Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/344

324 there were scorched into the hearts of agonized and maddened beings, themselves only in a crude stage of civilization, though under Christian nurture, a hate and rage such as only fiends in their diabolic ravings might be supposed to fire in a human breast. We can well understand, as we read the records and heed the traditions of that wasted border, that for years afterwards white men (who alone survived in their families, orphaned or solitary by those dire woes) lived only for revenge, to prowl in the woods like wildcats, and deal the death-blow to every one of the red race — man, squaw, or pappoose — that they could bring within range of the rifle or under the keen edge of the knife. A thousand families were broken up, with here and there survivors, trying, through a treacherous wilderness, to find their way back to the settlements. From one to two thousand of the whites were slain. Sir William Johnson, the Indian Commissioner for Indian affairs in New York, by the firm control which he had acquired over the tribes of the then Six Nations, succeeded by wise management in holding back all but a strong party of the Senecas from joining in the wide-spread conspiracy. Had those well-trained and ferocious savages joined in the work of desolation, doubtless English dominion here would have encountered a staggering peril. As it was, the exposed colonists were racked with dread uncertainty as to the constancy of these restrained fiends, who might at any moment prove treacherous, and who were held only by flatteries, gifts, and promises. When we note, as often we may, the assertion that Britain has always been more fair and humane than our Government in dealing with the savages, we cannot but pause upon certain facts on record in that fearful crisis which look quite in a contrary way. The British commander-in-chief, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, anticipated the