17G1, Sept.] TERMS OF THE TREATY. 183 



Having delivered this exordium, Wasson frankly 

 confessed that the tribes which he represented were 

 all justly chargeable with the war, and now deeply 

 regretted their delinquency. It is common with 

 Indians, when accused of acts of violence, to lay 

 the blame upon the unbridled recklessness of their 

 young warriors ; and this excuse is often perfectly 

 sound and valid ; but since, in the case of a pre- 

 meditated and long-continued war, it was glaringly 

 inadmissible, they now reversed the usual course, 

 and made scapegoats of the old chiefs and warriors, 

 who, as they declared, had led the people astray 

 by sinister counsel and bad example.^ 



Bradstreet would grant peace only on condition 

 that they should become subjects of the King of 

 England, and acknowledge that he held over their 

 country a sovereignty as ample and complete as 

 over any other part of his dominions. Nothing 

 could be more impolitic and absurd than this 

 demand. The smallest attempt at an invasion 

 of their liberties has ahvays been regarded by the 

 Indians with extreme jealousy, and a prominent 

 cause of the war had been an undue assumption 

 of authority on the part of the English. This 

 article of the treaty, could its purport have been 

 fully understood, might have kindled afresh the 

 quarrel which it sought to extinguish ; but happily 

 not a savage present was able to comprehend it. 

 Subjection and sovereignty are ideas which never 

 enter into the mind of an Indian, and therefore 



1 MS. Minutes of Conference between Colonel Bradstreet and the Indians 

 of Detroit, Sept. 7, i764. See, also, Mante, 517. 



