Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/254

 242 An Account of the Cheerake Nation.,

form his fuperiors, that the Cheerake were as defirous as the Englifh to> continue a friendly union with each other, as " freemen and equals." Thats they hoped to receive no farther uneafmefs from them, for confulting their own interefts, as their reafon dictated, And they earneftly requefted them to fend no more of thofe bad papers to their country, on any account \ nor to reckon them fo bafe, as to allow any of their honeft friends to be taken out of their arms, and carried into flavery. The Englifh beloved man had the honour of receiving his leave of abfence, and a fufficient pafs- port of fafe conduit, from the imperial red court, by a verbal order of the fecretary of ftate, who was fo polite as to wifh him well home, and ordered a convoy of his own life-guards, who conducted him a confider- able way, and he got home in fafety.

From the above, it is evident, that the monopolizing fpirit of the French had planned their dangerous lines of circumvallation, refpeding our envied colonies, as early as the before-mentioned period. Their choice of the man, befpeaks alfo their judgment. Though the philofophic fe cretary was an utter ftranger to the wild and mountainous Cheerake coun try, as well as to their language, yet his fagacity readily directed him to chufe a proper place, and an old favourite religious man, for the new red empire ; which he formed by flow, but Cure degrees, to the great danger of our fouthern colonies. But the empire received a very great fhock, in an accident that befel the fecretary, when it was on the point of rifmg into a far greater ftate of pui(Tance r by the acquifmon of the Mulkohge, Choktah, and the weftern Milfifippi Indians. In the fifth year of that red imperial sera, he fet off for Mobille, accompanied by a few Cheerake. He proceeded by land, as far as a navigable part of the weftern great river of the Mulkohge, there he went into a canoe pre pared for .the joyful occafion, and proceeded within a day's journey of Alebahma garrifon conjecturing the adjacent towns were under the influence of the French, he landed at Tallapoofe town, and lodged there all night. The traders of the neighbouring towns foon went there, convinced the inhabitants of the dangerous tendency of his un wearied labours among the Cheerake, and of his prefent journey, and then took him into cuftody, with a large bundle of manufcripts, and fent him down to Frederica in Georgia; the governor committed him to a place of confinement, though not with common felons, as he was a foreigner, and was faid to have held a place of confiderable rank in

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