HISTORY OF VERMONT. 135 



"^ for prisoners, because it would prevent cruel- 

 f ty ; and that not only such conripensation 

 ^ should be with held, but a strict account would 

 ' be demanded for scalps. These pledges of 



* conquest, for such you well know they will 



* ever esteem them, were solemnly and peremp- 



* torily prohibited to be taken from the wound- 



* ed ; and even the d}'ins(, and the persons of 

 ' aged men, women and children, and prisoners, 

 •^ were pronounced sacred even in assaults. 



* In regard to Miss M'Rea, her fall wanted 

 not tlie tragic display you have labored to give 

 it, to make it as sincerely abhorred and lament- 

 ed by me, as it can be by the tenderest of her 

 friends. The fact was no premeditated bar- 

 barity. On the contrary, two chiefs, who had 

 brought her off for the purpose of security, 

 not of violence to her person, disputed which 

 should be her guard ; and in a fit of savage 

 passion in one, from' whose hands she was 

 snatched, the unhappy woman became the 

 victim. Upon the first intelligence of this 

 event, I obliged the Indians to deliver the: 

 murderer into my hands ; and though to have 

 punished him by our laws, or principles of jus- 

 tice, would have been perhaps unprecedented, 

 he certainly should have suffered an ignomini- 

 ous death, had I not been convinced, from, 

 many circumstances and observation, beyond 

 the possibility of a doubt, that a pardon under 

 the terms which I prescribed and they accept- 

 ed, would be more efficacious than an execu- 

 tion, to prevent similar mischiefs. 

 * The above instance excepted, 3'our intelli- 

 gence respecting the cruelties of the Indians, 

 is falsCo'^ 



