Page:Colonization and Christianity.djvu/376

 lating to the improvement of their grounds and providing sustenance for their families, which the English had. If disputes should arise between the two, they should be settled by twelve persons, half of whom should be English, and half Indians. He then paid them for the land, and made them many presents besides from the merchandise which had been open before them. Having done this, he laid the roll of parchment on the ground, observing again that the ground should be common to both people. He then added that he would not do as the Marylanders did, that is, call them children, or brothers only: for often parents were apt to whip their children too severely, and brothers sometimes would differ; neither would he compare the friendship between him and them to a chain, for the rain might sometimes rust it, or a tree might fall and break it; but he should consider them as the same flesh and blood as the Christians, and the same as if one man's body was to be divided into two parts. He then took up the parchment, and presented it to the Sachem who wore the horn in the chaplet, and desired him and the other Sachems to preserve it carefully for three generations, that their children might know what had passed between them, just as if he himself had remained with them to repeat it.

"The Indians in return, made long and stately harangues, of which, however, no more seems to have been remembered, but that 'they pledged themselves to live in love with William Penn and his children as long as the sun and moon shall endure.' Thus ended this famous treaty, of which Voltaire has remarked with so much truth and severity, 'That it was the only one ever concluded which was not ratified by an oath, and the only one that never was broken.'