Page:A Century of Dishonor.pdf/325

Rh persons who sympathized with or protected Indians. They openly mocked and derided the governor and his proclamations, and set off at once for Philadelphia, announcing their intention of killing all the Moravian Indians who had been placed under the protection of the military there.

Their march through the country was like that of a band of maniacs. In a private letter written by David Rittenhouse at this time, he says, “About fifty of these scoundrels marched by my workshop. I have seen hundreds of Indians travelling the country, and can with truth affirm that the behavior of these fellows was ten times more savage and brutal than theirs. Frightening women by running the muzzles of guns through windows, hallooing and swearing; attacking men without the least provocation, dragging them by the hair to the ground, and pretending to scalp them; shooting dogs and fowls: these are some of their exploits.”

It is almost past belief that at this time many people justified these acts. An Episcopalian clergyman in Lancaster wrote vindicating them, “bringing Scripture to prove that it was right to destroy the heathen;” and the “Presbyterians think they have a better justification—nothing less than the Word of God,” says one of the writers on the massacre.

“With the Scriptures in their hands and mouths, they can set at naught that express command, ‘Thou shalt do no murder,’ and justify their wickedness by the command given to Joshua to destroy the heathen. Horrid perversion of Scripture and religion, to father the worst of crimes on the God of Love and Peace!” It is a trite saying that history repeats itself; but it is impossible to read now these accounts of the massacres of defenceless and peaceable Indians in the middle of the eighteenth century, without the reflection that the record of the nineteenth is blackened by the same stains. What Pennsylvania pioneers did in 1763 to helpless and peaceable Indians of Conestoga, Colorado pioneers did in 1864 to help-