THE GEORGE CATLlN INDIAN GALLERY. 189 



ran, then commanding at Fort Scliuyler, an account of their descent npon Butternuts 

 and Unadilla, delivered to him some prisoners and declared that they did not take 

 scalps. But when, in November, 1781, Major Ross's command had heen defeated by 

 Colonel Willett) near Johnstown, and was fleeing with desperate haste into the wil- 

 derness, an Oneida slew the infamous Walter Butler, at a ford of the West Canada 

 Creek, and scalped him. You will remember, too, that at the council of 1790, at Tioga 

 Point, when Thomas Morris was adopted by the Senecas, under Red Jacket's original 

 name of Otetiani, or Always Ready, a foolish Oneida, as he struck the post during 

 the ceremonies of the initiation, boasted of the number of scalps his nation had taken 

 in the war of the Revolution, and so provoked the Senecas to boast of the number of 

 scalps of the Oneidas they had taken, and to call them cowards. (Stone's Life of 

 Red Jacket, pages 41-44.) 



But it behooves us to remember that the Iroquois were hired to war against us 

 and hounded on to the perpetration of those atrocities by white men ; and that, apart 

 from war, to which they were too often impelled, as were the warlike nations of an 

 tiquity, by mere ambition and the lust of fame, they were generous and humane. 

 Their councils were models of decorous and dignified debate. Their policy was far 

 seeing and tended to the assertion of wide-stretching peace. They planted colonies 

 and, while their blows were terrible and they exacted tribute from the conquered, 

 war ceased with conquest, and the light tribute guaranteed protection. 



Of their eloquence I have said something, but I must add that Logan, the Mingo, 

 chief, whose celebrated speech was declared by Jefferson to be unexcelled by anything 

 in the orations of Demosthenes or Cicero, or of any European orator, was a Cayuga, 

 though he lived apart from his nation. But transcendent eloquence was the common 

 property of the Five Nations. What a masterly, nervous, and cutting speech was that 

 of the Onondaga chief, whom La Hontan calls the Grangula, to M. de la Barre, at 

 the Bay of Famine, in August, 1684! How proud and defiant was his declaration, as 

 the mouthpiece of the Five Nations, and especially of the Senecas, to the French gov- 

 ernor who came complaining of the Senecas and threatening war! " We have con- 

 ducted the English to our lakes in order to trade with the Outawas and the Hurons, 

 just as the Algouquins conducted the French to our five cantons, in order to carry on 

 a commerce which the English claimed as their right. We are born freemen, and have 

 no dependence either upon the Onontio or the Corlaer. We have power to go where 

 we please, to conduct whom we will to the places we resort to, and to buy and sell 

 where we think fit. If your allies are your slaves or children you may treat them as 

 such, and rob them of the liberty of entertaining any nation but your own.""* What 

 pathos there is in the memorial of Cornplanter, Halftown, and Bigtree, of December 2, 

 1790, addressed to Washington, and complaining of the purchases of Phelps aud Liv- 

 ingston as fraudulent: " Father, you have said that we are in your hand, and that 

 by closing it you can crush us. Are you determined to crush us? If you are, tell usso 

 that those of our nation who have become your children, and have determined to die 

 so, may know what to do. In this case one chief has said he would ask you to put 

 him out of pain. Another, who will not think of dying by the hand of his father or of 

 his brother, has said he will retire to the Chautauqua, eat of the fatal root, and sleep 

 with his fathers in peace. Before you determine on a measure so unjust, look up to 

 God, who made us as well as yon ! " (Clinton MSS., 6,077.) How grand, how touch- 

 ing! Aud yet, O Senecas! you have permitted the names of these two chiefs, so 

 worthy of remembrance, to perish. 



' The Grangula who delivered this speech was, most probably, the Hotrehonati, or Hatconati, of de 

 la Barre (IX Col. Doc, 243, 236), whose speech as recorded in de la Barre's return of his proceedings 

 to his sovereign (IX Col. Doc, 237) is very different from the one recorded by La Hontan, and was 

 made np, I think, to save the mortification of the French commandant and gratify his King. Mr. 

 Bryant informs me tliat Grangula was a title applied to a great chief and. consequently, Dr. C. Calla- 

 gan (IX Col. Doc, 243) was mistaken in his assertion that it was merely the Latinization by La Hon- 

 tan of Qrande Queule, the name given by the French to Ontreonati. 



