reserved for a more cruel destiny. The Cherokees, now forgetting the claims of civilization, fell upon the old and decrepid, upon the women and innocent children, and by their own account destroyed not less than 90 individuals! and carried away a number of prisoners. A white man who accompanied them (named Chisholm),[154] with a diabolical cruelty that ought to have been punished with death, dashed out the brains of a helpless infant, torn from the arms of its butchered mother! Satiated with a horrid vengeance, the Cherokees returned with exultation to bear the tidings of their own infamy and atrocity.[155]
It appears, to me, to have been the duty of the superintendent of Indian affairs to have apprehended that white man, and delivered him over to the government for trial and punishment. Without some interference of this kind, and indeed a cognizance of the conduct of every white man found permanently dwelling among the Indians, it will not be possible for a traveller or a merchant to go amongst these people without incurring the greatest personal risk, as their revenge is but too often indiscriminate in its object; neither can the security of the frontier settlements ever be rendered certain, until these wanton and unprovoked cruelties of the whites, and their piratical wars, be prevented.
Two or three families of the Delawares are now living
