much partiality? In a word, we find the Christians much more depraved in their morals than we are; and we judge from their doctrine by the badness of their lives.”
It is plain that this Indian chief’s speech was very much Latinized in the good Swede’s hands; but if the words even approached being a true presentation of what he said, it is wonderful indeed.
In 1721 His Excellency Sir William Keith, Bart., Governor of the Province of Pennsylvania, went with an escort of eighty horsemen to Conestoga, and spent several days in making a treaty with the representatives of the Five Nations, “the Indians of Conestoa and their friends.” He was entertained at “Captain Civility’s cabin.” When he left them, he desired them to give his “very kind love and the love of all our people to your kings and to all their people.” He invited them to visit him in Philadelphia, saying, “We can provide better for you and make you more weleome, People always receive their friends best at their own homes.” He then took out a coronation medal of the King, and presented it to the Indian in these words: “That our children when we are dead may not forget these things, but keep this treaty between us in perpetual remembrance, I here deliver to you a picture in gold, bearing the image of my great master, the King of all the English. And when you return home, I charge you to deliver this piece into the hands of the first man or greatest chief of all the Five Nations, whom you call Kannygoodk, to be laid up and kept as a token to our children’s children that an entire and lasting friendship is now established forever between the English in this country and the great Five Nations.”
At this time the village of Conestoga was described as lying “about seventy miles west of Philadelphia. The land thereabout being exceeding rich, it is now surrounded with divers fine plantations and farms, where they raise quantities of wheat, barley, flax, and hemp, without the help of any dung.”
