Note 4 — INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER

“There are no beggars among them, nor fatherless children unprovided for.” Roger William’s Key, ch. 5.

“Obs. They are as full of business, and as impatient of hinderance, (in their kind,) as any merchant in Europe. Many of them naturally princes, or else industrious persons, are rich; and the poor amongst them will say they want nothing.” Williams, ch. 7. “Obs. The women of the family will commonly raise two or three heaps (of corn) of twelve, fifteen, or twenty bushels a heap, which they dry in round broad heaps; and if she has help of her children or friends, much more.” Ch. 16. “I could never discern that excess of scandalous sins amongst them which Europe aboundeth with. Drunkenness and gluttony generally they know not what sins they be. And although they have not so much to restrain them (both in respect of knowledge of God and laws of men) as the English have, yet a man shall never hear of such crimes among them, of robberies, murders, adulteries.” Ch. 22. Quotations to the same effect might be adduced from nearly all the early writers. Yet we are told that in all that regards their moral condition, the Indians have been gainers by their intercourse with the whites!

It is probably within the recollection of many persons now living, when the very considerable quantities of corn required for the fur trade in the country about Lake Superior, were purchased from the Indians, by whom it was raised at a place called Ketekawwe Seebee, or Garden river, a small stream falling into the strait between Lakes Superior and Huron, about six miles below the Saut St. Marie. “The Indians at the first settlement of the English, performed many acts of kindness towards them: they instructed them in the manner of planting and dressing the Indian corn,” and “by selling them corn when pinched with famine, they relieved their distresses, and prevented them from perishing in a strange land, and uncultivated wilderness.” Trumbull’s History of Connecticut, Vol. I. Ch. 3. In another place, speaking of a famine among the colonists, he says, “In this distressful situation a committee was sent to an Indian settlement called Pocomtock, where they purchased such quantities, that the Indians came down to Windsor and Hartford with fifty canoes at one time laden with Indian corn.” Vol. I. Ch. 6. The Indians on Block Island, according to the same authority, “had about two hundred acres of corn.” This the English, after two days spent on the Island “burning wigwams,” and “staving canoes,” destroyed, and then sailed for the Pequot country. Ib. Ch. 5. Charlevoix, a less exceptionable authority than most of the early French writers, says, that in an incursion into the country of the Senecas, the French destroyed four hundred thousand minots (1,200,000 bushels) of corn. “They also killed a prodigious number of swine, which caused much sickness.” Hist. de la Nouvelle France, liv. XI. It is unnecessary to cite passages, hundreds of which might be adduced to prove, what few, except the reviewer above quoted ever considered doubtful.