If the Wyandot represented the highest
order of intelligence among the savages of the northwest, the Potawatomi
represented one of the lowest. He was dark, cruel, treacherous and
unattractive, and proved a willing tool for murder and assassination in
the hands of the English. There was no place on earth for the chivalrous
Kentuckian and the treacherous Potawatomi to dwell in peace together,
and the imparting of some idea of the true nature of this Indian will
now engage our attention.

When the Dutchman put flint-locks and powder into the hands of the
Iroquois, one of the tribes that he drove around the head of the great
lakes was the Potawatomi. Where did they come from? The Jesuit Relation
says, from the western shores of Lake Huron, and the Jesuit Fathers knew
more about the Algonquin tribes of Canada and the west than all others.
All accounts confirm that they were of the same family as the Chippewas
and Ottawas. From the head of Lakes Huron and Michigan they were forced
to the west and then driven to the south. In 1670 it is known that a
portion of them were on the islands in the mouth of Green bay. They were
then moving southward, probably impelled by the fierce fighting Sioux,
whom Colonel Roosevelt so appropriately named the "horse Indians," of
the west. At the close of the seventeenth century they were on the
Milwaukee river, in the vicinity of Chicago, and on the St. Joseph river
in southern Michigan. They had gone entirely around the northern,
western and southern sides of Lake Michigan, and were now headed in the
directio