repeatedly prompted the Indians to arm themselves against the United
States. The great principle of the Indian wars, for the last seventy
years, has been the preservation of their lands. On this, the French,
English and Spanish have in turn excited them to active resistance
against the expanding settlements of the whites. It was on the
principle of recovering their lands, that the French were their allies
between the commencement of hostilities with the colonies, in 1754, and
the peace of 1762; and subsequently kept up an excitement among them
until the beginning of the revolution. From this period, the English
took the place of the French, and instigated them in a similar manner.
Their views and feelings on this point, may be gathered from their own
words:

"It was we," say the Delawares, Mohicans and their kindred tribes, "who
so kindly received the Europeans on their first arrival into our own
country. We took them by the hand and bid them welcome to sit down by
our side, and live with us as brothers; but how did they requite our
kindness? They at first asked only for a little land, on which to raise
bread for their families, and pasture for their cattle, which we freely
gave them. They saw the game in the woods, which the Great Spirit had
given us for our subsistence, and they wanted it too. They penetrated
into the woods in quest of game, they discovered spots of land they
also wanted, and because we were loth to part with it, as we saw they
had already more than they had need of, they took it from us by force,
and drove us to a great distance from our homes."[A]

[Footnote A: Heckewelder's historical account of the Indians.]

It is matter of history, that for a period of near seventy years after
it was planted, the colony of William Penn lived in peace and harmony