Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/253

 An Account of the Cheerake Nation. 241

fiance of them. This Teemed to be of fo dangerous a tendency, as to induce South-Carolina to fend up a commiffioner, Col. F x, to de mand him as an^ enemy to the public repofe who took him into cuftody, in the great fquare of their flate-houfe : when he had almoft concluded his oration on the occafion, one of the head warriors rofe up, and bade him forbear, as the man he entended t:o enflave, was made a great beloved man, and become one of their own people. Though it was reckoned, our agent's ftrength was far greater in his arms than his head, he readily de- fifted for as it is too hard to ftruggle with the pope in Rome, a ftranger could not mifs to find it equally difficult to enter abruptly into a new em peror's court, and there feize his prime minifter, by a foreign authority ; efpecially when he could not fnpport any charge of guilt againft him. The warrior told him, that the red people well knew the honefty of the fecreta- ry's heart would never allow him to tell a lie -, and the fecretary urged that he was a foreigner, without owing any allegiance to Great Britain, that he only travelled through fome places of their country, in a peaceable man ner, paying for every thing he had of them, that in compliance with the requeft of the kindly French, as well as from his own tender feelings for the poverty and'inifecure ftate of the Cheerake, he came a great way, and lived among them as a brother, only to preferve their liberties, by opening a water communication between them and New Orleans ; that the diftance of the two places from each other, proved his motive to be the love of doing good, efpecially as he was to go there, and bring up a fufficient number of Frenchmen of proper (kill to inftruct them in the art of making gun powder, the materials of which, he affirmed their lands abounded with. He concluded his artful fpeech, by urging that the tyrannical defign of the Englifh commiflioner toward him, appeared plainly to be levelled againft them, becaufe, as he was not accufed of having done any ill to the Englifh, before he came to the Cheerake, his crime muft confift in loving the Cheerake. And as that was reckoned fo heinous a tranfgrefiion in the eye of the Englifh, as to fend one of their angry beloved men to enflave him, it confirmed all thofe honeft fpeeches he had often fpoken to the prefent great war-chieftains, old beloved men, and warriors of each clafs.

An old war-leader repeated to the commifTioner, the eflential part of the fpeech, and added more of his own fimilar thereto. He bade him to in-

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