CHAPTER XIV.
PARLEY TELLS OF THE ORIGINAL NATIVE AMERICANS.
I recollect when I was staying in America, an old Delaware Indian came to Boston to sell some skins and furs, and he called at the house where I was stopping. He had once been a chief among the Indians, but was now poor.
I went to this Indian's home, which was a little hut near Mount Holyoke. We found his wife and his three children; two boys and a girl. They came out to meet us, and were very glad to see their father and me.
I was very hungry and tired when I arrived. The Indian's wife roasted some bear's flesh, and gave us some bread made of pounded corn, for our supper.
I then went to bed on some bear skins, and slept very well. Early in the morning I was called to go hunting with the Indian and his two sons. It was a fine bright morning in October. The sun was shining on the tops of the mountains; we climbed Mount Holyoke, through the woods, and ascended a high rock, from which we could see a beautiful valley far below us, in the centre of which was the little town of Northampton, much smaller than it is now.
"Do you see those houses?" said the Indian to me, "When my grandfather was a boy, there was not a house where you see so many: that valley which now belongs to white men, belonged to red men."
"Then the red men were rich and happy; now they are poor and wretched. Then that beautiful river which you see running through the valley, and which is called the Connecticut, was theirs. They owned these fine mountains too, they hunted in these woods, and fished in that river, and were numerous and powerful,—now they are few and weak."
"But how has this change happened?" said I, "who has taken your lands from you, and made you so miserable?"