LOUISIANA. 245 



" him in the frame * ? or why did he not cut off 

 '^ his head, and fend it back to Peru ? This 

 " example of feverity and juftice would in part 

 " have fatisfied the people whom this general 

 " had ill-treated, by hanging on a gibbet, like 

 '^ a thief, the heir of a great empire, who de- 

 " pended only from the Lord of life^ or the Su- 

 " preme Being. Thus we red men, whom the 

 " Europeans call favages and barbarians would 

 " ad- towards the wicked and the murderers, 

 '^ who ought to be treated like the fiercefl: beafts 

 '' of the foreft." 



I again replied to this Indian chief in the fol- 

 lowing terms, " Thou mufl know that the 

 " grand chiefs of the white men that live in the 

 " old country, are defpotic and abfolute, and 

 '' that when they drive from their prefence their 

 " generals or warriors, who have abufed their fub* 

 *' je6ts without caufe, this affront is much more 

 " fenfibly felt by thofe proud chiefs, who are 

 " hated by the Great Spirit^ or by God, on ac- 

 '' count of their mifdeeds, than the punilhment 

 R 3 "of 



■^ A punifhment which the Indians adjudge to thofe that 

 have committed cruelties, and are taken at war : they are put 

 info a kind of frame, compofed of two pods, and a pole 

 laid acrofs them, and burnt alive. 



