Page:The History of the American Indians.djvu/449

 the North American Indians. 437

who ufe their fquint eyes and forked tongues like the chieftains of the fnak.es, (meaning rattle-fnakes) which deftroy harmlefs creatures for the fake of food. They fay, that the quotation of dark quibbles out of their old books, mould be deemed as white paint over a black man's face \ or as black over one that is naturally white. They wonder that, as an honeil caufe is always plain, judgment is not given freely in its favour, and with out the leaft delay, and infift, that every bad caufe mould meet with a fuit- able and fevere award, in order to check vice, and promote virtue in focial life.

One of the red Magi af^ed me, whether in our fcolding houfes, we did not always proportion the charges of the fuit in debate, to the value of the debt, or damages. Suggefting that it was wrong to make a perplexed fcience of granting equity with any charges attending it, to honeft poor people ; that we mould pity them on account of the diftreiles they labour under, and not in effect enflave or fine them becaufe they are poor.

I told him and the reft of his brethren by way of excufe, that the different nature, and multiplicity of contracts in our great trading em pire, with the immenfe difference that often happened between the eloquence and abilities of the contending parties, required a feries of decifions of right and wrong to be recorded in books, as an invariable precedent to direct future public determinations, in difputes of the like nature j that moft of our people were more unequal to each other in fine language than the bred lawyers ; and that none were fo fit to fearch, or could pofiibly underftand thofe regifters as well as they, becaufe they fpent the chief part of their time on fuch fubjefts. He granted that they might be ufe- ful members of the community, but doubted their honefty was too much expofed to the alluring temptations of our rich people's yellow (lone ; and that though our fore-fathers were no doubt as wife and virtuous as we, yet they were but men, and fometimes had paflions to gratify, efpeci- ally in favour of a worthy and unfortunate friend, or relation, who was beloved. He faid, the length of ftealing time muft have naturally occafioned fuch an event ; and that our wife men ought to be fo far from quoting a wrong copy, as a fixed precedent, that they mould erafe it out of their old court books, and profit by the foibles of the old, the wife and the good.

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