The great cavalry leader, General Sheridan, once said that the only good Indian was a dead one. It is unfortunate that the amicable relations of William Penn and the Indians could not have been more lasting and more widespread. Often the latter, with their savage instincts, were to blame for the feeling of hatred existing. But, on the other hand, many a red man has set a noble example to those who oppressed him. Such an Indian was Attakullakulla, a name so hard to pronounce, that we shall use the one by which he was known among the whites. This is Little Carpenter, who was a Cherokee chief, born early in the eighteenth century. Like White Eyes, of whom we have told, he was always opposed by a war party, at whose head was Occonostota, or the Great Warrior.
The Cherokees made a treaty with the English in 1730, and were their friends for a quarter of a century. Then on the eve of the great struggle between England and France for the ownership of America, French agents succeeded in causing a division of feeling among the Cherokees. English messengers strove to win them to their side, and a grand council was called by the tribe to decide what they should do.
Everything was going in favor of the English, when the council was thrown into wild rage by the news that a party of their tribe which had visited the French on the Ohio, had been massacred by Virginians, while on their way back. So fierce was the anger of the Cherokee members of the council that they would have killed every English agent present, but for Little Carpenter, who managed to save them with great difficulty after an exciting harangue.
The Cherokees had given much help to the English expedition against Fort Du Quesne, but on their return, when the worn horses gave out, they left some of them by the way-side on the frontiers of Virginia, and took others that belonged to the people whose homes they were passing. This brought an attack upon them, in which two-score warriors were shot down. This crime was partly due to the fact that, after Braddock's massacre, Virginia offered a bounty for Indian scalps. Thus the white men where impelled by two powerful motives,—indignation over the theft of their property, and an avarice that did not stop at the call of mercy. It proved to be the sowing of the wind and the reaping of the whirlwind.
Little Carpenter would not have been an Indian had not his soul been stirred by this fearful crime. After he had warned the agents of their danger and safely hidden them, he turned to his warriors, his whole frame shaking with anger:
"Let us make war at once," he said, "and never bury the hatchet till our countrymen have been avenged. We cannot violate our faith or the laws of hospitality by staining our hands with the blood of those now in our power. They came to us as brothers, and have no blame for what evil men have done. Let them carry back the belts of wampum and then let us take up the hatchet and not rest till all these murderers have been destroyed."
The man hated above all others by Great Warrior and the Cherokees was Captain Coitmore.
WILLIAM PENN TREATING
WITH THE INDIANS