296 RUIN OF THE INDIAN CAUSE. [1765. 



all the nations now assembled ; and whenever any 

 of those nations go to visit him, they may smoke 

 oat of it with him in peace. Fathers, w^e are 

 obliged to yon for lighting up our old council-fire 

 for us, and desiring us to return to it ; but we are 

 now settled on the Miami E-iver, not far from 

 hence : whenever you want us, you will find us 

 there." ^ 



" Our people," he added, *' love liquor, and if 

 we dwelt near you in our old viHage of Detroit, 

 our warriors would be always drunk, and quarrels 

 would arise between us and you." Drunkenness 

 was, in truth, the bane of the whole unhappy race ; 

 but Pontiac, too thoroughly an Indian in his virtues 

 and his vices to be free from its destructive taint, 



1 Journal of George Croghan, on his journei/ to the Illinois, 1765. Tliis 

 journal has been twice published — in the appendix to Butler's History of 

 Kentucky, and in the Pioneer History of Dr. Hildreth. A manuscript copy 

 also may be found in the office of the secretary of state at Albany. Dr. 

 Hildreth omits the speech of Croghan to the Indians, which is given above 

 as affording a better example of the forms of speech appropriate to an 

 Indian peace harangue, than the genuine productions of the Indians them- 

 selves, who are less apt to indulge in such a redundancy of metaphor. 



A language extremely deficient in words of general and abstract signi- 

 fication renders the use of figures indispensable ; and it is from this cause, 

 above all others, that the flowers of Indian rhetoric derive their origin. 

 In the work of Heckevvelder will be found a list of numerous figurative 

 expressions appropriate to the various occasions of public and private 

 intercourse, — forms which are seldom departed from, and which are often 

 found identical among tribes speaking languages radically distinct. Thus, 

 among both Iroquois and Algonquins, the " whistling of evil birds " is 

 the invariable expression to denote evil tidings or bad advice. 



.The Indians are much pleased when white men whom they respect 

 adopt their peculiar symbolical language, — a circumstance of which the 

 Jesuit missionaries did not fail to avail themselves. " These peop)le," 

 says Father Le Jeune, "being great orators, and often using allegories 

 and metaphors, our fathers, in order to attract them to God, adapt them- 

 selves to their custom of speaking, which delights them very much, see- 

 ing we succeed as well as they." 



