33 



COLLINSON TO BARTRAM. 



"March 7, 1764. 



* * * * * * 



" Is it reasonable to think the Indians will love us, after such 

 a cruel, unprovoked slaughter at Lancaster, &c. ? I hope the 

 authors will be made examples of justice." 



"MiU Hill, May 28, 1766. 

 ****** 



" In all thy expeditions, didst thee fall in with any Indians ? 

 what nation ? and how did they behave ? Is there any dispo- 

 sition in them to continue in peace and friendship ? There is 

 much talk of civilizing them. A good, sensible man, named 

 Hammerer, a foreigner, who was long in London, could not be 

 easy without going to reside among the Cherokees, in order 

 to try to bring them to a sense of moral duties." 



What Bartram saw and had to encounter in his botanical 

 excursions through western New York at that early day, will 

 be better understood by those who read the " Narrative of a 

 Journey made in the year 1737, by Conrad Weiser, from Tul- 

 pehocken to Onondago," lately published by the Pennsylvania 

 Historical Society. After overcoming all but unendurable 

 hardships on his journey, in the months of February and March, 

 upon his arrival among the natives of that then savage frontier, 

 he gives us this account of a conversation with them. " I asked 

 them how it happened that they were so short of provisions 

 now, while twelve years ago they had a greater supply than all 

 the other Indians ; and now their children looked like dead 

 persons, and suffered much from hunger. They answered, that 

 now game was scarce, and that hunting had strangely failed 

 since last winter ; some of them had procured nothing at all. 

 That the Lord and Creator of the world was resolved to de- 

 stroy the Indians. One of their seers, whom they named, had 

 seen a vision of God, who had said to him the following words : 

 1 You inquire after the cause why game has become scarce. I 

 will tell you. You kill it for the sake of the skins which you 



