Art. VII. — Notices of Peter Penet, and of his Operations 

 among the Oneida Indians ; including a Plan pre- 

 pared by him for tlie Government of that Tribe. By 

 Franklin B. Hough. 



[Read before the Albany Institute January 23, 18GG.] 



The history of our Indian tribes is diversified by many 

 plans and projects, in which schemes, of ambition and 

 profit, were disguised under the plausible appearance 

 of measures for the public good. The ignorance and 

 credulity of the aboriginal race, vain of personal ornament, 

 easily won by presents, and grateful for favors, presented 

 an inviting opportunity for crafty and selfish men. The 

 early and earnest competition of the French and English 

 colonists, for the trade and friendship of the natives of 

 North America, should have made them quite familiar 

 with these artifices, yet we find long afterwards, and 

 among a tribe that had for nearly two centuries been 

 familiar with Europeans, a successful attempt at imposi- 

 tion by a plausible stranger, for purposes of gain or 

 ambition. This project has been but slightly noticed by 

 historians and never fully presented. We refer to the 

 schemes of Peter Penet, a Frenchman, among theOneidas, 

 soon after the close of the revolution, and purpose to 

 present in a connected form, the scattered items of his 

 memoirs furnished by the public records, and such 

 details of his operations at Oneida, as we have been able 

 to collect. His Plan of the Government for the Oneidas, is 

 now here first presented in book form, and will repay 

 a careful perusal, by those interested in our local history 

 and aboriginal annals. 



This personage has left but few materials for his biogra- 



