Further particulars respecting the Cruelty of the Indians, their Hospitality, their sense of Justice, and the mode in which the Whites have acted towards them.

A great deal has been said respecting the cruelty of the North-American Indians. That they are in some instances cruel, may be admitted; but this need not be wondered at, when we consider the atrocities¹ which the whites have perpetrated upon them. “Cruelty and eager desire for revenge” says Buchanan, “are the chief, if not the only deformities of their nature; and these are scarcely ever manifested, except in their open hostilities³, the causes of which are precisely⁴ similar to those which actuate civilized⁵ nations. Then indeed their ferocity breaks out with almost demoniacal fury; their captives are generally doomed⁷ to death; but it is not until they have undergone the most exquisite⁸ tortures, the most ingenious, unutterable and protracted⁹ agony, that the final blow is given. These atrocious practices are not however peculiar¹¹ to our unlettered Indians. The metal boot and wedge; the thumb screw; the rack; the gradual burnings of Smithfield; the religious butchery of the bloody¹² Piedmontese who rolled Mother with Infant down the rocks; the dismemberment by horses; Luke’s iron crown; Damien’s bed of steel;” and the kiss of the virgin¹³; “sufficiently attest¹⁴ the claims of enlightened man to distinction in the art of torture.”[72]

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