he northern country. I know of no
reason for this save that he was honest and obstreperously minded his
own affairs, and could fling a tomahawk better than the best Indian. I
will not declare upon how hard it is for a man to be honest and to mind
his own affairs, but I fully know that it is hard to throw a tomahawk as
my father threw it, straighter than a bullet from a duelling pistol. He
had always dealt fairly with the Indians, and I cannot tell why they
paled him so bitterly, unless it was that when an Indian went foolishly
drunk my father would deplore it with his foot, if it so happened that
the drunkenness was done in our cabin. It is true to say that when the
war came, a singular large number of kicked Indians journeyed from the
Canadas to re-visit with torch and knife the scenes of the kicking.

If people had thoroughly known my father he would have had no enemies.
He was the best of men. He had a code of behaviour for himself, and for
the whole world as well. If people wished his good opinion they only had
to do exactly as he did, and to have his views. I remember that once my
sister Martha made me a waistcoat of rabbits' skins, and generally it
was considered a great ornament. But one day my father espied me in it,
and commanded me to remove it for ever. Its appearance was indecent, he
said, and such a garment tainted the soul of him who wore it. In the
ensuing fortnight a poor pedlar arrived from the Delaware, who had
suffered great misfortunes in the snows. My father fed him and warmed
him, and when he gratefully departed, gave him the rabbits' skin
waistcoat, and the poor man went off clothed indecently in a garment
that would taint his soul. Afterwards, in a daring mood, I asked my
father why he had so cursed this pedlar, and he recommended that I
should study my Bible more closely, and there read that my own devious
ways should be mended before I sought to judge the enlightened acts of
my elders. He set me to ploughing the upper twelve acres, and I was
hardly allowed to loose my grip of the plough handles until every furrow
was drawn.

The Indians called my father "Ol' Bennet," and he was known broadcast as
a man whose doom was sealed when the redskins caught him. As I have
said, the feeling is inexplicable to me. But Indians who had been
ill-used and maltreated by downright ruffians, against whom revenge
could with a kind of propriety be directed--many of these Indians
avowedly gave up a genuine wrong i