Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/252

 240 ~n Account of the Cheerake Nation.

The fuperior policy of the French fo highly intoxicated the light heads of the Cheerake, that they were plodding mifchief for twenty years before we forced them to commit hoftilities. The illuftration of this may divert the reader, and fliew our fouthern colonies what they may ftill expect from the mafterly abilities of the French L-ouifianians, whenever they can make it fuit their intereft to exert their talents among the Indian nations, while our watch-men are only employed in treating on paper, in our far-diitant capital feats of government.

��In the year 1736, the French fent into South-Carolina, one Priber, a gentleman of a curious and fpeculative temper. He was to tranfmit them a full account of that country, and proceed to the Cheerake nation, in or der to feduce them from the Britim to the French intereft. He went, and though he was adorned with every qualification that conftitutes the gen tleman, foon after he arrived at the upper towns of this mountainous country, he exchanged his clothes and every thing he brought with him, and by that means, made friends with the head warriors of great Tel- liko, which flood on ,a branch of the Mifllfippi. More effectually to anfwer the defign of his commiffion, he ate, drank, flept, danced, dreffed, and painted himfelf, with the Indians, fo that it was not eafy to diflinguifh him from the natives, he married alfo with them, and being endued with a ftrong underftanding and retentive memory, he foon learned their dialect, and by gradual advances, imprefied them with a very ill opinion of the En- glifh, reprefenting them as a fraudulent, avaritious, and encroaching peo ple : he at the fame time, inflated the artlefs favages, with a prodigious high opinion of their own importance in the American fcale of power, on account of the fitua.tion of their country, their martial difpofition, and the great number of their warriors, which would baffle all the efforts of the am bitious, and ill-defigning Britifh colonifts. Having thus infected them by his fmooth deluding art, he eafily formed them into a nominal repub lican government - crowned their old Archi-magus, emperor, after a pleafmg new favage form, and invented a variety of high-founding titles for all the members of his imperial majefty's red court, and the great offi cers of ftate ; which the emperor conferred upon them, in a manner ac cording to their merit. He himfelf received the honourable title of his im perial majefty's principal fecretary of ftate, and as fuch he fubfcribed him felf, in all the letters he wrote to our government, and lived in open de fiance

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