guns were well aimed. The bullets flew like birds in the air, and whizzed by our ears like the wind through the trees in winter. My warriors fell around me; it began to look dismal.

I saw my evil day at hand. The sun rose dim on us in the morning, and at night it sank in a dark cloud, and looked like a ball of fire. That was the last sun that shone on Black Hawk. His heart is dead, and no longer beats quick in his bosom. He is now a prisoner of the white men; they will do with him as they wish. But he can stand torture, and is not afraid of death. He is no coward. Black Hawk is an Indian. He has done nothing for which an Indian ought to be ashamed. He has fought for his countrymen, against white men, who came, year after year, to cheat them and take away their lands.

It

You know the cause of our making war. is known to all white men. They ought to be ashamed of it. The white men despise the Indians, and drive them from their homes. They smile in the face of the poor Indian, to cheat him; they shake him by the hand, to gain his confidence, to make him drunk, and to deceive him. We told them to let us alone, and keep away from us; but they followed on and beset our paths, and they coiled themselves among us like the snake. They poisoned us by their touch. We were not safe. We lived in danger. looked up to the Great Spirit. We went to our father. We were encouraged. His great council

We

gave us fair words and big promises, but we got no satisfaction: things were growing worse. There were no deer in the forest. The opossum and beaver were fled. The springs were drying up, and our squaws and papooses were without food to keep them from starving.

We called a great council and built a large fire. The spirit of our fathers arose, and spoke to us to avenge our wrongs or die. We set up the war-whoop, and dug up the tomahawk; our knives were ready, and the heart of Black Hawk swelled high in his bosom, when he led his warriors to battle. He is satisfied. He will go to the world of spirits contented. He has done his duty. His father will meet him there, and commend him.

Black Hawk is a true Indian, and disdains to cry like a woman. He feels for his wife, his children, and his friends. But he does not care for himself. He cares for the Nation and the Indians. They will suffer. He laments their fate. Farewell, my Nation! Black Hawk tried to save you, and avenge your wrongs. He drank the blood of some of the whites. He has been taken prisoner, and his plans are crushed. He can do no more. He is near his end. His sun is setting, and he will rise no more. Farewell to Black Hawk!

VIII

PETER WILSON ON THE EMPIRE STATE1 (1847)

You see before you an Iroquois; yes, a native American! You have heard the history of the Indian trails and the geography of the State of New York before it was known to the palefaces. The land of Ga-nun-no' was once laced by these trails from Albany to Buffalo, trails that my people had trod for centuries-worn so deep by the feet of the Iroquois that they became your own roads of travel, when my people no longer walked in them. Your highways still lie in those paths; the same lines of communication bind one part of the Long House to another. My friend has told you that the Iroquois have no monuments. These highways are their monuments; this land of Ga-nun-no, this Empire State, is our monument. We wish to lay our bones under its soil, among those of our fathers. We shall not long occupy much room in living-still less when we are gone.

Have we, the first holders of this prosperous region, no longer a share in that history? Glad

1 Delivered before the New York Historical Society on May 4, 1847. Peter Wilson was a Cayuga chief, whose Indian name, Waowawanaonk, means, "They hear his voice." Printed here from a copy in the archives of the Society. Abridged.

A name by which the Indians have known the State of New York.

were your forefathers to sit down upon the threshhold of the Long House. Rich did they then hold themselves in getting the mere sweepings from its door. Had our forefathers spurned you from it, when the French were thundering at the opposite end to cut a passage through and drive you into the sea, whatever has been the fate of other Indians, the Iroquois might still have been a nation; and I, too, might have had a country!

There was a prophet of our race in early times who said that the day would come when troubles would fall upon the Indians so that they would knock their heads together. When that time came they were to search for a large palm-tree and shelter their heads beneath its shade, letting their bodies be buried at its roots, and cause that tree to flourish and become a fitting monument of the Iroquois race. That time has now come; we are in trouble and distress-we knock our heads together in agony, and we desire to find the palm-tree that we may lie down and die beneath it. We wish that palm-tree to be the State of New York, that it may be the monument of the Iroquois.

JAMES OTIS

IN OPPOSITION TO WRITS OF ASSIST

ANCE1
(1761)

Born in 1725, died in 1783; a Law Officer under the Crown; Member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives; Delegate to the Stamp Act Congress in 1765; wrote a pamphlet entitled, "Rights of the British Colonies Asserted," in 1764, and others that attracted wide attention in England as well as here; owing to illness, not active during the war; killed by lightning in 1783.

MAY it please your honors, I was desired by one of the court to look into the books, and consider the question now before them concerning writs of assistance. I have, accordingly, considered it, and now appear not only in obedience to your order, but likewise in behalf of the inhabitants of this town, who have presented another petition, and out of regard to the liberties of the subject. And I take this opportunity to declare that, whether under a fee or not (for in such a cause as this I despise a fee), I will to my dying day oppose with all the powers and faculties God has given me all such instruments of slavery on the one hand, and villainy on the other, as this writ of assistance is.

1 Delivered before the Superior Court in Boston in February, 1761, and the earliest important word publicly uttered in the controversies which precipitated the Revolution. John Adams declared that in this oration "American independence was born." Abridged.