"An Indian chief of the Delaware tribe, who visited the governor of Virginia, during the Revolution, informed him that it was a tradition handed down from their fathers, that in ancient times a herd of these tremendous animals came to the Big-bone Licks, and began a universal destruction of the bear, deer, elk, buffalo, and other animals, which had been created for the use of the Indians. The Great Man above, looking down and seeing this, was so enraged that he seized his lightning, descended on the earth, seated himself on a neighbouring mountain, on a rock, (on which his seat and the prints of his feet are to be seen to this day) and hurled his bolts among them, till the whole were slaughtered, except a big bull, who, presenting his forehead to the shafts, shook them off as they fell; but, missing one at length, it wounded him on the side, whereon, springing round, he bounded over the Ohio, the Wabash, and the Illinois, and finally over the great lakes, where he is living at this day."—Jefferson's Notes on Virginia.
(3) White People treated with great kindness.—p. 105.
In every instance the white people, on their first interview with the Indians, were treated well. Varrazano (see Hakluyt's Voyages, vol. ii, p. 295, 300, Lond. 1600.) upon his landing on the North American coast, (which was near Wilmington, North Carolina), found the natives very hospitable. "Great store of people," says he, "came to the sea side, and, seeing us approach, they fled away, and sometimes would stand still and look back, beholding us with great admiration; but afterwards, being animated and assured with signs that we made them, some of them came hard to the sea-side, seeming to rejoice much at the sight of us, and marvelling greatly at our apparel, shape, and whiteness; and shewed us, by sundry signs, where we might most commodiously come to land with our boat; offering us also of their victuals to eat." Again, at another place, one of the sailors who had landed with a few articles designed as presents, found himself treated in the kindest manner. "These guileless people conducted him to the shore, and held him some time in a close embrace, with great love, clapping him fast about, in order to evince their regret at parting."—See Varrazano's Letter in Hakluyt, and New York Hist. Collect.
The treatment experienced by Columbus was equally kind. When Americus Vesputius landed, he was treated as a superior Being; all the early voyagers, the Cabots, Jacques Cartier, Sir Humphry Gilbert, Hudson, speak of the unbounded kindness and hospitality they experienced from the Indians. In the first report of Sir Walter Raleigh's Captain, it is said that they were entertained with as much bounty as could possibly be devised. They found the people most gentle, loving, and faithful, void of all guile and treason, and such as live after the manner of the golden age.—See Hakluyt.
In the first sermon ever preached in New England, the preacher says of the Indians: "They have been to us like lambs, so kind, so submissive and trusty, as a man may truly say many Christians are not so kind and sincere. When we first came into this country, we were few, and many of us were sick, and many died by reason of the cold and wet, it being the depth of winter, and we having no houses nor shelter; yet, when there were not six able persons among us, and that they came daily to us by hundreds, with their sachems or kings, and might, in one hour, have made a dispatch of us, &c. yet they never offered us the least injury."—Sermon printed 1622, reprinted Bost. 1815.
(4) Gave or sold them land.—p. 99.
At Stoke Pogis, Buckinghamshire, the seat of John Penn, Esq. the grandson of the founder of Pennsylvania, is preserved a portion of the trunk of a tree, supported on a marble base. On a brass plate is this inscription:
"This part of the great elm, under which the treaty was held, A. D. 1681, between Penn and the first inhabitants of America, in the neighbourhood of Philadelphia, and which was blown down A. D. 1810, is a present from some of the Society of Friends or Quakers, residing in Pennsylvania."
It is added: "The tree was in some danger during the American war, while the British army was in possession of that city, it being often necessary to cut down the trees in its vicinity for firing. But the late General Simcoe, who had the command of the district in which it grew, was induced, by his esteem for the character of William Penn, and the history connected with it, to order a guard of British soldiers to protect it from the axe."
By the side are some portraits of the Indian chiefs who signed the following deed: