Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 4).djvu/152

 *terest and power always went hand in hand to serve the mighty against the {125} weak, and writers are never wanting to aid the cause of injustice, barbarity and oppression, with the sophistry of a distorted and unnatural philosophy; while the few who would be willing to espouse the rights of the feeble, have not enough of the spirit of chivalry, to expose themselves to an irreparable loss of time, and the general obloquy attending an unpopular theme: even in this so much boasted land of liberty and equality, where nothing is to be dreaded from the arbitrary acts of a king and council during a suspension of a habeas corpus law, or the mandate of an arbitrary hero in the full tide of victory.

Is not popular opinion frequently as tyrannical as star chambers, or lettres de cachets?

The Indians north of the Ohio, under the name of the Five Nations, and their dependants, had been gradually, but rapidly, forced back more and more remote from the country of their ancestors, by the irresistible and overswelling tide of population of Europeans and their descendants. They at last abandoned all the continent of America east of the great chain of the Allegheny mountains, to the enlightened intruders, and besides that natural barrier, they added an immense wilderness of nearly five hundred miles in breadth, west of those mountains, to the space which divided them; settling themselves in that country which has since become the state of Ohio, having Lake Erie for its northern boundary, and the river Ohio for its southern. The woods and savannahs to the southward of that river abounded in game, such as buffaloes, deer, elk, bears, and innumerable smaller animals, valuable for their flesh, skins, and furs. They were tempted to make hunting excursions into this country, during which they frequently met with parties of hunters of other Indian nations, called Chocktaws, Chicka