important to their present and future welfare. These devout Indians seemed all impressed with the same feelings, and moved by the same spirit. They were received with affectionate cordiality, and accommodated in a manner quite conformable to their habits, in the passage, porch, and offices; and so deeply impressed were they with a sense of the awful duty that brought them there, and the rights of friendship and hospitality, and at this period become so much acquainted with our customs, that though two hundred communicants, followed by many of their children, were used to assemble on these occasions, the smallest instance of riot or impropriety was not known amongst them. They brought little presents of game, or of their curious handicrafts, and were liberally and kindly entertained by their good brother Philip, as they familiarly called him. In the evening they all went apart to secret prayer; and in the morning, by dawn of day, they assembled before the portico; and their entertainers, who rose early to enjoy, unobserved, a view of their social devotion, beheld them with their mantles drawn over their heads, prostrate on the earth, offering praises and fervent supplications to their Maker. After some time spent in this manner, they arose, and seated in a circle on the ground, with their heads. veiled as formerly, they sang an hymn, which it was delightful to hear, from the strength, richness, and sweet accord of their uncommonly fine voices; which

every one that ever heard this sacred chorus, however indifferent to the purport of it, praised as incomparable. The voices of the female Indians are particularly sweet and powerful. I have often heard my friend dwell with singular pleasure on the recollection of those scenes, and of the conversations she and the colonel used to hold with the Indians, whom she described as possessed of very superior powers of understanding; and in their religious views and conversations, uniting the ardor of proselytes with the firm decision and inflexible steadiness of their national character. It was on the return of those new Christians to the Flats, after they had thus solemnly sealed their profession, that these wise regulations for preserving peace and good will between the settlers (now become confident and careless from their numbers) and the Indians, jealous with reason of their ancient rites, were concluded.

Chapter XXVIII

CHRISTIAN INDIANS THEIR INFLUENCE
WITH THE MOHAWKS

HE influence these converts had obtained over

TH

the minds of those most venerated for wisdom among their countrymen, was the medium through which this patriot family, in some degree, controlled the opinions of that community at large, and kept them faithful to the British interests. Every two or three years there was a congress held, by deputies from New York, who generally spoke to the Indians by an interpreter; went through the form of delivering presents from their brother the great king, redressing petty grievances, smoking the calumet of peace, and delivering belts, the pledges of amity. But these were mere public forms: the real terms of this often renewed amity having been previously digested by those who far better understood the relations subsisting between the contracting parties, and the causes most likely to interrupt their union. Colonel Schuyler, though always ready to serve his country in exigencies, did not like to take upon himself any permanent responsibility, as a superintendent of Indian affairs, as it might have diminished that private influence which

arose from the general veneration for his character, and from a conviction that the concern he took was voluntary and impartial; neither did he choose to sacrifice that domestic peace and leisure, which he so well knew how to turn to the best account, being convinced that by his example and influence, as a private gentleman, he had it in his power to do much good of a peculiar kind, which was incompatible with the weight and bustle of public affairs, or with that hospitality which, as they managed it, was productive of so many beneficial effects. I have already shown how, by prudent address and kind conciliation, this patriotic pair soothed and attached the Indians to the British interest. As the country grew more populous, and property more abundant and more secure, the face of society in this inland region began to change. They whose quiet and orderly demeanor, devotion, and integrity did not much require the enforcement of laws, began now to think themselves above them. To a deputed authority, the source of which lay beyond the Atlantic, they paid little deference; and from their neighbors of New Hampshire and Connecticut, who bordered on their frontiers, and served with them in the colonial wars, they had little to learn of loyalty or submission. These people they held in great contempt, both as soldiers and statesmen; and yet, from their frequent intercourse with those who talked of law and politics in their peculiar uncouth dialect incessantly, they

insensibly adopted many of their notions. There is a certain point of stable happiness at which our imperfect nature merely seems to arrive; for the very materials of which it is formed contain the seeds of its destruction. This was the case here: that peaceful and desirable equality of conditions, from which so many comforts resulted, in process of time occasioned an aversion to superiors, to whom they were not accustomed, and an exaggerated jealousy of the power which was exercised for their own safety and comfort. Their manners unsophisticated, and their morals in a great measure uncorrupted, led them to regard with unjustifiable scorn and aversion those strangers who brought with them the manners of more polished, though less pure, communities. Proud of their haughty bluntness, which daily increased with their wealth and security, they began to consider respectful and polite behavior as a degree of servility and duplicity; while they revolted at the power exercised over themselves, and very reluctantly made the exertions necessary for their own protection, they showed every inclination to usurp the territories of their Indian allies'; and use to the very utmost the power they had acquired over them, by supplying their wants.

At the liberal table of Aunt Schuyler, where there was always intelligence, just notions, and good breeding to be met with, both among the owners and their guests, many had their prejudices softened