Dear Sir,

de Marbois, then fecretary of the French legation in the United States; and a manufcript copy was delivered to him. A few copies, with fome additions, were afterwards, in 1784, printed in Paris, and given to particular friends. In fpeaking of the animals of America, the theory of M. de BufFon, the Abbe Raynal, and others prefented itfeif to confideration. They have fuppofed there is fomething in the foil, climate, and other circumftances of America, which occalions animal nature to degenerate, not excepting even the man, native or adoptive, phylical or moral. This theory, fo unfounded and degrading to one third of the globe, was called to the bar of fa 61 and reafon. Among other proofs adduced in contradi6tion of this hypothefis, the fpeech of Logan, an Indian chief, delivered to Lord Dunmore in 1774, was produced, as a fpecimen of the talents of the aboriginals of this country, and particularly of their eloquence; and it was believed that Europe had never produced any thing fuperior to this morfel of eloquence. In order to make it intelligible to the reader, the tranfadion, on which it was founded, was ftated, as it had been generally related in America at the time, and as I had heard it myfelf, in the circle of Lord Dunmore, and the officers who accompanied him: and the fpeech itfelf was given as it had, ten years before the printing of that book, cir- culated in the newfpapers through all the then colonies, through the magazines of Great-Bri- tain, and periodical publications of Europe. For three and twenty years it pafTed uncontra- di6led ; nor was it ever fufpe6led that it even admitted contradiction. In 1797, however, for the iirft time, not only the whole tranfa6lion refpeding Logan was affirmed in the public papers to be falfe, but the fpeech itfelf fuggefted to be a forgery, and even a forgery of mine, to aid me in proving that the man of America was equal in body and in mind, to the man of Eu- rope. But wherefore the forgery; whether Logan's or mine, it would ftill have been Ame- rican. I (hould indeed confult my own fame if the fuggeftion, that this fpeech is mine, were fufFered to be believed. He would have a jull right to be proud who could with truth claim that compoiition. But it is none of mine; and I yield it to whom it is due.