Neither do they feem to be deficient in natural affeftion. I have feen both fathers and mothers in the deepeft affliction, when their children have been dangeroufly ill;
though I believe the afFeftion is ftronger in the defcending than the afcending fcale, and though cuftom forbids a father to grieve immoderately for a fon flain in battle, ** That they are timorous and cowardly/' is a charadler with which there is little reafon to charge them, when we recoiled: the manner in which the Iroquois met Monf.
, who marched into their country;
in which the old men, who fcorned to fly, or to furvive the capture of their town, braved death, like the old Romans in the time of the Gauls, and in which they foon after revenged themfelves by facking and deftroying Montreal. But above all, the unlhaken fortitude with which they bear the moil: excruciating tortures and death when taken prifoners, ought to exempt them from that charafter. Much lefs are to be charafterifed as a people of no viva- city, and who are excited to a^lion or motion only by the calls of hunger and thirft. Their dances in which they fo much delight, and which to an European would be the moft fevere exercife, fully contradidt this, not to mention their fa- tiguing marches, and the toil they volun- tarily and cheerfully undergo in their mili- tary expeditions. It is true, that when at home, they do not employ themfelves in labour or the culture of the foil : but this again is the ejffeft of cuftoms and man- ners, which have affigned that to the pro- vince of the women. But it is faid, they are averfe to fociety and a focial life. Can any thing be more inappUcable than this to a people who always live in towns or clans? Qr can they be faid to have no 'republic,' who conduft all their affairs in national councils, who pride themfelves in their national charader, who confider an infult or injury done to an individual by a flranger as done to the whole, and refent it accordingly I In fhort this pidure is not applicable to any nation of Indians I have ever known or heard of in North-Ame rica.